Here Are 5 Things Worth the Money When Opening a Coffee Shop

What’s actually worth the splurge when you’re opening a coffee shop?

If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, you’ve probably seen the “5 things worth the money” trend. Influencers, creators, and brands list splurge-y purchases and experiences they don’t regret spending on. 

That’s a concept that definitely applies to opening a coffee shop.

In our recent article Where to Spend and Where to Save When Opening a Coffee Shop, we shared the importance of making intentional investments on equipment, spaces, or experiences that will help your business become more profitable over time. 

In our article Smart Ways to Save When Opening a Coffee Shop, we identified smart decisions you can make in the opening process that will build a more streamlined and efficient coffee shop over time. 

So now, we get to focus on spending. Because, as the old saying goes, you’ve got to spend money to make money. So, how do you decide which spends are worth the money? We think about it this way: 

Does the investment add efficiency? Value? Revenue? Will it give you back your time or help you save elsewhere? These are the considerations our coffee business education team kept in mind when they thought about what was “worth the money.”

Here are the investments (they’re not splurges when there’s strategy involved) our team believes are worth it when opening a coffee shop. 

1. A Coffee Business Education Course

A coffee business education tops this list for a reason: it’s the one investment you can make that will provide countless hours and dollars saved over time. 

Before you invest in equipment, branding, or a buildout, you need a clear roadmap for how those pieces will come together as a part of your overall business strategy. Our 3-Day Coffee Business Master Class® is unmatched in the industry for delivering value and for setting your business up for long term success. But if you’re not sure how to choose a course, we just wrote about what to look for (and what to avoid) here: How to choose a coffee business education course.

2. Your Water Filtration System

Coffee is 98.5% water, so the right water filtration system is essential to both the quality of your final product and the longevity of your equipment. It’s one of those investments that’s easy to overlook while you’re focused on more visible purchases, but this is the system that will protect everything downstream of itself–quite literally.

We break down the importance of this investment here: Water: Coffee’s Largest Variable. 

3. Your Cold Brew System

According to our coffee educators, this is hands down one of the most profitable pieces of equipment a coffee business can buy. The Brew Bomb Hive Cafe can prepare cold brew coffee in 20-30 minutes, and can brew to high concentrations. When prepared correctly, the strength of the cold brew concentrate it produces is stronger than espresso, which means it can replace espresso in iced lattes. It can also be easily diluted down to classic ready to drink cold brew. Because it is a concentrate it also takes up way less space.

That swap alone speeds up every iced latte transaction by 60 to 75 seconds, which adds up quickly during a rush. Multiply that efficiency over time, and this piece of equipment becomes a profitable investment.

Some might argue that batching espresso would accomplish the same thing, but we tested both methods side by side using the exact same coffee. The cold brew concentrate was much easier and faster to produce in larger batches, and we also preferred how it tasted after being stored for a period of time. It is also more versatile. The same concentrate can be used for iced lattes, then diluted for traditional ready-to-drink cold brew, so you are getting more uses out of a single batch.

4. Your Espresso Machine

A sub-par or overpriced espresso machine can cost you far more than whatever you saved up front. A machine that slows you down during a rush because it literally runs out of steam, produces inconsistent drinks, or requires frequent and expensive service will cost you in labor, downtime, and lost customers.

Price alone does not determine value, either. Some very good machines carry a premium because of the name on the front, while giving you fewer features for the money. For the same investment, another top-quality manufacturer may offer better steam wand performance, a more efficient workflow, easier controls, newer technology, and substantially better energy and water efficiency.

Espresso equipment is one category where it pays to spend well. It is literally your profit generator. Students in our 3-Day Coffee Business Master Class® get our complete equipment recommendation list and manufacturer contacts, along with access to wholesale discounts directly from manufacturers that can often cover the cost of the class itself.

A note on our equipment recommendations: 

We don’t sell equipment, and we don’t make recommendations based on which brand has the best marketing or the most recognizable name. We rigorously test what we believe to be the best equipment in the industry and recommend what we trust will set our students up for success.

