590: The Problem w/ Focusing On The Numbers vs The Guest Experience

Chris DeferioPodcast

Focusing on numbers above guest experience may actually prevent you from achieving the numbers you need to sustain your business long term. Yet still people insist on creating environments in the shop that turn customers into marks to be worked for the sake to extracting as much out of them each interaction as possible so we can see average tickets …

SHIFT BREAK! What We Lose When We Don’t Listen

Chris DeferioPodcast

Feedback is all around us. From the customers, staff, and the business itself, we can only make great decisions for the coffee shop when we practice listening to understand. Trouble is we often avoid listening for fear of what we will hear, or because we falsely think we know what someone thinks or that their opinion cannot be helpful due …

589: How Coffee Sets the Stage For Conversation w/ Actor Grant Garry

Chris DeferioPodcast

Coffee is a connector. I think we all have seen this in our personal lives, our social lives, and in the community we help facilitate through our shops. In the fast paced often stessful world of cafes and the vocation of coffee, we need to take some time, and leave some room for appreciating the real impact a simple cup …

SHIFT BREAK! Time Management to Beat Overwhelm

Chris DeferioPodcast

It’s a common belief that there are not enough hours in the day to do the work that we need to get done in order to run a good coffee shop. The truth of the matter is that, more than a lack of time, this feeling is a result of poor time management. In particular, not having appropriately set and …

588: Prioritizing the Right Things as Your Cafe Grows

Chris DeferioPodcast

As a business grows, the relationships in it shift and and evolve. The double edged sword of success and growth in numbers, is a natural pulling away from paying attention to those relationships. IN the end, unless we fight to stay engaged and prioritize the health of our communication and care fro the people that make the cafe possible, it …

SHIFT BREAK! Have We Made Coffee (and ourselves) Miserable?

Chris DeferioPodcast

In our pursuit of optimization, analysis, scientific rigor, and financial success, we may find ourselves wondering, “where is the life in all of this?” Could it be that in dissecting every inch of our business, we have inadvertently killed it? Today on Shift Break we will be talking about the need to remain connected to and act from the heart. …

587: How To Apply Insights To Your Coffee Bar

Chris DeferioPodcast

Coffee shop insights and resources abound! We have innumerable platforms, tools, and ideas that all have a certain amount of value…if only they are adopted and applied well and consistently to your shop On today’s episode, we will be talking about the steps that owners and operators should take to go from revelation to realization when they get insights that …

SHIFT BREAK: Cafes, We Need To Train Harder

Chris DeferioPodcast

The experience of the customer day-in and day-out is often treated as a given. Something that is expected, but not something that is earned. We work to The real focus of our efforts should be on training and resourcing our staff to deliver a consistently excellent product, space, and hospitality experience every time. Are we truly doing that? Today on …

586: How to Dial In Your Cafe

Chris DeferioPodcast

When we think about dialing-in, we automatically think about coffee. Changing the grind, the recipe, and other inputs and variables all to obtain an ideal outcome. Your coffee shop is not just about coffee though, and that means that other areas of the cafe need to be dialed in in order for the product of the cafe experience to be …