who specializes in location issues, says atmosphere can be an important aspect of the coff eehouse experience. "Perhaps I can go to McDonald's and buy some specialty coff ee,
or I can go to a place that roasts their own beans," Th rall says. "Th e diff erence is more than just the beans. It's also the ambience, the environment. And that includes the locational context." If you're going to go for ambience, that will require room,
Th rall notes. "When somebody goes to a specialty coff ee facility, part of it is the experience of being there, reading a newspaper, enjoying the ambience," he says. "In eff ect what they're doing is not just consuming coff ee—they're renting space." On the other hand, Milletto notes that a cup of coff ee is more
oſt en an impulse buy than a goal in itself. To make it the latter, the shop has to be a "destination," he says: "If you're looking for a location and you are truly a destination, then that could work, but you're going to have to have an amazing product and something really special that people are actually going to drive to you to get to." Why they come to the coff eehouse, and how long they stay,
depends a lot on what they were doing immediately beforehand, which leads to the question... Where will they come from? One of the keys is being
near what Melaniphy calls "generative areas." Th ese could be residences, commercial areas, schools—anywhere that people congregate. Th ey form a pattern, he says, and "the secret in this business is to get yourself in that pattern, so you're visible and people can easily come to you."
But not all generative areas are created equal. Whether
they're a good match depends on what kind of customers a coff eehouse needs; all of them have drawbacks. For instance, even though many people drink coff ee before work, commuters aren't necessarily a guaranteed customer source. "People think employment is" a generative area, Melaniphy
says. "Th ey think, 'Well, people have to get to their job every day and they go back and forth.' [But] try to stop them in the morning. Very diffi cult." On the other hand, residential areas aren't always ideal either.
Bob Fish, CEO of Biggby Coff ee, a Michigan-based chain of 137 stores, says that when Biggby helps a potential franchisee evaluate a given location, purely residential surroundings constitute a red fl ag. "We can get a little squeamish if it's just a bedroom
community, because basically everyone may clear out, so there's no business in the middle of the day," Fish says. One sign of a generative area is the presence of other
restaurants. And yes, that can include other coff eehouses. Physically distancing yourself from potential competition is not automatically a winning strategy. "I've seen gazillions of restaurants, and coff ee shops and
pizza joints and sandwich places, take locations because there was no competition—but it wasn't generative," Melaniphy says. "Th ey thought, 'Hey, I'm going to do gangbusters here. I haven't got any competition.' Well, you haven't got any competition because everyone's going over to where the generation is."
An inviting area out front
encourages walk-in traffic. Photo courtesy of JP's Coff ee
December 2011 • www.specialty-coffee.com | 15
