Coffee Shop Business Tips: Banish the winter blues and get more customers
Shoppers busily shuffling up and down the jam-packed high street. Survival instincts cutting in as two people make a dive for the last must-have gift left on the shelf. It must be Christmas! Your coffee shop is a haven from the festive madness, and hopefully your tills have been ringing almost as merrily as the sleigh bells. But all good things come to an end. As the population counts the cost of all the festivities, sales can practically go into hibernation during January. Here’s our guide to banishing the winter blues by taking positive action to get more customers in your café.
Get a quote now and protect your business with a bespoke policy.
It’s a booming market – but you have to work at it
Coffee shop sales in the UK continue to boom. But there are also increasing numbers of stores opening every day to try and get in on the action, with an estimated 30,000 coffee shops predicted to be open in the UK by 2025. On the one hand, it’s great for your business that coffee has become such an intrinsic part of daily life. But on the other, you have to work hard to keep customers coming back to you.
1) Location
If your café is close to a railway station or in a prime location in your town, well done. You’ll automatically get people coming into your café based solely on the convenience of where you are. But a great location is not always enough, especially if you have competitors nearby.
2) Quality of product
It stands to reason that if you want customers to come back, and recommend your café to their friends, your coffee has to be outstanding. Just as the UK has seen a rise in artisan bakeries and breweries as the public appear to develop more discerning taste buds, customers are becoming coffee connoisseurs and are demanding speciality roasts.
3) Surroundings
Customers also expect comfortable and cool surroundings from their coffee shop. Is your décor up to scratch? Could you plan to open a new outdoor area? Use quieter times in your café to plan changes and updates.
4) Meet customer demand with profitable extras
Your customers don’t just buy coffee. There are cakes, snacks and quick lunches that can all help to boost your profits. Make sure you ask your customers what they want before you introduce something new. This will also help to make them feel valued – so it’s a double win.
5) Marketing your coffee shop on social media
60% of the UK population have a Facebook account. 14 million of us use Instagram at least every month and 15 million of us do the same with Twitter. Social media is massive, and you can use it to help build a loyal customer base. Just being online isn’t really enough. You need to actively engage with your customers online to make a difference. Using popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, you could try:
- Offering exclusive deals to followers to generate a buzz and encourage new customers to sign up to your pages
- Running competitions that will encourage customers to share your pages with their friends so you expand your network of contacts. Offer a prize that would mean a big saving to your lucky winner, but won’t cost you a large amount, such as a month’s worth of free coffee. And ask your customers to not only share your page but to write a comment, such as what they love about your café. That will encourage more of their contacts to also start to follow you
Once you’ve built up your social media presence, use it to share news and special offers with your customers, such as notice that your summer garden is now open or that you have a new coffee blend in store. Don’t constantly bombard your customers with messages. Think how often you’d like to receive news from somewhere you go to? If you send out too many messages, and they are of limited relevance, you risk turning off your customers.
Support all your efforts with good insurance
With all the hard work you put into running your coffee shop business, make sure you’re backed up with sound insurance. Things can and do go wrong and could cost you big, from expensive legal charges to defend a public injury claim to problems with your cash-flow following damage to premises or stock.
- Employer’s liability insurance
- Public liability insurance
- Money cover
- Stock cover
- Commercial premises insurance
- Commercial vehicle insurance
- Business interruption insurance
- Personal injury insurance
At Park Insurance we really understand the unique needs of your coffee shop business and have a specialist team to help you eliminate risk. We’re independent brokers – so we’re not tied to any insurance company – and can negotiate great value for money deals that won’t leave you short if you do need to make a claim.
Get a quote now and protect your business with a bespoke policy.