A surefire way to run your business into the ground

Posted by barblog on Jun 28, 2010 in Bar Management, Bar Service | 0 comments

Today I’m working from a coffee shop. I say a coffee shop, but to be honest it’s more like a department store. From where I’m sitting, I can see a Cigar Humidor filled with 100s of cigars for sale, a big display of homemade candles for sale, a large Gelato fridge displaying every kind of gelato you can imagine, a small kitchen that serves Belgian Waffles and French Crepes (but only on weekend mornings), there is a large energy drink display, the music playing has no relevance to any of these things, oh and yes there is coffee too.

The only thing that’s missing? Customers. I’ve been here for two hours and remain the only customer. It’s not a coincidence. I’ve been here before and it was the same story, except when they first opened, they didn’t have all these add-ons. They just had coffee and a dream to be a local coffee shop.

So what went wrong? Well, for reasons that are probably a mixture of poor branding, inefficient marketing and a lack of reach to the demographic they wanted to serve, it’s never been very busy and so the classic response to low customer levels is to start to offer more and more, because “surely that way we’ll appeal to more people…..”. Unfortunately, while you might appeal to a larger base of interests, you’ll attract none of them in sufficient numbers to sustain a business.

You see, customers have way too many choices today. There are ever more demands on their attention, money and loyalty. To the coffee customer, the cafe isn’t “purist” enough to get their business. To the cigar smoker, he’s unlikely to seek out his fine Cohiba in a coffee shop and to the gelato customer, well there’s no indication outside that this is anything more than a coffee shop, so the gelato probably isn’t selling.

As a customer, I want you to “get me”. I consider myself too smart to be won over by run of the mill signs and posters. I want to align myself with a business that matches my interests and motives. I want my coffee shop to be passionate about coffee and little else and I want to get my cigars from a store that deals in little else.

So if you do nothing else today, ask yourself, what is my main product or service and how well am I representing this? How passionate am I?

To those customers you attract, you’ll keep them forever and they’ll be your biggest raving fans and evangelists. Keep adding on to your product range in the hope of attracting more customers and you’ll end up knee deep in melting gelato trying to keep the cigars dry…..