I was wondering what subject my first blogpost should have, but then one of my friends reminded me of a good subject, why not describe the CoffeeCulture in my hometown and my experiences with it. I live in Groningen and have been the owner of two franchise espressobars (better not say coffeeshop in the Netherlands) in the city center. One was situated in the main shopping street, the other was located next to the local museum and Central railway station. Groningen is the largest city in the north of the Netherlands in a rural area. Lots of wide open spaces and farmland. The city has a regional function as the main shopping city and it attracts also a lot of german guests. It is a student city, lots of students at the University and businesschools. In my opinion, Groningen is widly seen as a great benchmark city, 'if it works there it will work anywhere'. So a lot of new franchises and bigger companies start a shop in Groningen. For instance, about five years ago you only had three stores who sold coffee in a proper way. They were CoffeeBreak, CoffeeUnited and Douwe Egberts. Although Douwe Egberts was more of a gift shop who sold coffee on the side. Nowadays, there are a lot more espressobars and franchises in the city. We have two CoffeeCompany's, a Simon Levelt (machine- & coffee shop), Doppio, Kaldi (machine- & coffee shop), two Coffee United's, Douwe Egberts revamped the store and became a proper cafe, CoffeeBreak, CosiCoffee, MiCaffe at the University and last august a Starbucks opened at the central railway station. And thats not all, the regular bars and pubs also start to see the value of good coffee quality so they improve their machines, beans and they take courses to learn how it is properly made.
I must say that all these developments did actually change the way people drink coffee. More and more people learned about the changes in the coffee experience and learned about the taste of coffee. At one point, I even thought that people actually started to select the place where they wanted to drink coffee. But I was wrong.
If one shoppe had a too long waiting line, they would turn around and go to another place, and another, and another... It was just that they wanted to drink coffee someplace special. They came for the great seat near the window with the view, the place upstairs so they could sit there with the laptops, drinking one espresso and talk to the family for hours and hours on skype. They didn't care for the taste, it was just convenient.
I noticed that the level of taste in the espressobars was everywhere the same. Dark roasted espressoshots from italian roasters with dark, chocolate and hazelnut roasted flavours. Some where underextracted, giving the most horrid espresso ever. However, the place was packed with people who drank coffee! Was it the atmosphere, the food, the situation? The people just liked it.
I thought about how to deal with this and I started to focus on taste. I noticed that my espresso was a bit acidic, so I bought 18 gr VST baskets and turned up the temperature a little bit to 93C. I changed my burrs in the grinder, changed the amount of coffee and started to experiment with flavour. I wanted it to be more sweet. The reaction was amazing. The people started to realize that someone in the city was playing with taste and flavour of the coffee. Then I started to import beans from abroad, Intelligentsia, HasBean, Caffenation, SquareMile as a special besides my franchise coffee. I added SlowCoffee to the menu and the people loved it, they were surprised by the fact that someone did something else then the others. So I tought my staff that they had to focus on coffee quality and taste and brought them all to the same level of performance to guarantee the level of quality. And guess what, people came to the store just to see what kind of specials I had this time and they said that no matter who made the coffee, it always tasted perfect. They told me that at the other stores the coffee sometimes was good, sometimes bad. It depended on who was operating the machine. The staff responded in starting to find coffee interesting, and they started to play with flavour and taste itself. I even gave them a Chemex for chistmas. They were absolutely delighted and started to use it for experimenting wth flavours and they applied it in the shop! I had never thought this would happen!
Sadly, this august I had to stop with the franchise. The store was taken over by someone who is more commercial so the specials went away and the quality of coffee went down to the same level of the others. Fortunately, there is still a small group of 'my' staff there who takes good care of the coffee so the standard is still ok. When someone askes me where to get good coffee in Groningen, I will always send them over to 'my' store but the waiting is now for someone who really stands up and brings the Third Wave to Groningen!
The scary part of business is competition. No matter how well established a business is, no one is untouchable. Every business has its own chinks in its armor, a weakness that can be exploited; price, quality, quantity, feasibility, promos and more.
BeantwoordenVerwijderen- FranchiseMatch.com
When you have a well-organized business plan, it'll be easy for you to handle competitors. However, if you're on foreign land, you might be exploited. Before you start, make sure that you've done feasibility studies. Think of a product that's needed in the community. Preferably, you can invest on franchising. It's the easiest way to start a business. :)
BeantwoordenVerwijderenFreshAndHealthyBrands.com