The economics of flavoured syrups continued.
So as a coffee house you have syrups but keep them hidden out the way, haven’t really updated the board and not sure how much to put in a coffee, or which order to put it in, and certainly haven’t had time to make sure the staff are getting the most out of it. No, I know this probably isn’t you, but let’s imagine we all might know someone a bit like that.
First objective
Increase the revenue- how? Well getting customers to spend more money is the trick. Put prices up? Well you could, but better to keep offering more choice and more bespoke drinks- so rather than just charging more, give the customer more options and that way they are buying differently. But customers are creatures of habit, they are in a hurry, they don’t want to be messed about I hear you say! Ordinarily I agree but we want them to enjoy more experiences, try more beverages, experience more flavours and do it happily not noticing that it might cost a little more. Changing the board to reflect the seasons, new flavours and offering more choice makes price less of an issue and flavour experiences more important. Better still, customers will feel more confident about change.
Second objective
How does that make more money? Well there is an old and proven principal that profitability follows customer satisfaction. So first, satisfy your customers and that will help profit. How? If you accept that customers will welcome change so long as it’s done in a gradual way and has some logic, then offering new seasonal flavours, highlighting offers that tempt people to order more or move to new products is a start. It has to feel like value.
Entertain! So maybe think about this as part of welcoming and entertaining customers for a short part of their day. They trust you with the choice they are offered so by recommending flavours and recipes to try you are helping them make new choices that hopefully result in the amount they spend with you increasing.
Still not sure?
One of the areas people have a problem with is making new coffees and flavoured drinks. How much syrup flavouring to put in a drink?
We have looked at what works and one large well known chain of coffee houses that we all would recognise do the following.
On the basis that a pumped shot is about 10ml of syrup:
2 pumps in a small cup, 3 pumps in a medium and 4 in a large. This is using the most popular flavoured syrup. However, not all syrups are the same and the subjective nature of taste means that what is ‘enough’ for one person is not nearly enough for another.
‘Syrups are expensive, we don’t want to put too much in’ Well that is obvious but too little will not feel like value to a customer either. Remember that flavours generally have about 50%-70% margin and that is almost all straight profit. We all want customers to be satisfied then the trick is to make sure you have tried and tested all your versions and that your staff have too. That way any variation between flavours and the perceived strength can be accommodated. We find the more natural the flavours, the more variable they might be. Temperature, coffee strength, bitterness, time of day and many other factors all affect the way we perceive flavour; more on that subject another day.
So, in summary; ring the changes gradually, inform, entertain but mostly recommend new beverages and flavours to customers. Make sure everyone on the staff knows and try the products. Make sure it feels like value.
