Keys To The Shop : Equipping Coffee Shop Leaders

Latest Episodes:

174 : Saying Yes to Business Opportunities w/ Kyle Wells of Torpedo Coffee & Close Quarters Sep 10, 2019

Show notes

How do you decide which opportunity for expansion is good and which one is not for you? If you are in business you will get offers to open a location in many different contexts but when you are knee deep in operating your first store it can be challenging to see the next step clearly.

Today we are getting the perspective of one entrepreneur who is expanding to a second location within the first year of opening his first shop. Kyle Wells is the co-owner of Torpedo Coffee in Denver, CO and a past Founder Friday guest. I wanted to bring Kyle back to give us insight into his own process of accessing opportunities and making the decision to say yes to one of many the have been made since opening.

Kyle and his wife Falene are are true entrepreneurs and Kyle communicates very clearly and with a balanced perspective about that life and in this interview he lays out a lot of very useful information that you can use to help you on your own journey

In the conversation you will learn:

How this opportunity won Kyle over
The signs that you are ready to say yes to expanding
How to prepare yourself for the added responsibility
How to prepare you team and invest into the current culture
The importance of delegation, systems, and trust
The importance of working "on" your business not "in" it
Kyles advice for how to assess opportunity

Links:

@Torpedocoffee

@theclosequarters

www.torpedocoffee.com

Founder Friday w/ Kyle Wells "Before and After"

Need consulting or training? Lets talk!

chris@keystotheshop.com

www.keystotheshop.com/consulting

Your Customer's Relational Baggage Sep 05, 2019

Show notes

Customers impression of your business is going to be filtered through the lens of their past experiences in coffee. Unfortunately that is too often a bad thing and the memory of bad experiences far outlasts the memory of a good one.

Today we chat about the important role we play in delivering positive experiences to re-write the script for our customers and their default view of coffee and service work in general.

For consulting and training contact : Chris@keystotheshop.com

Or visit: www.keystotheshop.com/consulting

Related Episodes:

10 Reasons to Love the Customer

Simple, Powerful, Hospitality w/ Philip Paul Turner

Why YOU are Key

173 : 5 Areas of Focus for Retailers Sep 03, 2019

Show notes

To be successful in retail coffee today you need to be able to give your time and attention to the things that will truly make a difference. The standards for what makes a truly great and sustainable shop is as high as it has ever been.

Today we are going to be talking about five areas that are critical for you to focus on in today's retail coffee industry. I cannot tell you how strongly I feel about the importance of these points as I have seen many shops either fail or succeed based on their omission or adoption of them.

Please take the time after listening to reflect on your situation and see how you can take steps to improve in these five areas:

Hospitality as Priority
Accessibility
Genuine on-line presence
Customer Education to Equip
Quality Leadership and Accountability

In this episode you will learn:

The place of hospitality in a shop to fuel success
Why quality coffee is not enough
The next level of customer education
Managing expectations and living values on-line
The critical state of leadership in shops and what to do about it

www.keystotheshop.com/consulting

Chris@keystotheshop.com

Related episodes:

Your Peers are not your Customers Aug 29, 2019

Show notes

It is easy to be so focused on comparing yourself and your business to what you see in the industry that you end up ignoring your customers and the community your shop serves. Today we are chatting about this all to common mentality and what it looks like to be put the priority on serving your actual customers.

172 : Why Tracking Performance is a Must! Aug 27, 2019

Show notes

This is absolutely critical! One of cornerstones of running a coffee bar is the ability to stay in tune with the performance of the people that work in it.

Having a system for tracking behavior that is either praise worthy or in need of correction is a must. Many shops that just shoot from the hip when it comes to correction or affirmation end up seeing their best people frustrated and their problem people hide out too long in the ranks, spreading toxicity to the others.

Today we are going to talk about some ideas and steps you can take to make tracking a performance a reality in your cafe so you can have a vibrant and thriving team the knows that the leaders are paying attention and are there to facilitate their success.

In this episode you will learn:

The importance of tracking performance
How to prepare yourself to launch a system and actually stick to it.
Ideas for tracking and rewarding praise worthy behavior
A step by step process for corrective action
The cultural hazards of correction applied poorly
Your role as a coach in the corrective process
The importance of having a balanced view of your staff

Links to related episodes:

The Affirmation Vacuum

Why its OK to be the Boss

Interested in consultation or training for your coffee business? Reach out and lets have a conversation! Reach out!

Chris@keystotheshop.com

www.keystotheshop.com/consulting

171 : Founder Friday w/ Matt Chitharanjan and Namrata Asthana of Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters in India Aug 23, 2019

Show notes

The Indian specialty coffee market is growing by leaps and bounds. Today's guests Matt Chitharanjan and Namrata Asthana and their company, Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters, are part of the reason why Indian people are switching from instant and drink more amazing Indian coffee at home and in cafes.

From humble beginnings working shoulder-to-shoulder packaging their roasted coffee in a home's 2 spare rooms - to now 25 cafes, over 300 staff, and partnerships with over 25 Indian coffee estates, Matt and Namrata have been able to build an incredible business that makes Indian coffee the star, creates amazing coffee professionals pouring resources and training into their staff, and successfully introduces the average Indian coffee consumer to the wonders of specialty coffee grown in their own backyard.

I had such a great time talking with Matt and Namrata, I know you will find this to be inspirational especially if you are a coffee pro or business owner in a producing country.

