Order your coffee as usual. Pick up your cup. If someone has written “FREE” on it, you don’t pay.

That’s the whole idea.

And I love it.

Good marketing starts with understanding people

There’s a tendency to believe that good marketing needs a big budget, a lengthy campaign or an influencer.

Good marketing actually only needs one thing: for you to understand people.

Tom & Serg recognised that people love a pleasant surprise. We enjoy the possibility that an ordinary day might contain a small win.

Notice, I say a “small” win. The win doesn’t have to be big or dramatic or expensive.

Because human beings love small wins. I would argue that they can feel even more authentic. They arrive without fanfare and ask nothing from us. They simply make the day a little better than it was a moment ago.

A free coffee won’t change your life. But it might change your mood. It might make you smile, message a friend or tell someone at work what just happened.

That’s enough. More than enough.

Tom & Serg also understood that customers don’t want to work for every reward.

Nobody needs to download an app, create an account, scan a code or complete a form. You only need to do what you were going to do anyway: order the coffee.

They took a familiar routine and added a little anticipation to it.

Is my cup one of the free ones?

That question is enough to make a completely ordinary transaction feel different.

The cup became the campaign

What I also love is that there’s something refreshingly physical about the idea.

In a world of loyalty apps, push notifications, QR codes and promotional emails, this entire campaign lives in a handwritten word on a disposable cup.

It feels immediate. Imperfect. Human.

For a moment, the cup stops being packaging and becomes something worth paying attention to. It carries a little suspense. You know some cups are free, but you don’t know whether yours is one of them.

A marker has changed the meaning of an object customers handle every day.

A useful reminder for anyone building a brand. You may not need to create another touchpoint. There could already be an overlooked one sitting right in front of you.

Hospitality should include delight

There’s another reason this works.

It leans on one of the most important, and often forgotten, goals in hospitality: delight the customer.

Imagine ordering the coffee you were already going to buy and then being told you don’t have to pay for it.

It probably won’t transform your week. But it’ll change that moment.

You’ll smile. You might tell the person sitting next to you. You might take a photo. You’ll probably remember it the next time you walk past Tom & Serg.

That’s what delight can do.

Customers expect their order to be correct, their coffee to taste good and the service to be friendly. Those things are essential. But they are also the baseline. They’re expected.

Delight is when something happens that the customer wasn’t expecting.

Again, tt doesn’t have to be expensive or extravagant. A free coffee. An extra pastry. A remembered name.

These moments give people a story to tell.

The story someone tells about how you made them feel is more valuable than the money spent getting their attention in the first place.

The best activations don’t interrupt the experience

The promotion fits naturally into what the customer is already doing.

Order coffee. Receive cup. Look at cup.

There are no extra steps. Nothing to scan. No form to complete. No instructions that take longer to understand than the reward is worth.

The best activations don’t interrupt the experience.

They are part of the experience.

Tom & Serg found a moment that already existed and added a little possibility to it. Even if your cup isn’t free, you still check. You still participate.

And perhaps you pay closer attention when you order again tomorrow.

Marketing doesn’t have to be complicated

Sometimes we make marketing more complicated than it needs to be.

We start by thinking about channels, content calendars, reach and production. Tom & Serg started somewhere much simpler.

How can we make someone’s coffee run more enjoyable?

The answer didn’t require a new platform or an elaborate campaign. Someone simply had to write “FREE” on a few cups.

Marketing doesn’t always need to add more. Sometimes, it just needs to make the ordinary feel less ordinary.

That can be enough.

Like I am now after my visit to World of Coffee Brussels.

The exhibition wrapped up the day before and I had the day free before my evening flight home. So I did what every coffee person does in a new city. I set out to visit the best coffee shops the city has to offer.

I was particularly excited about this coffee crawl because my companion is his country’s national barista champion. Fair to say he knows a thing or two about coffee. I was keen to see hear his thoughts on the coffees we would have.

