4. Ask the Experts

Welcome to the Coffee Experts Club, where we discuss all of the insights, expertise, and drama that goes into making your passion your profession. Our hosts, Aaron, Ben, and Drew are three coffee experts who have taken their coffee experience and turned it into true expertise. They have consulted with major coffee brands throughout the United States and beyond, providing operations, expertise, and gross strategy for drive-through openings, multiple locations, and everything in between. So, brew yourself a cup and hang out a bit with the Coffee Experts Club. Yes, Coffee Experts Club. We're back again, believe it or not. Alrighty, guys. Question and answer. We're here. Drew Moody, how are you feeling today? How's Texas? I feel great, man. I went on a little two and a half minute walk and got my sweat and done for the day, so. A lot isn't in Texas right now. Just over a hundred, I believe, all week. All week, it's over a hundred, so. I'll be here all week. Come on, Ben. Yeah, I'll be. Well, she doesn't like in the Tri-Cities today, the Midas Tri-Cities. Nice today. I'm hoping there's a range of the next few days. Alrighty, guys. So, back in Coffee Experts Club, I think that one of the worst things is unanswered questions, right? That itch that just can't be scrunched, right? That spot on your back. You're just. I wish you have one of those back scratchers, you know? Like, if people come up with these questions, a lot of times they pose these questions by their boss. You know, we're talking to number two people here, right? People that are running operations, people that probably aren't the number one decision maker, but a lot of times have to live like they are, and a lot of times have to live with the consequences that whatever the number one had decided, and be the one that has to make the people feel good about it, right? So, I think there's nothing worse than unanswered questions. I was just thinking about coming out of the master's class, especially anybody that had joined us for the last four days. We covered so much ground. You know, being recovered, you know, the initial stages of planning, how you choose your new location, what you're building exactly, what are the costs that go into it? We talked about menu and how you build that, and how you build your vendors, and what should you be looking at from the college perspective, cost to get sold? We can look at people, you know, higher end serving. We talked about your ideal avatar. We talked about what are you serving? Are you meeting what people are asking for? Talked about different platforms, and then we went on to energy drinks, density drinks. And so I think once you get all that information, I think it's just a lot. It's a lot to take in. And I think it probably just riddles people with questions. So I asked people to be thinking about questions there. They can drop them into the chat here or things that we can be thinking about. I know some of the questions I've received on the sidelines, you know, by a couple of people that have taken advantage of the offer that we made during master class, was things like, okay, so do you guys have the ability to help me with my menu? Like do you guys have a template I can work on? Do you have a starting point? I thought I would just circulate some of those questions here. So maybe let's have a conversation around that. Obviously, I pushed towards option number two, through a project block, then securing us for a month, you know, at the 20 hours, like we talked about during master class. And in that thing, we'd be able to bring them back, you know, a menu, a template, and then help them actually build it. But would you have something like that, right? And I just full that out of nowhere like we do have some kind of framework that we're going to help people with. Can you guys speak to that? Yeah, I suppose so some sort of framework. Yeah, menu that's a little bit odd, just odd with the fact that, you know, the product is going to be different for each client. So we could definitely put together a template on like, you know, how I think you structure a menu visually. And honestly, Amy, I would just go like the two, the two menus I showed during a master class, the rosers, powerful menu with, a tutorial coffee menu. I also would just rip those off, copy, copy and claiming as your own, that's we do best, right? Yeah, but oh, yeah, we could definitely put that together, we see percent pool. And it'd be a matter of them putting their own like stuck to the drinks are all unique things that are their own products. The thing about it is, you're going to want to create, or whatever it is, you're going to want to create a menu that's unique to them. And they're, like, they're demographic, or they certainly like, like, that would be where I want to start with anybody like that, like, who is your demographic? Who are you? Are you in a neighborhood that's right next to school? You should be catering to menu slightly that way. Are you in a business district, primarily walkoffs from, you know, businesses around you. So where you add and then what is your community known for? Like, you're going to want to tailor your menu to the things that are relevant to your community. You see a lot of, it's kind of, somebody's name, a lot of drinks after landmarks in their cities or after parks in their cities or after famous people from the cities that helps with that coffee shop in the TV. I think for us to be more a sit down, I'm like, okay, let's brainstorm on, you