In this episode you will learn about:

The specialty landscape in India
How Blue Tokai started, scaled, and structure their business
The challenges of operating in a producing country
How they overcame the hurdles and won the trust of the farmers
The value of connecting with your customers on their level
How blue Tokai has empowered their female staff
What role presence and communication plays in breaking through harmful social norms
What Blue Tokai does to continually develop their quality as they grow

LINKS:

WWW.BLUETOKAICOFFEE.COM

More about Matt and Namrata:

Namrata Asthana - Co-Founder Namrata graduated from Vanderbilt University with a major in Psychology and a minor in Anthropology. After working in design in Chicago, she moved to New Delhi to work with the American India Foundation where she managed the Service Corps Fellowship (now the Clinton Foundation Fellowship) for three years. Namrata then worked with PepsiCo India as the Communications Manager for four years and moved onto working as Communications Director for the Centre of Development Finance at the Institute of Finance Management and Research. In addition to this, Namrata has also worked with Alliance India and has authored a book on migration and education for the American India Foundation's Learning and Migration Programme. In 2012, she co-founded Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters with her husband, Matt Chitharanjan. Matt Chitharanjan – Co-Founder Matt graduated from NYU's Stern School of Business with a B.S. in finance in 2003. He spent a number of years working in economic research and real estate investing for a boutique consulting firm and hedge fund in Berkeley, California before pursuing an M.A. in economics from the University of British Colombia. After graduating in 2008, he spent several years working on impact evaluation in international development in Jordan and the U.S. before moving to India in 2011 to work on SME access to finance research with IFMR. In 2012, he decided to put his past roasting experience to good use by starting Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters with his wife, Namrata Asthana.

www.keystotheshop.com/bluetokai

Fear or Inspiration? Aug 22, 2019

Show notes

Which one best describes how staff react to your presence in the cafe? The problem is that, no matter what, management will always be seen in a different light than a barista. The authority managers carry creates a certain tension and that tension either will lead to people fearing you, or being inspired by you. Today we will chat about embracing your authority, breaking down needless tension, and investing in your staff to create a culture that sees your authority in positive light and avoids the all to common fear based authority that drive people from your business.

Related Episode:

6 Truths About Power

This episode was inspired by a talk I gave to the wonderful retail managers of Phoenix Coffee. If you want me to come to your business for training/ workshops./ or speaking contact me here: Chris@keystotheshop.com

170 : Why your Inventory Counts w/ Albert Amar and Pierre-Francois Rio of SwiftCount Aug 20, 2019

Show notes

What you have on your shelf is of the utmost importance. Tracking it and evaluating its performance is key to being able to make good decisions that will increase the health of your business. Unfortunately we in coffee tend to rely on either our own personal knowledge of what we can see on our shelves or on very rudimentary systems that don't give us enough information. Today we are going to be exploring the importance of accurate counting and tracking of your stores inventory with special guests Pierre-Francois Rio and Albert Amar of SwiftCount.

Swiftcount is a cloud-based inventory management solution suitable for small to midsize businesses in a variety of industries. It has been designed to make taking inventory simple, accurate, and easy to manage. Especially nice is the reporting it gives you on the back-end to help you track the flow of inventory, profitability, performance, and more.

Albert and Pierre take us through why the company was formed and detail a ton of examples, mindsets, and actionable solutions we can take to get a hold of our inventory which is life blood of our shops.

I hope you take notes and apply what is presented today because the importance of this aspect of our businesses cannot be over-stated!

In this episode you will learn:

What inventory tracking does for your businesses' cost of goods and cash flow
Why we tend to rely on faulty ways of measuring this important area of business.
Examples of businesses that have seen success from proper inventory management
How SwiftCount works
The steps we can take to get a hold of our inventory today
The mindset to infuse into yourself and your culture so that these practices last well into the future.

LINKS:

WWW.SWIFTCOUNT.COM

Need consulting of training for your coffee business? Reach out!

www.keystotheshop.com/consulting

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www.pacificfoods.com

Selfish Self-Awareness Aug 15, 2019

Show notes

Being self-aware is over-rated. Why? Because without action following it up, self-awareness becomes useless and quickly creates a situation where we seek scoring status points for being aware and then never do anything about it the thing we are aware of. In short, our self-awareness becomes a vanity virtue and we, and those we lead, suffer for it.

Today we chat about this problem and what actions we can take to take action and complete the self-awareness journey.

169 : Designing the Guest Experience w/ Dr. Lisa Waxman Aug 11, 2019

Show notes

The design of your shop communicates the level of care you have for your customer and the community. Crafting the details of your space to evoke a sense of connection to place and a feeling of hospitality that matches the quality is absolutely critical. Today we are going to learn about the specific physical and social dynamics that guests look for in a coffee shop with special guest, Dr. Lisa Waxman!

Dr. Lisa Waxman, Ph.D. is an award winning professor and chair of the Interior Architecture + Design department at Florida State University. Her research includes topics related to the design of spaces that foster community, sustainable design, and design for special populations. She also serves on the board of directors for the Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA).

Dr. Waxman has many scholarly and creative works to her name but we will be focused on one particular study "The Coffee Shop: Social and Physical factors Influencing Place Attachment"

In this study we learn of the 5 design considerations that customers most appreciate as well as specific social dynamics that all together influence whether or not a customer will feel a special attachment to the shop, which in turn inspires return business!

We dive into this study in today's interview and hit on several other great points to consider when you approach the design of your space.

I am truly excited for this episode and the impact it can have on the landscape of specialty coffee retail.

LINKS:

"The Coffee Shop: Social and Physical factors Influencing Place Attachment"

Article: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/coffee-shops-build-employee-loyalty-according-to-science.html

Dr. Waxman's Full Bio

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