Specialty Coffee Retailer is a publication for owners, managers and employees of retail outlets that sell specialty coffee. Its scope includes best sales practices, supplies, business trends and anything else to assist the small coffee retailer.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/26872
Jack’sBlend Jack Groot owns JP’s Coffee in Holland, MI. He also provides coffee business consulting and training through the Midwest Barista School (MBS). Check out Jack’s new blog, “Jack Groot’s blog — confessions of a coffee shop owner” at www.coffeegroot.com. Jack can be reached at jack@jpscoffee.com with “Jack’s Blend” as the subject line, or (866) 321-4MBS. I t has been a busy last few months. Fall of 2010 showed good sales at JP’s with our 4th quarter 2010-over-2009 sales seeing a 6.5 percent increase. Christmas was great both as a business and personally (although my oldest son leaving for Basic Training 10 days before Christmas made the wife a little unhappy). And most recently we’ve implemented some changes and much-needed improvements at the store in January of 2011. For anyone who has been in business for any length of time you know change is rarely unanimously accepted. What you see as an improvement may tick off a regular customer who has gotten used to “that” drink, flavor, seat, paint color, menu item, chair, or other concern that has made your business special to them. Changing it may even upset their world enough that they stop coming to your store. At JP’s we made a substantial change to our seating. We have a significant amount of it in our store, much of it our very popular high-backed booths. People sitting there can meet, hang out or study in the privacy of their own little world with the high backs keeping conversations and people mostly concealed. We have, oops had, 11 booths in the store, each potentially seating four people…potential being key to my desire to change. First, it is oſten frustrating to see many of our booths taken up by one person. Second, people are always asking where they can plug in (we do not have plugs in the booths). I felt if we created a spot designed for one person—one with enough room to study or work, a plug right in front of them and the overall feel of a library— it would diminish any negative reactions to change. About two years ago I started thinking library tables would be a valuable addition to our store (remember, I’m a slow mover). I knew we’d have to remove some booths, but felt the overall effect would be a positive one that would add real seating (oſten tables or booths have less than the total number of available seats used, thus four seats may only seat one person). 10 | March 2011 • www.specialty-coffee.com So I commissioned my best friend to build our library tables. Over the last couple of years he has been taking down old barns and reclaiming the wood for some amazing projects. He had some 200-year-old beech wood from a local barn and suggested we use it to make the tables. I told him what I wanted and sketched some designs. We put our heads together and came up with a great final design, one that would be perfect for our store. JP’s is big enough to reasonably accommodate between two and four new tables. At the same time I wanted to refresh some nearby booths to match the new tables, as they needed an update anyway. I started by having two of the tables made so I could get a good feel for the space and how customers would react to them. In the process of removing and renewing our booths and bringing in the new tables I asked customers’ opinions. “Do you like the tables? Do you think we should have 2 more?” I received various opinions, but one that I had to take most seriously was the, “Yea, the tables are great, but don’t take away more booths.” But I felt adding tables would open more booth space because customers would be drawn in by the benefits they offer. I was correct. Te tables have been, overall, a very welcome and much-used addition. So I ordered two more. By the time you read this they may even be in place. If you would like to see more pictures, I will be posting them to our JP’s facebook page aſter they are installed. Tere are still some people who are unhappy that there are fewer booths, or that I removed their “favorite” booth. But I believe what we accomplished is a positive improvement to JP’s, one most customers will appreciate and one that will also bring new customers to our store. We may lose a few people, but as with all businesses we must change. To not change is to die. And you can quote me on that. SCR