Many of us who manage coffee shop operations are familiar with the frustrating loop that comes with working in the business rather than on the business. It’s like the movie Groundhog’s Day. After the alarm clock goes off each morning, we tackle a never-ending to-do list at the coffee shop from open to close: taking inventory, ordering ingredients, serving customers, posting on social media, planning the next week’s schedule. Before we know it, the day is over and the alarm clock goes off again.
Even if the business is doing well, it’s nearly impossible to help it reach its full potential when we’re stuck in reactive mode every day. In fact, it’s impossible to even know its full potential when we haven’t had time to develop a team, build out efficient systems, and track key metrics to measure performance.
When you’re stuck in the day-to-day, it might feel impossible to pull yourself out of the cycle long enough to put these systems in place. But it’s not.
At its core, running a successful coffee shop comes down to managing people, processes, and profitability. Read on to learn tips and strategies for each. With training and intention, these strategies can help keep a coffee business afloat during difficult times, push it through a frustrating plateau, or catapult to the next level of success.
Ready to take a deeper dive into these management strategies? Join our next Coffee Shop Operations Master Class. This one-day course is offered in-person or online to help managers rise above the day-to-day, streamline operations, and drive success.
Building, Developing, and Leading Your Team
Assess Your Existing Team
The strength of your business is in the strength of your team. An effective team is the foundation for successful operations. First, assess your current team to ensure you have the right number of people in the right roles. This evolves as your coffee business does. One of our former students, owner of The Den in Denver, shared a great example of restructuring her leadership team to separate ownership of key areas of her business. She delegated a “cafe lead” and a “lounge lead.” This clarity of responsibility allowed both leads to thrive and drive growth in their new roles.
Build an Effective Hiring Process
Once you’ve assessed and clarified the roles for your existing team, you’ll need a thoughtful hiring process to fill in the gaps. Of course, hiring is about more than that—it’s about building a team aligned to your business’s core values and eager to carry out your vision.
Hiring and retaining great people is a huge challenge for many businesses. Make sure the hiring process you create is a proactive one. Don’t wait until a role is vacant to start looking! Instead, accept applications on an ongoing basis. Invite a diverse applicant base to apply—experience can vary, and it’s important to know what qualities you can teach and which (like a great attitude) come along with the right candidate. Have a strong interview process that ensures candidates are aligned to your vision and also identifies red flags.
Onboard, Train, Retain, and Promote
Once you’ve hired a new team member, it’s your job as a leader to help them succeed in their role. Your onboarding and training process should set clear expectations and goals, while your training process should provide the time and resources required to help your new hire meet them. Give new hires measurable objectives to achieve as they learn so that both of you are able to measure their progress objectively. And of course, training isn’t just about coffee. Ensure your team members know how to interact with customers, use your point-of-sale system, and carry out their other responsibilities.
When you’re spending time finding and training great employees, it’s paramount to keep them. Turnover is high in the coffee industry, and it costs time and money to replace your employees. To keep them motivated to stay, you’ll need to create a safe, positive culture. You’ll also need to get to know your team’s individual goals and values to keep them excited about new opportunities for growth.
Perhaps one of your baristas has the potential to become a strong trainer. “Training the trainer” helps turn your team members into internal leaders. Invest in the right individuals for these trainer roles, and you’ll create a sustainable training program that can elevate the performance of your entire staff and business.
Implementing and Managing Coffee Shop Operations Systems
While managing your coffee shop, you’re responsible for building and maintaining the systems that keep your cafe running smoothly and delivering a consistent customer experience. Your operational systems can help you prevent mistakes, streamline processes, and empower your team to be confident and productive.
Start with a deployment plan. Build a deployment map, or station chart, of your coffee business that outlines key roles and responsibilities at each station during a shift. Stations might include the espresso bar, register, drive thru, and others. Within the map, build out roles and routines, making sure to allow for enough flexibility to support other team members.
Your operational systems should also include physical inventory management, cleaning protocols, and handling reports and cash procedures. We teach managers how to develop each of these systems in our Coffee Shop Operations Master Class. We also discuss identifying inefficiencies and refining these systems as your business evolves.
Implementing these systems may seem complex, but having them in place is incredibly freeing. Rather than running around from one endless task to the next, each responsibility within the business has a process and a team member to carry it out. Imagine: elements of the business can carry on without your direct time or energy. That frees the business’s leaders to look toward the next big goal.
Staying on Top of Key Financial Metrics
We’ve covered people and processes. The last important tier of management is your coffee shop’s profitability. Achieving your profit benchmark (20% operating profit, also called “EBITDA,” for best-in-class coffee shops), you’ll need to start with managing your prime costs: labor and cost of goods sold (COGS).
Setting menu effective menu pricing is the next step. Menu prices are not arbitrary; they’re based on your costs. In order to price effectively to increase profit, you’ll need to be intimately aware of your costs.
It’s also crucial to consistently track other key performance indicators (KPIs) to have a clear understanding of your business performance. Running reports should be a key part of your operational system. We recommend running consistent reports for (at least):
- Sales
- Labor
- Drive-thru window time (if applicable)
- Profit & Loss
- Deposits and cash drawer
- Trends/items
- Inventory management
Of course, beyond managing costs and tracking metrics, your coffee shop’s profitability potential also relies on driving revenue. If you’re not meeting your goals, you’ll need to consider strategies to increase volume or average transactions at your business. This means marketing, events, community outreach, menu changes, and more. The good news is that when you have the people and systems in place, you’ll have time to focus on innovations that will drive more customers through your doors.
Unlock Your Coffee Shop’s Potential and Start Effectively Managing at Your Coffee Shop With Texas Coffee School
At Texas Coffee School, we don’t just help people start coffee shops. We help them build businesses positioned to grow and thrive. Our Coffee Shop Operations Master Class is designed to help coffee shop owners and managers take their coffee shops to the next level. Sign up for the one-day course to for a thorough and well-organized dive into each of these strategies. Then, bring them back to your coffee shop to achieve new levels of success.
