Take your coffee business to new heights.

Keys to the Shop Consulting has been an incredible help to me both while I was starting up my business, and again a year into being open. Chris has an abundance of knowledge and he is willing to push you to grow, even if it is uncomfortable. After just a couple months we saw a decrease in labor and COGS percentage by implementing the recommendations from Chris. Highly recommend!

I was crazy enough to buy an existing coffee shop with no business experience and limited coffee knowledge. To get a clear picture of my new business and learn how to run it, I hired Keys to the Shop for an assessment and consulting. The initial assessment was incredibly thorough, covering every aspect of my coffee shop. Chris not only identified issues but also provided practical solutions on the spot during his visit. KTTS helped me gain confidence in managing my business. He didn’t just point out problems; he helped me come up with a plan to address each one, which made it clear and manageable.
This experience has proven to be valuable, and I’m already seeing positive results in my business.

I was an avid KTTS Podcast listener, and was actually reaching out to see if there were resources available to help me launch my Vietnamese Coffee business. It all started as an idea, a dream — and a year later -Chris helped it come to fruition. I found that KTTS Consulting existed, and it was the answer to my coffee prayers! I had no prior business experience, some barista experience, but when it came to opening a coffee shop — I had no clue HOW, where to even begin, what were the legal steps, etc. So, I needed help in all areas of the business and KTTS Consulting had it all.

Working with Chris has been an absolute delight. It is worth every single penny of investment. He is extremely knowledgeable, and understands the industry so well. He has been instrumental in helping me with even coming up with ways to pivot because of Covid. I really owe 97% of my continued success to his guidance.

From looking over my business plan, to making sure I have the right drinks, to my branding, to counseling me on business decisions, what my next steps are, mistakes to avoid, how to adjust to COVID, resources to use, networking — you name it, I’ve gained it.

KTTS Consulting is a game changer because you are getting a customized mentorship from someone incredibly involved and well known in the coffee industry. He’s helped launch dozens of other coffee shops, worked in many himself, and will truly be there for you when you have really specific questions that not many others could help you with. If you want your coffee shop to be successful, I think having KTTS Consulting as your main tool is truly necessary.

If you have ever considered investing or growing your leadership staff (or cafe as a whole for that matter), I’m here to say it can be so worth it. One huge obstacle is to know where to turn and if it will it pay off? We have known Chris Defirio for almost 4 years, since the beginning of the creation of Lucabe Coffee Co., and knew he was honest, intentional, knowledgeable, and a trusted outside perspective. If you are wanting to invest in developing your cafe people in any way, Chris is a superb option. We look forward to investing in his consulting for many years to come.

Chris is an insightful and experienced coffee professional with loads to share about making cafe management efficient and effective. During his two day visit to Phoenix’s cafes, he provided our leadership team with practical approaches to create predictable work environments and supportive management relationships. His interactive, small group workshops helped our managers develop perspectives and specific ideas on how to address existing tensions, develop talent, and best position themselves to lead a cafe. The presentation material and collaborative conversations allowed our team to quickly implement many of Chris’s suggestions after his visit. We very much enjoyed working with Chris and highly recommend his services to other operators looking to strengthen their cafe leadership and operating models.

We hired Chris at KTTS consulting to advise us on up-leveling our culture and quality. We knew there were issues, but felt an outside expert would more clearly see root causes.

Chris spent a week on site and at each of our locations. He observed and spoke with nearly everyone he encountered to get their assessment of how things were going. Chris came back with a blunt, but accurate, assessment of our leadership structure and culture. He offered clear solutions and stayed on for the following 6 months to help us get things moving in the right direction. Now, almost a year after our initial meeting, I am confident that we are on a much better path to being the kind of company and employer we have always wanted to be.

KTTS consulting can help you see past the day to day of your work toward the big picture of where your business’ strengths and opportunities lie. I very much recommend their services.

