As your competition increases, standing out becomes more of a struggle. We chase ways to be unique and often we grab hold of trends, products, and concepts that end up looking more like desperation than authentic expressions of your business and…
Managing money can be super stressful. This is especially true when you own and operate a coffee shop, the margins are thin, and there seems to be more going out than coming in. To help us work through our approach to our money we are talking with the Emmy Award nominated and Gracie Award winning financial analyst for CBS …
Coffee is too cheap, and we all want customers to pay more for specialty coffee. How can we more effectively shift customers over to paying more, is it through higher quality or better experiences? Today we chat about why elevation of the customer…
What we think and how we act are inextricably linked. In the world of hospitality how our views and assumption about others influences everything form how we serve customers -to who we promote to leadership positions in the cafe. A large part of what contributes to our behavior is actually under the radar and as such goes unaddressed. Today we …
Everyday we have the opportunity to act on thoughts we have that would benefit others and never follow through. There is a whole world of encouragement lying dormant inside each of us that could greatly contribute to harmony within the bar and ease…
Being a manager in coffee ain’t easy. There is no end to the number of different issues vying for your attention on any given day and it can seem like you are constantly trying to keep your head above water. Managers are the most important leaders in specialty retail and in order to do our best work we need to …
Sometimes we can give ourselves a pass when it comes to being the type of professional that we want employees to be. Practicing self-awareness is tricky when the work continually distracts you but it is necessary in order to not become a hypocrite at…
The beautiful thing about coffee is getting to explore the stories of all the wonderful individuals who make up the specialty community. Today we we do just that. In this series of four short interviews from the show floor at Coffee Fest Indianapolis we get to sit down with Stephen Garcia, General Manager at Commissary Barber & Barista, Indianapolis, IN / Andy and Sarah Hassler, …
“Like walking into your granny’s kitchen.” That’s the goal Andytown Coffee Roasters founders Lauren Crabbe and Michael McCrory have for what people experience when they walk into their shops in the Outer Sunset of San Fransisco. Starting as a single 600 sq ft shop, Andytown currently employs 49 people over 5 locations— four public-facing coffee shops and one private office cafe. …
Tracking staff performance can be difficult when you are putting out fires and being pulled in a thousand different directions. Things fall through the cracks and that means we miss growth opportunities with staff who end up feeling forgotten about…
