Professional development and opportunities for betterment and advancing are areas that operators must bake in to the business as much as possible. If you are a barista, manager, trainer etc and you want to take advantage of those things, create…
Running a coffee shop means you take on a fair degree of risk. This is why having and understanding of insurance that is appropriate for your shop is critical. On top of that you need to make sure the insurance you do have is optimized and that you are providing an environment that puts safety first. Unfortunately, while all small …
Nobody is perfect. No coffee business is perfect. Therefore there will inevitably be complaints that staff have about the business. This could be anything from the schedule and state of the bar, to the performance of co-workers and even your own…
As the 2023 begins it is a great time to take inventory of our cafes and roasteries and really look at what we have done and where we can not only improve, but what needs to change. How can we keep up with the changing industry while still serving our customers? Where do we need to innovate and what are …
Every year we have the opportunity to invest our time and attention into many different things. In a coffee shop it can be overwhelming and toward the end of the year we tend to look back and determine way to improve how we invest our time and…
What a great year this has been! So many amazing people have graced KTTS with their presence, perspectives, and wisdom. It really is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to high value content that can transform your coffee business and career. This makes it very hard to choose which lessons and insights to feature in this episode but I …
On this last Founder Friday of the year I am quite happy to feature a coffee shop founder story that is firmly rooted in service to the community. First as a pop up at farmers markets and now with a brand new brick and mortar, today we are talking with the founders of Last Mile Cafe in Grand Rapids, MI …
We all want our customers and staff to be enthused and exhibit what we tend to consider loyalty. Trouble with that word is that it is loaded with assumptions that go beyond reasonable expectations. In fact, many operators are guilty of trying to force…
There has been a resurgence of mobile coffee carts recently. A cart offers the owner flexibility, agility, and a less risky entry into the world of coffee retail. That said, there are many elements that need to be in place for you to be able to set up and run a successful coffee cart that serves you and your customers …
Sometimes it is hard to reconcile our desire for authenticity with the performance and responsibilities that we take on while working in the cafe. In fact, for many baristas, their distaste and inability to embrace anything that seems prescribed…
