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- Vision is really important.
At the end, if you're not doing what you love,
you're not gonna be doing it for long.
But it is also really important to cater
to what people want.
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You have to realize who is out there and how to reach them.
You also have to realize what they want and give it to them.
Without analyzing what your target markets are,
you're essentially just like putting yourself
out there to who knows.
It's not only that you need customers to survive
as a coffee business,
but it's that what ends up happening is your community
invest back in you by showing up every day.
And if you're not there for them, they'll know that,
you're more likely to serve more coffee
to more people if you think about them as specific target
markets versus thinking about just people as a whole.
Like, I wanna serve my community.
It's like now I've got students, I've got parents,
I've got grandparents,
I've got people (chuckles), lots of people.
- I mean, when we started 26 years ago,
I think we just wanted to be...
we wanted everybody to come in.
So we know we didn't really have a target audience.
I mean, we figured that everybody needs to enjoy a beverage.
And I think today, it's a little bit different.
We do have more of a target audience.
So a lot of times when we have university locations,
as a lot of student organizations that might come in,
or as if it's in a neighborhood,
there might be a mom's group or reading group,
something like that.
So there's a portion of our menu that appeals
to younger kids, middle school, high school,
and then all the way up.
I'm Lisa Bee, I'm the CEO of Sweetwaters Group.
We've opened 24 franchise locations
and we probably have a little over 80
that are in development.
It's hard to explain (laughing)
you see something that looks like our server,
we're in a totally different spot hundreds of miles away.
That's very odd. (laughing)
Initially why people come to us
is a lot about the marketing and the branding.
The first thing they do is they go on our website
and they see all the beautiful pictures.
We have a Facebook page, we have Instagram page
and I think that instantaneous
feel of who we are comes through in our social media,
with the world is getting busier and more stress,
I think people tend to wanna step back
and feel that community piece of it
and we wanna be a part of that.
- When I first realized,
"Okay, I'm gonna do cold brew coffee."
Then I was...
I got really excited, I had this real cute trendy idea
of packaging and the name and everything.
There was a cube that you fit in your fridge
and then the name was gonna be Coffee Cube
like coffee to the three, so strong, all that stuff.
And I thought it was a good idea, I was so excited about it.
And then when I met with the marketer
who I met through the Candy Kitchen,
she just sat down the first thing she asked is,
"What's important to you?
"What are your values?
"What do you want your brand to say?"
And then I started talking about empowerment of women,
single moms, and then I told her my idea about the cube
and stuff she's like,
"Girl no, whatever you just told me
"does not match that at all."
And so I was crushed for a little bit and then I was like,
"Wait a minute, she's right."
Even though it's a cute idea,
that's really not I can't...
I need to be able to sustain what this brand
and message and everything is about.
My name is Meliesha Pullano,
and I'm the owner of Mamaleelu Cold Brew.
I think there's a lot of opportunity in the coffee industry.
I'm just trying to hone in on my niche.
And I think part of my niche
is producing them a quality coffee
and it's also about storytelling.
That's what Mamaleelu does in the coffee industry.
That's my niche.
- Creating a brand,
what I've learned is, keep it simple,
make it local, and I'm just being specific to coffee.
So for instance, the Brighton Coffeehouse and Theater,
it is what it is.
Now this is not a hip, like college town,
it's just small town America Main Street.
So once you create that brand,
it's really up to you just to support it with product
service friendliness.
You do all that stuff and your brand solid.
You can't go to a marketing firm and say,
"Create me a solid brand."
You're gonna get a logo and a name and it's not connected.
It's got to connect it, it's about people.
So go ahead and get that, secure your website
and all your domains.
If you've got a name secure it before you talk too much.
It's very annoying if somebody grabs your name.
So get those on your social media accounts,
your website, your licensing.
Those can all be done prior to anything else
and it doesn't cost that much.
You might be out 100 bucks at this point.
- Oh, okay, our great example is our second drive
through that opened in Long Island, New York.
These guys were just great
at creating that social media presence.
They had over 1000 Facebook likes before their cafe opens.
And when they actually did open,
they had a line outside their door, around their building.