know, what's around you? Who's your target demographic? Who's going to be visiting your shop at the lowest? And then what access do you have to read answer? And just from there, it's like, okay, then you just start building the semblance of what you should be offering. What about what goes into the drink? So about like ingredient list. Like, do I know I've seen you pitch out a couple different times, you couple different engagements. Hey, this would be an ingredient list for this. This would be this many scoops at this, this many of this template wise. Do we start people down the right road on that kind of stuff? Yeah, I mean, of course we could. I think a lot of what we're going to have to determine their, you know, ratios off of is. One, first of all, they're espresso because how strongly espresso is going to have a big influence on how that product is going to come out at the end. Who they're using as their supplier or who they're, I guess, eyeballing or a list of people that they may have, they can go and taste testing his samples and things of that nature. Well, I did what I was when I was developing my menu was taste test. I'd go and I'd get a espresso from certain top of shops that I was looking at. I buy the ingredients for certain drinks that I was interested personally in having my menu and I would test out ratios and which kinds of milks I liked in the drinks. And a lot of that was trial and error and I'd, I'd have the baristas at the stores taste the drinks. I'd be like, hey, you guys don't have these flavors, try this drinks that I just made. So crowdsourcing things like that. I would also look into the history of where you're opening eyes. So like Ben was talking about the roots, like a lot of people are really proud of where they live. And they obviously have their reasons. So what really goes into that pride and what is it that keeps them there keeps them. You know, I'm proud to live in the Tri-Cities for why are we proud to work with the Tri-Cities things like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. I'm going to drop some more questions that I received from this particular person that's going to sit on with us to do. I'm not only a project block, but I think I'll still going to send up for the elite. You know, I dropped the offer page down below copy experts up to work at the masterclass will extend it to you there as well. But still, the question went across. They're going to take us up on a lead, which is Drew coming to their town to help them kick off their grand opening and all those different pieces. These are some of the things. So number one, help with spite suppliers. I don't know if you guys have connections just consult us on the process. What are your thoughts on that one gentleman? Yeah, it depends on where you are. We primarily work with mom of pop organizations distribution warehouses. So those are usually smaller, meaning they don't distribute nearly as far. For example, have ones that we work with a lot, they distributed primarily eastern Washington, eastern Washington into southeast Oregon, a little bit into western Idaho. That was their primary area. So it depends on where they're at. When it comes to the slides of the looking for again, I always advocate for finding that that mom of pop distribution warehouse. If you're opening a shop anywhere on the west coast, it's typically you should be able to find somebody in your area that supplies. I would go to Cisco or an FSA, probably the last. The nice thing about them is you know that they will most likely be able to service you because they service, you know, they're pretty much country wide. But you won't get awesome prices. You won't get hardly any custom customization of your products. And you won't be able to build a good relationship. Probably have a sales route that you deal with. But there's no, as you grow as a company, you won't really gain any more buying power with them because they're already a gigantic corporation. It's one of the great things about the mom of pop places that as you grow, you gain buying power and leverage and what I asked them to do for you. Especially if they're that local outfit. So like we did at Roasters, as we grew, we were able to say, hey, can you start carrying this only for us? Hey, can you store this for us and deliver? Was there other deliveries? Our energy drink. That's how we first started for example. We had avalanche store owner product, our proprietary product in their warehouse and then deliver it to us for a nominal fee. Like you're not going to get Cisco. I say to ever do that. Never going to happen. So that's why I have to get looked for that small moment, pop shop. And then if you can't find anybody like that in your area, then start looking at the FSA at the yellow the Cisco's. The Cisco's and the FSA's. They may also not house everything you need just because they're not solely coffee distribution warehouses. So there, I mean, they do everything from Delhi to restaurant, the coffee, gas station, they're doing everything. It's really more of a jackable trades than a specialty or unique, you know, directly related to coffee distribution warehouse. So you're going to have a you may have a little bit hard time finding like specific service or splitting mixes or whatever. Go for that mom and pop and you might give it to you for one was a little mom on pop in your area that also rose coffee if you're not doing on your own. So keep them out that definitely local. If you let us know what your death raft isn't Drew answer