22 Treat lunch like a restaurant
Coffee signals the end of the meal, so make it easy for your
customers to get coffee afterwards and buy a soft drink during their
meal.
Many coffee shop owners don’t take proper advantage of their
lunch time business. A well run restaurant will attempt to sell you
as much as possible during this period in as subtle a way as
possible. They will offer drinks before food, wine with food and
ideally sell you a starter, main course and dessert coupled with a
side dish or two. And they will always sell you coffee at the end of
the meal.
Most coffee bars & cafes will have a different format, but make sure
you aren’t leaving money on the table that the customer should
ideally be spending with you and not somewhere else. At the very
least you want to be selling them two drinks– a cold drink
during the lunch and a coffee afterwards. Make sure you have the
systems in place to do this easily. If you have table service, ensure
your staff are adequately trained to offer this, and with counter
service make it easy for the customer to get back to the till to get a
coffee afterwards and not be put off by the continuing daunting
queue. As ever, never forget the margin available in the coffee
sales. And obviously coffee with dessert is a much better sale than
coffee on its own.
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