They did the highest sales in our system,
and they did an amazing job.
They had to be out in the community,
talking about their business, talking to their friends,
creating excitement, posting things on their Facebook page
that were fun and exciting and engaging.
So very, very, very important.
- So yeah, over here, when we first started,
we were just roasting coffee in the back
and there was nothing really,
there was a table with an espresso machine,
and this girl who I hired was really hilarious.
She was like social media, she was really, she could just...
And so she and I would just make up stories
or we would just anything that happened.
One time we covered a water main that brook
out in the street.
We were standing out there and I'm drinking a cup of coffee
and I'm like, "I'm over here at the water main brook."
I'm live, put it on (laughing) as a video.
And so they picked up the video which was on our website.
And I had a website really early too, which was...
And I used to write these blogs
and everything was misspelled
and all crazy but it was really funny,
and people were like, "Where's your blogs?"
They read my blogs.
Yeah, it really helped.
My name is John Roos and I own RoosRoast Coffee.
I really thought what this business was gonna be,
it was like,
I thought it was gonna be just me roasting coffee
and selling it online.
But it's like, this kind of is taking a life of its own
and the front part out here, it's like a park.
There's picnic, put picnic tables out,
people love to sit out there.
There's a little mini apple orchard
on the side of the building
and then people come in and they walk in the back
and they say, "Hello."
And it's a part of their day, it's their thing.
(laughing)
I think yeah, I think one of the things
that is spend more money on equipment right away.
Sometimes I would really cheap out on our equipment.
So we'd be working with some really junky stuff
that was breaking all the time.
But I mean, I don't know, maybe not.
Maybe that wasn't, maybe that was good,
'cause it was a good way to learn.
- This was really low tech, and still is low tech.
The imperative piece of equipment that I needed,
because I wanted my product to be as fresh as possible
as a coffee grinder.
So my first piece of equipment was big red (laughing)
over here is our a coffee grinder, I think it was like $900.
So that was a big deal for me.
And then the candy kitchen had some equipment
but the one thing I still to this day don't have
and would love is a labeler (laughing).
So I label everything by hands.
I was going to buy one but just other things
were more important
and so that's kind of you have to make the decisions on
when it comes to equipment.
- There are ways to maneuver around purchasing equipment.
You can work with a roaster
if you're not roasting coffee for yourself.
They will also help you by an espresso machine
and a grinder sourcing.
Those things, they will help you with that.
'Cause most likely they have those relationships
with those vendors already and they could get you a discount
if you go through them specifically.
You have to serve their product,
but it's a small price to pay
for someone who's also probably gonna service
those things for you too.
Hopefully you already know good amount
about the people roasting coffee in your area.
Reach out to their sales representative
and tell them you like their coffee
and that you would like to try to use their coffee
in your shop.
And from there, you'll be able to start a relationship
with their sales rep.
I do recommend being a multi roaster though,
because there could be a lot of coffee
out there you're missing if you just stick with one.
- The nice thing is that we are not a new brand,
we're 26 years old.
So we have some really solid relationships with vendors.
So we have a good majority of our vendors
that we've worked with for over 20 years.
So they really understand our business
and they are great asset to not only us,
but to our franchisees.
- I think it's very unique for a cafe
to actually roast their own coffee.
And I think people just kind of like,
"Oh yeah, whatever you roasted on your coffee."
That is a huge thing.
We start off as a roaster,
and I wish I would have gone to more trade shows earlier,
because once you start going to the trade shows,
you meet more people.
And I started doing that about four years ago,
five years ago, maybe I went to a couple,
but then I started going more often,
and you really meet more people.
And then by meeting more people,
now we have a lot of people who want us to buy their coffee.
So we have a lot of coffee samples coming in.
And it's all just a matter of relationships.
It's all about trying to support those people
so they can keep bringing you coffee.
- When you fill your gas tank up with gas,
you don't think about the people
who are manning the oil company halfway around the world.
But at a coffee shop, there's this place of engagement
between the customer and barista
where there's a chance to talk about that.
There's a chance to see it as a global industry
with real people behind it.
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