Know Your Customer
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Real quick:
Shopify’s event space in SoHo is running a competition tomorrow to pick the odd one out between three coffees. You can win $100 if you are the fastest and “most accurate(?)”, at 10a.m. and 2p.m.
Something I learned at Peet’s
I went to a coffee shop in flushing called Gong Dan with an incredible menu—meringue affogato, granola-topped oat drinks, egg cream drinks. Something you go when you’re exploring; going out; touristing.
I realized I’d never want to sit and do work there. I think that these drinks are innovative, but powerful. They take up too much of your brain. When you’re finished with the drink and you can focus back on your work, you’re now working with nothing to sip.
I contrasted that with a place I went to in middle of cheese-curd-land that served a latte in full-froth mode in a large staying-here cup.
Served with sugar, a spoon, a light snack.
Anything you need to milk that coffee for all the time it’s worth.
There’s also the specialty shop, serving the best of the best to people with the palette to taste it. And there’s the ‘middle ground’ shop, where you can sit or you can go and the coffee is respectably good but caters specifically to the area’s taste. NYC leans towards cocoa and roasty notes, for example.
Getting to the point
Peet’s, Starbuck’s older brother, is a California-based chain where I worked as a barista—across four of their stores for a number of months.
We’re talking about the customers today on New York Coffee, and something that everybody hears but has other things to focus on—”Know Your Customer”.
It’s a kitchy term [a.k.a. corporate-speak] for “do a tiny amount of research at the very least”, but here it’s relevant. The point is that your coffee shop is made towards a specific crowd, and that crowd will like coffee how they like it.
The way your customers like it is often not the best way it’s made.
It is the way the coffee shop makes money, though.
The customers that went there, though, especially those that got lattes, liked them more when the milk was a bit less frothy, with a good amount of sugar.
About 90% of the customers won’t really care much about your specialty blend or your limited edition pourovers or what farm it’s from. They need something from the coffee, and you have to provide it to them.
Usually, it’s one of the following:
A brand new, special experience
what farm is it from? is it a varietal I’ve never tried? is it expensive and limited-edition?
A soft drink, to ease their pain
Hot chocolate is too taboo to order at work, they want a frothy milky drink that helps connect them to the melancholy rain and ease the pains of having worked a 9–5 for 20 straight years or a hard couple months at university
A reliable friend, a way to get caffeine that doesn’t taste like garbage
A way to get caffeine that can taste good but doesn’t have to
You’ll also notice smaller things, like how much foam they expect on the tops of their lattes, if they like it more when you mix their syrup with the espresso or with the complete latte, and even the temperate of the drink.
The point is: Regardless of what you think and know to be good, you are at the service of your customers. Knowing what your local area likes will
How can I learn what customers like?
By asking!
With your children, coworkers, bosses, and relationships, sometimes the best way to find out what someone likes is to ask them.
Something they drove home to their baristas at Peet’s was to chat with the customers while they’re waiting for their drinks at the espresso machine. It’s often that the expo area is near the espresso machine anyway, so it’s not a lot of extra work.
Knowing that maybe only 10% care about the coffee itself and its origin and specifics, it doesn’t mean the other 90% are all in that last group, where they could care less about the taste.
So, if they’re getting a drink, say something like “hey, welcome back, I see you got a latte again! How was the last one?”
Or if they’re new, just asking them “how do you like it?” makes them consider the question, possibly for the first time.
If they liked it, next time they’ll ask for it that new way and be a happier customer. Then they’ll be curious, and wonder if different ways are even better, and start asking the baristas for recommendations. This turns casual customers into regulars, as you’re providing more value than a random coffee shop.
Do this enough, and you can turn casual coffee drinkers to specialty drinkers. And you’ll turn drinking cappucinos from a machine into writing a newsletter.
Product of the month
Doritos made a coffee-flavored Dorito that was given to a few Austrailians who won a sweepstakes. They are receiving mixed reviews.
This week’s coffee shop spotlight!
Oh, am I a big fan of this one. There aren’t many coffee shops that aren’t bodega-esque in Flushing, but the Prince Street area shows up to play.
This one is a Vietnamese coffee shop, meaning their ‘espresso’ is replaced with slow-drip Vietnamese style coffee in a Phin. They then add ice, sweetener, and something to make it special.
Càphê Đen is a shop nestled behind the energy of Prince Street, Flushing, where if you can make it past the hot pot shops and the 30 minute line outside of Molly’s Tea, you’ll find one of the best coffee shops there are. The design screams ‘professional chain’, but this is the original and only Càphê Đen in the world (for now!). When I went back, the designer was giving out stickers to test out designs for new merch.
You can see in the shop that there is a ‘story’ being told, which is an aspect of great design. For example, if you’re buying a $500 towel, you need to know about the heritage of the cotton, the skill of the weaver, the benefit that buying this towel can do for the world, for them, and for you. It’s probably not that much better than a $100 towel, which is only marginally better than a nice Costco fluffy one you replace every year or so.
But the story is what gives it value, and what justifies the handmade aspect.
The same way here, the story starts with the phin and the history behind it, purporting that you can experience the entire history uniquely in Càphê Đen.
Càphê Đen is also a very cool name, because it sounds like “Café den” and also means “Black Coffee”.
With a menu up to par with the flushing community expecting interesting, innovative drinks, they have a lot.
The traditional Vietnamese Milk Coffee, which is a slow drip with condensed milk, affogato, caramel, egg cream coffee (and salted cream and ube cream and matcha cream and sesame cream), matcha drinks, and milk tea and ‘refreshers’ which is like fruit mixed with tea.
I got the egg cream coffee, presumably made by the A-team, because when I went back with a friend it wasn’t as good. I was told it was egg powder mixed with cream cheese and another dairy product to make it hold its shape. Eggy!
The people are nice, and informed, and there is history and story around Vietnamese coffee all over the walls. If you have the chance to meet the owner, I assume they have a wonderful history to tell.
I recommend you go. It’s not specialty coffee as you’re used to; it should be.
Break time!
No break today. Get back to work.
Did you know we have a wheat field in NYC? If you’d like to guess where it is, dm the instagram at instagram.com/nycoffeenewsletter! Whoever gets the closest guess gets a coffee, on us!
And now…
Coffee news!
Hawaii’s 15th statewide cupping competition had 51% more participation this year
Starbucks is holding $1.77 Billion dollars of our money in the form of gift cards, making them a ridiculous bank that happens to sell coffee.
Their new BOGO deals are also ‘encouraging’ employees to quit, because some of their shifts are becoming a constant rush. They wouldn’t report this, but rushes and understaffed locations is almost a guarantee that employees are ‘encouraged’ to skip breaks at risk of being fired.
You can book tickets to the November European Coffee Symposium now.
Energy company Hartee Partners acquiring Volcafe.
China summoned a bunch of coffee brands citing illicit collection of consumers’ personal information. Lots of news articles have picked this up and literally copy-pasted the entire article into their website, so. I don’t know. At least they cited Reuters, but the original article sucks. It claims Luckin Coffee and Costa Coffee (who did the Olympics!) were part of the six summoned, and that the ‘penalty’ would be asking them to stop :).
Coffee is the “largest organic growth contributor” for Nestle over the last six months, as per Allegra World Coffee Portal, mostly in Nescafé and ready-to-drink drinks.
Recipes are hard when your espresso machine is broken
We’ll see you soon, folks.
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Thanks for tuning in!
Enjoy your coffee!