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/46786
Jack'sBlend Jack Groot owns JP's Coffee in Holland, Mich. 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 at (866) 321-4MBS. F act: Americans consume 400 million cups of coffee per day, making the United States the leading coffee consumer in the world. Break that down, and we drink 16.7 million cups per hour, 300,000 cups per minute or 5,000 cups every second. That's a lot of coffee. In the following paragraphs I make a few assumptions and educated guesses about coffee consumption, population and number of coffee shops in the U.S. Even if my numbers are off a bit, I think you'll get the point. There are an estimated 300 million Americans, approximately 240 million of them 15 or older. Coffee drinking stats claim 50 percent of Americans drink coffee daily and another 25 percent or so drink it occasionally. This means 180 million U.S. coffee drinkers drink 400 million cups a day. Estimating 30,000 coffee shops in America, each serving an average of 250 cups of coffee per day, that adds up to 7.5 million of the 400 million cups consumed per day, or less than 2 percent. That leaves 390+ million cups of coffee people are getting at places other than our stores. Much of this is people's at-home consumption, which some reports put as high as 75 percent of all coffee consumed. If this is true, 300 of the 400 million cups of coffee consumed every day are at home, leaving 90+ million cups consumed in brewed form at places other than a coffee shop. Which brings me to the stat I want to focus on: 9 of 10 cups of coffee purchased outside the home every day are purchased at gas stations, doughnut shops, fast-food restaurants and other businesses where the focus is not necessarily on quality. I'm not even taking into account the number of coffee shops that don't serve quality coffee. Of course "quality coffee" means different things to different 10 | November 2011 • www.specialty-coffee.com people, but that notwithstanding, there is a huge number of people buying their coffee at places other than your store or mine. Although you and I are coffee snobs, much of the coffee- drinking public is not. They enjoy coffee in its various forms but really don't give it a lot of thought. I'm sure you've all had friends or acquaintances who say stuff like, "Oh, I just go there when I'm not by your store" or "I really like your coffee, but," or the even-better, "You know, I really can't taste the difference." Are these people wrong because they don't love quality coffee and value it like we do? Are they a less-valid customer for someone to sell a cup of coffee to? Is their desire or need for coffee less valid than mine, and does a person selling them coffee have a business less valid than mine? Some would say yes. I say no—let people drink what they want to drink. My point: do not let others tell you how you should run your business. Are you a quality-focused shop? Keep fine-tuning your quality focus, improving your processes, upgrading your equipment and coffees, defining your business correctly and marketing it as such. Are you a café or more of a "coffee is only a part of what we offer" coffee shop? Keep serving good coffee to your customers and make sure it is freshly brewed and served hot, even if it isn't $12-a-pound cup of excellence coffee. Aſter being in the retail coffee business for almost 20 years I can tell you this: We are only as good as we are today. Past successes mean little to the person walking through the door. We must always improve, always smile, and always serve great coffee. SCR