coffee business strategies

Phil Lempert, a.k.a. The Supermarket Guru, weighs in on the current state of the out-of-home coffee marketing in the article “FACTORING COFFEE IN TODAY’S BUDGET: MORE TAKE-HOME BEAN SALES YET NO TOTAL ABANDONMENT OF THE COFFEE SHOP”

Be sure to look for a couple of quotes in the article from me too:

The Small Business Association states that in good times and bad, businesses fail for the same two basic reasons: inexperience in business management and insufficient capital to grow the business. For the coffee retailer, there is a third, and rather ironic, reason: insufficient understanding of the very product they’re selling, coffee, said Andrew Hetzel, an international coffee consultant whose company, Cafemakers, LLC, is based in Hawaii.

In the U.S., it is not coffee issues that are crippling major chains for they are more affected by larger economic issues and the whimsy of Wall Street. The cutting back of employee hours or reducing staff, and closing some underperforming stores, may actually be a good thing, Hetzel added. The small chains and independents are not necessarily suffering in the same degree primarily because their efforts in promotions are geared to a smaller audience, he added.