Key Success Factors for the Coffee Business

Top-quality coffee beans are essential to business success.

The global coffee industry has been steadily rising for decades, and forecasts indicate continued growth. That can make this a profitable business to enter, but success isn’t as easy as opening a shop in a high-volume area. Factors like the quality of your products and your marketing strategy are also critical to business success.

Product

Perhaps the biggest factor for success in the coffee business is being able to make a reasonable claim that your coffee is better than the competition. You might have a special proprietary blend, or the best on-site roasters, or baristas who can make even professed coffee-haters fall in love with their lattes. Hopefully you have all three. But giving your customers a great cup of their favorite beverage is essential to success.

Customers

You don't need to be located on the busiest street corner in town -- the traffic might not be enough to make the high rents worth it. But you do need to figure out who your customers are likely to be and make sure there are enough of them located near your business to make the numbers work. If your coffee business is a shop on the corner, make sure that there are enough people in the area who drink coffee to keep your business profitable. If you’re operating a coffee service that serves local offices, it helps to be near enough to get your products there on a timely basis.

Employees

Like in any other business, your frontline employees are your business’s prime connection to the customer. They not only make the coffee, they have a huge role in determining the culture of your business. It does little good to spend a fortune on the best coffee if the person making the cup doesn't grind the beans correctly, makes a poor-quality latte, works too slowly or is surly to the customers. A friendly, skilled barista at a coffee shop, or pleasant salesperson marketing at the local office complex, can be a huge asset to your business.

Marketing

You can serve the best coffee in the world, but it won’t do your business any good if nobody knows you’re there. Loyalty cards and social media marketing can draw in individual customers, while a sales pitch demonstrating the positive impacts on employee morale for the comparatively low cost of providing quality coffee service can be a hit with large offices. Advertising lets everyone know about your coffee and gets them in the door. Once there, it's up to the coffee itself to do the rest.