I am a manager at a yoga studio with a pretty vibrant community. We've got a client base of about 2k, with ~500 being regulars that come weekly or more often, the rest coming bi-weekly or a few times a month. Most of the regulars and some of the semi-regulars are loyal customers and feel like they are part of a community, so we are expanding to create a Wellness and Community Center (massage/reiki/healing services that includes a retail/workshop/community event/etc space out front). We'd like to serve coffee in this space before/after classes and workshops and on select hours weekly.
I'm debating the use of French Press for this. My thoughts on where this is ok or a benefit:
-It's a client base that will be stopping in and staying, hanging out so the 5 minutes isn't an issue.
-We'd have hot water ready to go so the total prep time is decreased. (Still reading the opinions on exactly how hot that should be.)
-The select hours wouldn't be those morning rush hours when people are in a hurry, but instead would probably be around 10a-1p when local office workers (we are downtown) are wanting coffee meetings or mid-morning perk.
-I'm thinking we'd purchase different size presses so we could brew up a batch for one lone customer or a small group at once. If we needed to scale up, we could get more presses and have multiple brewing at once.
-There's only one other coffee shop within the area that is considered downtown and to be honest- their coffee sucks.
-It would be novel and different to a lot of people, which is a plus here. And since we likely won't have a non-stop stream of visitors, it will eliminate the coffee sitting forever on a burner plate or in a thermos thing.
-People around here will usually pay a little higher price for better quality (real or perceived- for example, driving across town for organic coffee and passing about 3 different starbucks/scooters along the way).
Negative:
-If I'm massively underestimating how many people show up during those hours and we can't make enough coffee fast enough...
-I don't know any others, that's why I'm here asking.