clients will set up an L 10 meeting with you level 10. Maybe we talked about that a little bit different about objects or coffee extras club of how we orchestrate meetings and turn that into an issue and then assign it out to one of you on the team and Drew can definitely help we dig into finding those in your area. As has been suggested here and I know you you experienced the burn of that. Personally, right, like there it's we always worked at the coffee chains that were required to use the big voice. This is good. and what it may then do is have to scramble to offset, right? - Yeah, and of course, you know, control over the menu at certain points, because you have to only serve what your supplier's selling. So those people who are flexible are priceless, priceless. - Of it. Second question on machines. Drew, I know you do quite a bit of consulting on machines, actually, as far as taking an existing list, they're we are used to using it also then working with different vendors, less ships we've built over time, both used and new. - So that's something that I feel like is right up your alley, you want to talk to that for me? - Yeah, and it was actually some, I'd think a good jumping off point would be, especially for somebody smaller, is to research first what techs are in the area, so that you have an option for who can come to your service, because these machines take a really specialized type of knowledge to work on. So if you do have to whittle down and you need a starting point, I would research, hey, you know, what types of techs are available in my area, what brands do they service? And generally, if you call around to certain brands, they can tell you exactly where they have techs located, and they can tell you what regions that they service and what their prices are and things of that nature. And so I would definitely start off there. I do, of course, have my favorites that I like to work with and ones that I know how to work with. I would point people to that as well, because a lot of the training is available, you can send yourself to classes or an employee to classes at a certain time of the year to learn how to do those things. And honestly, that's a lot more cost effective than paying a tick. - I think two things that we've learned over time is try and standardize a machine purchase. You know, I think it's really easy to be moved by price sometimes. I think, wow, we can get that one so much cheaper downside is if you start opening up multiple stands, right? We always talked about thinking with the end in mind, it's the beginning, right? And if you open up multiple stands with multiple kinds of brands and machines, because you got a deal on this one there and a deal on this one there and a deal on this one there, what you're not always thinking about is that pieces go bad, parts go bad, and it's nice when you can buy an abundance of parts on the things that fail frequently, and it's going to fit all of your machines. It's going to be a solution for every one of your places. So you're not having to buy one-offs. I know there was a season at Roasters where we had so many one-off parts and pieces that in all honesty, when we started standardizing, we just had to kind of jump. Like there was not much to be done for these machine parts and pieces that we know longer we're going to standardize with. So thinking with the end in mind, standardizing machines. - Yeah, point and cases, blenders. - The blenders are a very huge point. - Yeah, and those little Brooke Bracker, it's called Bracket Blender actually sits in the spills of blade. Those things burn out every four or five months. And if you've got a Vitamix Blender and a Blintet Blender and another type of Blender, can't buy those little brackets in bulk. They're not expensive, they're 12 bucks, but if you have 10 different blenders, all a different bracket, you can't buy those in bulk. If you do buy the bulk, you get a lot of savings. And so that's an easy one. - We'd go through those things so quickly, you know, Brice, it turns it on and forgets dig the pitch on. - Well, I, you know, register the pieces. - Standardizing that will make your life just easier in the fact that you don't have to be like, where do I buy this? Where do I buy that? Where do I buy this? It's just all from the same spot. - Yeah. - That's what that step would let us see. - Born in a long way. - Good one. - Well, another one it looks like and it got grouped underneath the machines, but I think it was actually a sub-point and it was how higher train staff should create training procedures, employ handbooks, help a real culture. Do I feel like that's one of your greatest passions, right? That's one of your biggest challenges. Is those things there? - Yeah, those are all things that we have standardized for at least personally I do. And one of the best things I think about all of those concepts is it's all kind of oriented around your culture and what you want to put into the business. So leaning back into what I said during Masterclass is your mission statement. If you can kind of enter Twina into all of those things, then gives you kind of a compass as to who you want to hire and how you want to hire and how you treat those processes and the way that you train people on the time that you spend on them, creating training processes. How long you want to train your people for? And really, I mean, we all probably know it's six months to Liberista is really independent and comfortable working all on their own from open to close. Of