Our process typically takes 6 to 12 months. We evaluate performance under sustained maximum output, how easily new baristas can be trained on the machine, user interface and workflow, energy and water efficiency, a true 50 state service and technical support network, parts availability, access to trained technicians, and the actual features and technology you are getting for the price.

We also look closely at whether a manufacturer is continuing to improve its equipment and solve problems for operators or simply relying on an established name and older technology.

Before a machine makes our recommended list, we also speak with at least 10 businesses already using it and require complete satisfaction with both the equipment and the support they have received from the manufacturer before we move forward with adopting them into our program.

5. Professional Services

Many aspiring coffee shop owners come to the table with their own backgrounds and talents. By all means, lean on your prior experience in construction, real estate, or marketing to make wise decisions or potentially save money while opening. These professional services, however, are some that our coffee business educators deem absolutely worth the money. We talk about these (and more) in our 3-Day Coffee Business Master Class®.

A Strategic Brand Package:

This is one to invest in early, and it is not the place to cut costs with a general graphic designer. Or worse, a random logo created with AI.

Most coffee shops are ultimately selling many of the same drinks, using similar equipment, and offering a fairly similar customer experience. Great coffee, good service, and a beautiful space matter, but they are also easy for competitors to replicate and aesthetics eventually become dated.

Your brand is what gives the business meaning beyond the cup. A strong brand communicates what you stand for, who the business is for, and gives the right customer a sense that this is a place they belong. Coffee shops are lifestyle businesses, and the strongest brands become part of how customers identify themselves.

A good test is whether someone would actually be proud to wear your logo on a T-shirt. When a customer does that, they are not just advertising where they buy coffee. They are saying something about themselves.

Your name, logo, signage, packaging, and overall visual identity should come from a branding professional who understands fast-casual businesses and knows how to build a brand around a clear audience, positioning, and set of values, not simply make something that looks cool.

Marketing:

Marketing should be part of your operating budget from day one, not an afterthought you try to save money on.

A strong brand gives people a reason to connect with the business. Marketing is how you consistently put that brand in front of the right people and give them a reason to walk through the door.

We often tell students that good marketing should effectively be free. Not because it costs nothing, but because it should generate enough additional business to pay for itself and produce profit beyond what you spent.

If you are constantly wondering whether your marketing is working, that is usually a sign that something is wrong. Effective marketing should produce results you can see and measure in traffic, sales, customer acquisition, or repeat business.

Plenty of new owners try to save money by doing all of this themselves. In our experience, that often costs them more in missed traffic and slower growth than professional marketing would have cost in the first place. Hire someone who knows what they are doing, give them a clear budget, and hold the work accountable to results.

An Architect

An architect’s role in the design phase is easy to underestimate. Trying to design the space yourself, or leaving it entirely to a contractor, can lead to inefficient workflow, permitting delays, failed inspections, and expensive changes after construction has already started.

Look for an architect with restaurant experience at minimum, but ideally one who has worked specifically with coffee shops. Food-service spaces come with their own health codes, materials, plumbing, electrical, equipment, and permitting requirements. This is one of those places where experience can easily pay for itself by avoiding rounds of revisions, red tags, and delays while you are paying rent on a business that still cannot open.

There is another piece most architects cannot bring, though. Very few have actually worked behind a busy coffee bar and understand how equipment placement and bar layout affect speed, movement, and workflow during a rush. In our 3-Day Coffee Business Master Class®, we teach that part and provide sample coffee-shop layouts and workflow designs you can take directly to your architect. They can then adapt that operational plan to your specific space, code requirements, and architectural drawings.

And don’t skip the architect and go straight to a contractor. A contractor knows how to build the ship. You still need someone to draw the plans and make sure it will actually make it across the ocean.

Worth the Money

When we’re considering what’s worth the money, the bottom line is that none of these are impulse purchases. Being intentional with your money doesn’t mean spending less on everything. It also doesn’t mean spending extravagantly on the most expensive equipment you can find without doing your research on what really matters in this business. 

Rather, it’s about making smart investments and building a solid foundation for a profitable business. Each item on this list, from the equipment behind the counter to the education that shapes how you’ll operate your business, is doing exactly that.

Ready to build your foundation first? See our upcoming 3-Day Coffee Business Master Class® dates and reserve your seat.