9. Be brave with your prices
Nothing hurts your ability to make profit from your coffee business
more than being cowardly with your prices. Far too many operators
are scared of offending customers by charging properly for their
food and coffee. You must be proud of your product and
charge accordingly. Fighting for business on price is the surest
way to go out of business. You must charge enough and have a
simple enough menu system so that you don’t delay increasing
prices due to the cost of implementing any changes.
The best solution is to be at the upper end of the pricing scale from
your competitors and to increase prices little and often to avoid any
big shock rises. Price increases always need to be accompanied
with a little bit of staff training to ensure the right message is given
to your customers. They need to understand how hard it is to make
a profit and how expensive it is to keep the business going. You do
not want employees to be telling customers that you have just
bought a new car and need to pay for it! Increases in rent, rates,
water charges and taxes are all reasonable and highly valid excuses.
Increase in minimum wage is a trickier one, even though it is
generally relevant, simply
because it invites negative
comment from the
employee who is telling
the customer why the cost
of their coffee has
increased.
Wake up to listening to
everybody at the expense
of your intuition
“Problems cannot be solved by
the same level of thinking that
created them.”
Albert Einstein21