course not the whole day, but on any shift. So it's an ongoing training procedure, but as long as you can build a nice solid foundation for them and give them something to hold on to, like a mission statement. Like this, you know, this is, it's all new, it's all difficult at first. Learning anything new is hard and can be discouraging 'cause nobody likes to suck at anything. And we also suck at new things at first. So given them, you know, little nuggets of stuff like that, like guide posts or checkpoints or, you know, like I said, a compass. And all of that of course goes into your employee handbook. You know, every person that you hire, it was gonna read through that thing, it was gonna get a sense of what the culture is like. Just by the way that you build it and the things that you include in it, all the things that you exclude are almost just as important. Yep. So yeah, I mean, those all are kind of, that's all kind of one package and I think it is oriented around culture. So the vision that you have for the company is gonna determine all of those factors. But as far as a standardized process goes, it's an organic process, but we have it as standardized as possible. Yes. Yeah, Jean was one of you where we have, you know, and the employee handbook has a template on our review of each resource page. So, you're already a business you're like, Billoth's business for a year. I don't have an employee handle. Yeah, but if I go grab that, it's got everything you would need in it. All you have to do is slot your logo in it and your name where it says place company name here. And it's, that's a really good like it's, it's an employee handbook that we have evolved over years and years and it's robust. And you can just take that, make a few tweaks to it, and then you're onto the races. The fact that it's interesting, we've got a lot of great resources there on the resource store, especially those of you who have an expert's pub. You know, we don't, we don't like broadcast that a whole lot, but that is definitely something to those of you here in the expert's pub to take advantage of. And then also, maybe those of you in expert's pub as you watch these videos later, if you're not here with us today, you're thinking, man, I'd love to take you up on a project block. I actually, if you take me up on a project block in that, my first drive through.coffee/coffee/expert, continuing on in our questions, consulting on POS systems, software for accounting, scheduling, ordering, CRMs, as few or as simple as possible. I feel like that's something that we always do, right? That's something it feels like, whether it's coffee clients, whether it's online entrepreneurs, whatever it is, whatever our jam, we do operations for all different kinds of businesses. That's always something I feel like we end up pretty neck deep in, is the tech. And then not only just the tech, but like helping people align it out, right? 'Cause that's some of the most overwhelming part. You can buy a piece of software or you can, you know, sign it for an online service, but then you have to make it yours, right? Yeah, it's all the setup that goes into it. Sometimes that can just be infuriating or just be exhausting or you're just like, man, I was already overwhelmed. One last thing I want to do is go fight with something on my phone. Here's a computer and I think that's something that we a lot of times will take on for clients, help them set up with some intentionality. I love that this particular client called out with CRM. That's not something that most coffee shops are thinking about. It's definitely something that's advantageous. And I know that you live in the world of CRM a lot. And especially in regards to coffee, do you want to give a shameless plug on CRM, Joe? Yeah, yeah, I mean that CRMs are, especially if you can find one that's built in your POS system. I mean, I give Square the solid shout out for that. They last time I used Square was probably 2019 and in 2019 it was really transition away from Square and they have evolved a lot since then. And a lot of their CRM capabilities are built in at no extra price, which is awesome. So you've got the capabilities to be blasting your customers with emails about upcoming promotions, upcoming products, new drape of the months. Show your barista this email from us and get $2 off. They've got the built-in for a reward system, which is super easy to use. You can also text your customers too. So you can really like, when your customers are there, you can be hitting them with marketing about you to remind them back the next day. Square, I haven't dug too much into toast, do you know if toast has a really evolved CRM capabilities in that sense? I haven't dove too much into that myself. I know that the way that they work as far as their customer service and the integration and their tracking is pretty robust, but as far as the in-depth part of it, I'm not 100% certain. - No, I was thinking, Ben, I was just thinking, just now as I was prudent, I'm sure very excited. Zach Lyman did a great section on how do you see our ends? So we haven't walked to this one yet. Tech made easy tips with Zach Lyman, talked about how you messaging your clients, how you're getting them to come back, how you're establishing a habit of them hearing from you. I think some of the highlights you'll call out here, thinking about simple and free at first, to get you a return on investment back quick, implementing automations that can be some of your time back, focusing on your brand, and