And he’s a good guy. I just genuinely like hanging out with him.

Have we forgotten espressos need to be enjoyable?

The first café we visited was serving espresso on a lever machine that’s currently trending on social media.

You know the one.

Beautiful. Minimal. Chromed out. Photogenic AF.

My friend ordered the espresso. It was prepared on the lever machine and therefore charged at a premium.

(I don’t know how to type the rolling eyes emoji)

He took two sips. Then quietly pushed the cup away.

I’ve seen toddlers show more commitment to broccoli.

The espresso wasn’t “challenging”. It wasn’t “modern.” It wasn’t “expressive.”

It was battery acid.

Then the service started

I ordered what I believed was a flat white. I couldn’t tell from the menu.

So I guessed. Then I waited.

Two customers who arrived after me were served before my drink arrived. No problem. Mistakes happen.

Eventually I asked if my drink had perhaps been forgotten. The response wasn’t an apology.

It was confusion.

It was the look of someone surprised I'd interrupted their afternoon by asking where my drink was.

When my drink finally arrived, it came with a complimentary cold drink. It's name escaped me almost immediately.

Not because I’m forgetful.

But because somebody had invested more creativity into naming it than making it memorable.

It wasn’t offensive. Just not interesting.

Then I met Frank

Brussels was in the middle of a heatwave. At the time of writing this, it still is.

So when I saw the queue outside Frank, my first instinct was to skip it. But my friend told me he had heard good things.

So we waited.

Ten minutes later we were shown to a table.

The welcome was warm. Not theatrical. Genuine.

The drink I ordered had sold out. The waitress apologised. Then smiled and said,

“Can I recommend something else? It’s actually my favourite.”

Not the café’s favourite. Her favourite.

The drink was excellent.

A few minutes later she came back. Not to clear cups. Not to upsell.

Simply to ask whether she’d chosen well. She looked genuinely pleased when I told her she had.

My favorite moment of the day

Our next stop was one of Brussels’ most celebrated cafés. I was told by a few “insiders”, one of Brussels’ top 3.

Friends had arrived ahead of us and found a table.

I walked through the door, spotted them immediately and headed over. I managed perhaps two steps.

“Excuse me!”

“We queue here.”

“And we respect the queue.”

I explained that I was joining friends. The explanation seemed inconvenient.

I genuinely can’t remember the coffee. Because I was annoyed.

I do remember the cinnamon bun. Enough to know that Birch Bakery still makes the best cinnamon bun I’ve ever eaten.

Hospitality isn’t loud

Specialty coffee often treats hospitality as performance.

Big smiles. Warm greetings. Long conversations.

Real hospitality is quieter than that.

It’s making sure customers receive what they ordered. It’s noticing someone has been waiting too long. It’s choosing equipment because it makes better coffee, not because it photographs well. It’s writing menus people can actually understand. It’s asking a question before making an assumption.

It’s remembering that every interaction either adds to the experience or chips away at it.

Truth is, I probably wouldn’t touch any of those things on day one. I’d start somewhere else. Somewhere simpler.

I’d ask one question.

Why do people come back?

More customers isn’t always the answer

When business slows down, the instinct is: “We need more customers.”

That’s a logical conclusion to make. After all, more customers should mean more sales.

But this isn’t usually where the biggest opportunity lies.

Imagine two cafés. The first serves 300 customers this week. The second serves 220.

At first glance, the first café seems to be doing better. But most of Café A’s customers visit once every few weeks. Most of Café B’s customers visit three or four times a week. And they buy beans, bring friends and recommend the café to colleagues.

Which business would you rather own?

Coffee isn’t your product

You don’t sell coffee. Yes, customers hand over money for a cup of coffee. But that’s not why they come back.

People come back because they feel comfortable. They know your team. The service is consistent. They know exactly what they’re going to get.

The coffee gets them through the door. The experience brings them back.

So, if customers are returning for the experience, improving the experience is a better investment than spending more money trying to attract strangers.

