A word on consistency

As much as people love surprises in life, in business it is important to be consistent. People want to know what they are getting is the same from day to day or week to week, and not enter your shop to find the menu has changed completely one week to the next. Even if your business runs off a model like Costco's where the products you offer rotate in and out, it is then important to consistently have in new products, or as I joke, be consistently inconsistent.

In the food and beverage industry, consistency is exceptionally important. Let's look at 3 possible scenarios for the same person.

Scenario One:
Frank is a master baker able to make the worlds finest cakes. He decides to open up shop because his cakes are of such fine work, only to find he is slammed with orders. Frank is now unable to take the time it takes to make his cakes of such high quality, so on occasion some of them are not. For sake of argument, let us say that 75% of Frank's cakes are of worthy of being called high quality, and the rest are all over the board. Now imagine being one of Frank's customers, when you enter his shop you have a 1/4 chance of paying for a high end cake and getting something that tastes like it was made from a box.

Scenario Two:
Now lets look at this business if it was set up another way. Frank is still the same high end baker again, only this time he decide to open up a bakery that makes above average cakes. He is still know for being of high skill, and thus his reputation leads to a high volume of initial orders. Frank is pretty apt at making cakes of above average quality, so he only makes mistakes about 5% of the time. Now when you enter Frank's shop, you are paying for an above average cake made by an artisan baker and you have a 95% chance of getting what you payed for and a 5% chance of finding a flaw in your product. You maybe able to even get Frank to take a special request and have him make a very high end cake for you at extra cost, which leads us to scenario 3.

Scenario Three:
Frank knows he can make cakes better than almost anyone else, so he decides to open up shop. Making cakes of this high end will take him time and money, so his prices are higher than his competition from the start and as such his initial client base is not as high as in the other two scenarios. Frank makes sure each cake is thoroughly inspected before it leaves his shop, and makes less than 1% mistakes in any given year. Now when you enter Frank's shop you know you are VERY LIKELY to get what you paid for, however you are paying more.

Of these 3 scenarios we just looked at, which do you think will be most successful as a business? I would argue that Scenario One would be destined to fail, and struggle at best, Scenario Two would have the highest customer base (volume), and Scenario Three could be successful depending on how large the niche market in Franks area is.

I chose these three scenarios as they tend to mimic what I see in many specialty coffee shops. The shops I most often come across have a well trained manager who cannot keep up with the demand/has not trained his or her staff strictly enough. As a result, drinks are only great in this place when a certain barista is on duty and I usually will not go there if he or she is not. Imagine if you were to enter your own shop, would you feel this same way?...

I want to make a point here clear. I am not suggesting that all small coffee shops give up on quality and water themselves down for the sake of consistency (we have plenty of that as it is). What I am suggesting is that shops train their staff and themselves a bit stricter and maintain the discipline of making better drinks. Doing anything short of this, and claiming to serve quality specialty coffee, is destined to lead to hard times.


Here is a short little video on consistency in business on a meta scale:

Consistency of Vision

and a quote

"To do a common thing, uncommonly well, brings success" -Henry Heinz

Attitude First and Creativity

Any book you read on positive attitude will always tell you to think in terms of "I CAN" instead of "I CAN'T!" This is 90% of having a good positive attitude in my opinion. I want to give some example to drive home why this point is so important.

Say your espresso machine breaks in the midst of a decent sized rush. It's a big break too, nothing works and your not trained to fix it. The first thing most people will start doing is talking about what they cannot do, such as:

I can't make espresso
I can't froth milk for drinks
I can't keep up with the rush since I am on the phone with a tech
I can't make sales without my machine

The moment you start thinking this way you have admitted defeat. Take a moment in this situation and think "What CAN I do?"
Can you:
Use a milk frother to froth milk?
Use a whisk and heat source to froth milk? (you may not get latte art but it does work!)
Use an Aeropress to manually make shots?
Use a French press for mixed drinks? (not ideal and would depend on your shop and customer base)

The point is you have options and can make the best of a bad situation. Positive attitude helps create solutions to problems and invokes your imagination. I used the above worst case scenario to stress the point of what a positive attitude can do. Think about what GOOD can come from this scenario! You may find your some of clientele enjoy coffee from an Aeropress or other brewing means. Depending on your customers, you could even find that you could do a special day where you only serve this means of coffee and add to the uniqueness of your shop!

There are other smaller lessons you could learn from this case as well, such as how preparation (be it equipment preventive maintenance or learning about multiple brewing methods) is usually EQUALLY AS important as execution, and great customer service will keep clients loyal. I can tell some of you will roll your eyes as you read this, so let me give you a personal story to help bring this point home.

Not long after starting this roastery I encountered a problem. I would have customers order a very small amount of coffee that I did not have fresh roasted. This created a scenario where I would have pounds of roasted coffee sitting in storage and losing its freshness. My goal as a roaster was to always provide fresh coffee for my customers, and after a few days of sitting in storage I did not feel that I could sell this coffee and meet that goal.

What was I to do? Someone with a poor attitude would have given up on their goal and sold the coffee as it staled, perhaps others would have simply thrown the coffee out. I was not content with these options (and many other CAN'T options), and I refused to give up on my mission statement. I thought "What CAN I do with these beans?" This is what I came up with. Once our beans were past their sell date I toss them all into a 5 lb bag and label it "Mystery." I sell these beans at a reduced price and I will tell you this; I am almost always sold out of it.

Every problem has a solution, and a positive attitude is the key to finding that solution. Encountering problems does not mean you are weak, but overcoming them makes you strong. Solutions are abundant when you free yourself from negative thinking and a positive attitude will agitate your creativity.

Here is your quote for this week:

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
-Albert Einstein

Lastly, here is a video on attitude I recommend you watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRMogDrHnMQ

Take care!

-Luke Hudek
President of Old WWWorld Cafe
old wwworld cafe

Who I am

For those of you who are coming here with no prior knowledge of who I am, let me introduce myself. I am a 26 year old micro business owner in upstate South Carolina who has devoted his life to making honest sales. Here is some background so you don't confuse my youth with inexperience.

I started work at age 11 as a paper boy, and worked 3 jobs at once by age 17 (clerk at a movie rental store, ticket taker at concert ground and short order cook). When I was in college I set sales records while working at Babbage's Electronics in a few different categories. I also worked at Wal Mart's optical center and in my second week I was able to exceed the departments WEEKLY sales goals in less than a day. I then finished college and shortly after started Old Wwworld Cafe.

There are a few lessons that can be taken from every job I worked, and they are:


Having A Positive Attitude
Customer service/Communication
Quality
Consistency
Knowledge of Product/Service you offer


These lessons helped me in starting OWC and making it a success from early on. Although salesmanship alone is not enough to run a successful company, it baffles me how often I see people focus on EVERYTHING ELSE when operating a small business. I am not trying to undermine the importance of knowing your numbers or product cost or marketing etc... etc... but to quote Red Motley "nothing happens until a sale is made!"

With that out of the way I would like to start going over the above mentioned lessons on a bi-weekly basis with you all. Who is "you" exactly? My target audience for this will be Baristas, Cafe owners, or anyone working in the coffee industry. Anyone who is interested in making sales, however, can benefit from these lessons.

Next week will mark the first sales blog, so in the meantime I will leave you with one of my favorite inspiring quotes:

"Power gravitates to the man who knows how and why" -Orison Marden

-Luke Hudek
President of Old Wwworld Cafe