then quick tips and tricks, examples like you can grow your marketing endeavor. So great things that were covered on that particular show, but I do think, and there's nothing like advertising to your people, you know? I'm just expecting them to think out of you, 'cause we all have our own lives. We all know they're probably not thinking of you. So how can you get them to be consistently thinking of you and have it out of thinking of you and the solution and the offering that you bring? - Yeah, so it'd be as simple as, like, even just every reminder, when they have their 10 dreams, get one, three, or their 10 stars, or their 10 stamp, whatever it is, stamp cards are great, but they're extremely antiquated now. I recommend, you know, any you copy them, they can't not start with stamp cards, but to start with whenever the software that's built into your POS, that's really robust these days. - Yep. - But, and if you actually do that, like a square or two. or a touch point, you can actually send these messages out to your customer saying, "Hey, you just bought your take drink. Next one's on us." And immediately they go, "Oh, back to my morning for my free drink. I'll probably be on my pace." Or they'll probably get a drink further or stout. Or they'll probably pick up something to your kids. It's marketing because you're marketing to them, but the customer doesn't see it as marketing to see it as, "Oh yeah, reminder, I got a free drink. Thanks for reminding me that I have a free drink tomorrow." "Thanks for reminding me to come spend money with you because I'm going to only get my free drink. I'm going to buy that baked goods." That's part of the culture thing that Drew was talking about earlier too, creating a sales culture within your coffee shop behind your window that's not necessarily salesy. It's just it's just it. Somebody comes in for their free coffee, but they're not spending money on their coffee. Now they've got some dollars to put towards him. You tried this pastry. Have you ever tried this accent? Have you ever tried this? Whatever it is that you're trying to sell. I think it's good just those one-on-one-off upsells are a great thing and it brings it back in for another straight one. First of all, it's a bit of a background back in my manager of race of days. Me and one of my braces that worked in the morning, we used to have this routine we would do to see who'd get the most upsells. What we'd do is the customer would jump through and be like, "Fairy Bob, do you want your ice, your ice slot today?" You'd get it with a quad shot, right? No way Bob never gets a quad shot. It would definitely be like, "No, what? I do need a quad shot today." It's super simple. You're the same same as your text straight email marketing. Hey, it's been a long, you know, New Year's Eve next year's shot this morning. You properly do and they go, "Yeah, I probably do need next year's shot." Just little subtle stuff like that. It's not super salesy. It's a part of your interaction with the customer, but it's still small upsells that really work. Now we would sell extra shots out of the yay-yaying every morning. It's good stuff. I love it. Awesome, Jens. Well, any other things that come top of mind that you would just like to leave these fine people as we wind up, a coffee expert's Q&A today? Yeah, I would say it's here thinking about a menu. You definitely go back to day two where I showed those good and bad menu ideas. That's a really easy way. I would copy the two good menus that we pointed out. Just in the structure of it. How do I want you to highlight the drinks that you need to meet my high-productly drinks? Where do I not want to waste space? Where do I want to conduct information? So people are reading to me, I mean, quickly. If you have an idea of what you're wanting to be offering, I would say go there and then kind of piece it together like a little puzzle on what a good way to display this to your customer. Yeah. It's good. I was going to actually reference the menu day two in building a menu. You almost wanted to be intuitive because the way that you present it is going to create certain questions in a certain order in the customer's mind. Do I want ice or hot? I want ice. What size do I want? Do I want any add-ons? Where is that alternative milk or extra flavor? It's just the way that you produce these things on visually to the customer. Well, they're going to be reading up sideways or down and you can present it to them. By the time it gets to the bottom, you've answered all their questions naturally. That takes time out of the drive-through on which creates more space on the drive-through. Yes, guys. So thank you so much, boys, for showing up for another shoot-a-may of Coffee Experts' Club. Hey, and if you haven't taken advantage of it yet, check out the link down below. If you want to work with you guys, we want to take on projects for you. We don't want to just be somewhere you come in and get information here. And then we're just leaving you to go figure stuff out on your own to put it into plan your own. Think up a project block with us. A lot of us jump in and help you really sus out of your pain and work out the issues and that way you don't have to be an only solution. So, thanks, guys. We'll see you next week. Cheers. Thanks so much for joining us today. For those of you who are looking to become a Coffee Expert yourself, we offer an incredible, thorough training online for opening your first coffee drive-through at www.myfirstdrivethrough.coffee.