We knew it was time to find someone with the wisdom of experience and an outside perspective to help us navigate through our challenges. It was incredibly helpful to have someone to talk to that understands all of the nuances of running a coffee shop. – Chris is the perfect blend of tough love and encouragement. He gave me timelines (and held me accountable to them) which really helped me get things done that I’d been putting off for far too long. He was also an encouragement in the areas that we were actually doing well.

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We decided to hire Keys To The Shop Consulting, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions we made! Working with Chris has been an incredible experience. The systems we created with Chris for our shop have been a game-changer. They provided much-needed structure for our business and helped to create a solid foundation for us to continue to build. For all the shop owners out there who are thinking about hiring KTTS, our advice is simple: do it! Chris’s expertise, guidance, and support will encourage you to take on challenges, maximize opportunities, and better your business.

KTTS was instrumental in assisting Reserva Coffee Roasters to become a specialty café located in McAllen, Texas. Chris Deferio’s vast experience and knowledge enabled us to create café standard operating procedures, improve espresso and batch brew extractions, as well as improve team and leadership culture in order to provide the best customer service possible for our guests. Chris is a such a phenomenal mentor and coach, whenever we have questions or concerns, he is there to guide us to the best outcome. We are so blessed and grateful KTTS took us on as clients so early in our endeavor, we believe it accelerated our ability to become successful much earlier rather than later in our café journey!

I initially thought of hiring KTTS to help me with opening our second location because of the wisdom and pure gold that I had heard on the KTTS podcast. I do not regret it one bit and it’s one of the best decisions we made in this process! Chris is super attentive with quick responses and great advice from his experience. There’s no way to put a $ amount to the amount of “errors” I feel we avoided by having KTTS help. It was truly invaluable. Anyone looking to improve (all of us right?!?) or expand should definitely reach out to Chris and employ KTTS to assist them!

Chris was able to ask questions to better understand our culture and then lead us into templates for our documents. I was then able to take that fill out for Fika and then meet back up and go over and discuss it with Chris. Was able to bring new staff in with clear expectations and above normal training too.

Chris was very thoughtful and thorough with our time and the prep time he put into our meeting too. To just build better (clear and concise) systems which lead to great and onboarding and retention of staff. I would recommend. Chris comes with more than enough experience and with the wisdom to know that all operations are different and have different needs. He listens and then delivers.

I have known Chris for almost two decades. What I like about him since his humble beginnings, is the pragmatic approach he’s always had as barista at first, then as consultant and finally as mentor to others.  Key to the shop is a reflection of that: he tries to inspire people sharing best practice and ultimately by identifying tools that shop owners can use in their day to day. Specialty coffee, in order to prosper in the current economic environment, needs more people like him and his podcast.

I hired KTTS to help give Railway Coffee a fresh start. We had no foundation at the time and KTTS saved us years of mistakes at the beginning. KTTS thoroughly went through every aspect of our shop. He interviewed and observed baristas, went through opening and closing, surveyed inventory, and all of our policies and procedures (which were painfully inadequate at the time). KTTS then developed an in-depth analysis of our problems with solutions that turned out to be game changers! We have seen a major improvement in all aspects of our shops since KTTS’s advisement. Barista’s are happier, sales are up, and we are now opening a third location. I would recommend (and have recommended) KTTS to others in the coffee industry. They bring experience and professionalism that is hard to come by.

I highly recommend Chris Deferio and his podcast series “Keys to the Shop”. It covers a wide range of relevant topics for coffee professionals, the content of which is instructive, informative, encouraging, inspirational, and entertaining all at once.  Not only has the podcast become a go-to resource for me, but I’ve seen my own team and our cafes benefit from the information shared and the learning its provoked. If I had to point to one singular resource for coffee professionals to better themselves at their jobs, as leaders, and as humans, it would be KTTS. It’s great to see someone producing material that is responsive to what needs to heard and discussed vs simply a self-indulgent hour of talk.