Any Ideas to increase sales volume????

[CoffeeJunky]

We have great coffee sales but my average ticket sales is around 3.75 and we sell around 300-330 cups average a day.
I am looking to increase sales volume by adding more things to sell.
Any ideas you guys have?
I currently sell typical items like scones, cookies, brownies, and other pre-baked items that we prepare on our oven.

Any help would be very appreciated....

 

[expat]

Greeting cards--funky and odd. Mugs-funky and odd. Unique coffee makers (like an Aeropress or Chemex -- something not readily available) -- again something funky and odd. Start roasting in your store (good theater) and sell coffee beans.

 

[CoffeeJunky]

Thank you

Greeting cards--funky and odd. Mugs-funky and odd. Unique coffee makers (like an Aeropress or Chemex -- something not readily available) -- again something funky and odd. Start roasting in your store (good theater) and sell coffee beans.

Thanks for your input.
I am located in Michigan and want to see what others are doing in their coffee house.
I love the business and want to always improve but my space is limited.(1850sqft)
I do have few things on the wall like shirts and mugs but nothing very different. I was thinking about re-decorating my wall.

Thanks again for your input. I do appreciate it very much.

 

[John P]

You ask about "Sales Volume" but you're really talking about raising your average ticket price.
There are several ways to do this, here are the easiest two.

1) Start with a higher quality product and raise your prices significantly.

2) Raise your current prices and push higher priced drinks.

And also

3) Become more efficient. Less staff, less waste. More efficiency = higher profit. It's about the end number, there's more than one way to get there.

Personally, both 1 and 3 combined will effectively raise the return on each ticket the most.

Adding products never works as a long term solution. Develop from your core outward, not by adding something to the periphery.

 

[CoffeeJunky]

I am working on raising the price. We supply higher quality beans and coffee. We sell tons of iced coffee and frapp on summer. We open longer hours but we only staff 2 people per shift. That is not including myself and my partner. We no longer carry food item that takes longer then making espresso. We are very efficient but I am out of small town and it will be hard to raise my prices. I am few cents under StarBucks....

We are working on coming up with different products and we carry very short list on menu. More choice just does not mean more business I found out.... But I want to see what others are doing to boost up the business.

Thanks for your input and I do appreciate all the time that you took to write this post. I think every bit helps.
Thanks......

 

[expat]

CoffeeJunky,

John's in the coffee shop business, I'm not (although thinking about it) so I'd lean toward taking his advice over mine.

My friend in New Hampshire owns her own shop and does well. She roasts in the shop and that brings in more people. Lots of people buying a cup of coffee also buy 1/2 lb. or 1lb of coffee to brew at home. Depending on what you're roasting you've got $4 profit in a 1/2 lb. bag. More with 'gold cup' or limited crop coffee. She also sells a ton of coffee equipment. She's also lucky enough that Starbucks opened up right across the street from her. So now a lot of those people who came just because of the powerful SB brand found her across the street and since, dare I say it, her coffee is so much better, they're giving her a fair share of the business they would have given to SB. But few of us can be that lucky.

But all in all, if you don't have the space to do much then what John says makes a lot of sense to me.

 

[CoffeeJunky]

Expat,

Thanks for your advise as well. I do agree fully with John. I am lucky enough to have great location in my town. I don't know there are many small town coffee house sells as many cups as I do daily basis. That's why i have disclosed at the beginning, average daily sales... If you think about it, we sell around 30-35 cups of coffee per hour. And most of the business come early in the morning or early afternoon.
I want to sell my own roasted coffee but I will have to bite the higher cost of printing my own cup, napkins and stir. I roast for my own but I have never roasted more then few pounds at a time.... I am still learning to be better roaster. ....

Thanks for your advise and ideas....

I appreciated all ideas, kind words, or even criticism.... Keep on coming Gents and Ladies....

 

[ChopShopCoffee]

The only thing I wanna add is why are you cheaper then Starbucks? I would be at the same price level and just make sure the quality is there.

 

[CoffeeJunky]

I am from small town and we are competing with Starbucks in some level.
They are located other side of the town but we want to make sure our customers to know they are getting great coffee at the better price. That is the only reason we are few cents, not by much, cheaper then starbucks.
We have been around about 10 years and maybe it is right time to increase the price....

 

[PinkRose]

It's good that you're prices are slightly less than Starbucks.

It's always nice to hear people say, "Wow! This coffee is great, and it cost less than Starbucks!"

Instant repeat customer!

Rose

 

[CoffeeJunky]

We try very hard to keep our product fresh. I don't even use the airpot coffee dispenser since that seem to make people think you serve cheap coffee.(like gas station coffee) We always pour our coffee and hand it to our customer. That seems to be more work but I think that is another reason why we are doing very well in this small town.

 

[CanadianBrian]

You might wanna charge more for pour overs. I have seen a few shops doing this, and people are willing to pay for the extra service.
Brian

 

[CoffeeJunky]

I was thinking about that actually. I was thinking about offering french press on their table as well. I don't know how that is going to turn out. We always have around 10-20 people at our shop. That is pretty good number since we only have around 35 seats....

 

[JRMobile]

Hey CoffeeJunky, I just have a suggestion for different way to approach your problem. Instead of trying to think about your average ticket sales and how many cups you sale each day, ask yourself what the total value is on your customers and you’ll have to decide what time period to look at. You could look at a month, 3 months or a year. The reason for doing this is that essentially you’re looking to figure out of how much of my sales are coming from regulars.

The reason to do this is because if you have 375 average ticket sale (this might be an extreme case) 300 to 330 cups average per day. If most of these are coming from regulars that means you actually have a very high value per individual. And when you understand what that value is over a certain amount of time, then that means you understand how much you can invest to bring another individual to the door.

And the reason that I'm suggesting that you look at this way is that maybe you don’t need to increase your ticket sales, but maybe what you need to do is change your marketing’s that bring more people into the door and create more regular customers. But until you know how much value you’re getting for your marketing, that is if you pay a dollar to bring someone in the door and then they return 3x a week for the next year, then you know that a dollar brings a huge amount of value you can leverage that . So that’s just a different way of approaching your problem.

--transcribed and posted for Joseph @ JRmobile.co by Mark

 

[vanjait]

It's good that you're prices are slightly less than Starbucks.

It's always nice to hear people say, "Wow! This coffee is great, and it cost less than Starbucks!"

Instant repeat customer!

Rose

great! pinkrose