If I were responsible for growing your café...

This is where I’d start. Not with your Instagram account. Not with your advertising budget. Not with your logo.

I’d spend a week watching your customers.

I’d ask questions. Who are your regulars? What do they order? How often do they visit? What makes them choose you instead of the café across the road? Why do some customers disappear after one visit while others become regulars?

Until I understood those answers, I wouldn’t spend another dollar on marketing.

The biggest opportunity is hiding in plain sight

Most cafés are working hard to attract new customers. Far fewer spend the same effort understanding the customers they already have.

Your regulars are the people who tell their friends about you. They’re the people who forgive the occasional mistake. They’re the people who buy retail coffee, attend events and become part of your community.

And the beauty is, every additional visit they make costs you almost nothing to acquire.

Compare that with paying for another click on Instagram or Google.

Five things I’d do this week

If I were responsible for growing your café, this would be my first week’s to-do list.

Learn the names of twenty regular customers.

If your team knows your regulars by name, you’re already building something that your competition will struggle to replicate.

Ask every regular one question.

“What keeps you coming back?” Don’t guess. Ask.

The answers will probably surprise you.

Look for patterns.

Do people come because they love the coffee? Or because your café is a great place to work? Or because your baristas remember their order?

Those are very different businesses.

Create one more reason to return.

It doesn’t have to be complicated.

A weekly tasting. A brew bar feature every Friday. A new guest espresso each month.

Measure returning customers, not just daily sales.

Sales tell you what happened. Returning customers tell you whether your business is getting stronger.

The first thing I’d fix wouldn’t be your marketing

It would be your understanding of your customers. Because that’s what great marketing really is.

It’s not posting more often. It’s not running more ads. It’s understanding why people choose you, then making that reason impossible to forget.

Everything else comes afterwards.

And those who claim to know they need marketing, reduce it to a press release or a social media account.

In coffee, that usually means handing the account to the youngest person on the team and asking them to recreate whatever’s trending on TikTok.

Most owners believe the product should carry the business. Find a decent location, buy the right machine, hire good baristas and open the doors.

It’s only when the seats stay empty that “marketing” becomes urgent.

Someone needs to post something.

So they do. Sometimes they post something good. It might even get views. Most times they post something terrible.

Regardless, the fact is, posting something is content. It’s not marketing.

What is marketing?

Marketing should tell you:

• who the café is for,

• why those people should choose it,

• what they should expect when they arrive and

• what will bring them back.

It should shape the offer, the pricing, the menu, the space, the service, the way staff behave and the way the business talks about itself.

If none of that has been worked out, social media only broadcasts confusion.

Marketing runs through the whole business

Marketing doesn’t sit in a department. It isn’t your Instagram account. And it isn’t the person holding the camera.

It starts with who the café is for. And where you choose to open. The name, the sign outside, what the place looks like, the products you sell and what you charge for those products. All of those decide who will visit. All of those are all marketing.

Then the customer walks in.

The menu needs to make sense. Ordering needs to be easy. Someone should acknowledge them. The wait should feel reasonable. Staff need to speak to people properly. That’s marketing.

When something goes wrong, the way you handle it becomes part of how they see the business. That’s marketing.

Reviews count. Your website counts. So do your posts, promotions, partnerships and whatever people say about you after they leave. All those things are marketing.

There’s one other thing that is also marketing. And, in my opinion, the most important marketing you should do.

Building a community.

What is community?

The coffee industry uses the word community very loosely.

A busy room gets called a community. An Instagram following gets called a community. A WhatsApp group gets called a community.

Regular trade doesn’t always mean you have a community. Someone might visit every morning because the café is close to work. The coffee is reliable, parking is easy and they collect points.

Nothing wrong with that. That’s good business. But it’s not community.

Community starts when people feel they belong there. They know the staff. The staff know them. They know other customers. Other customers know them.

Social media followers can watch for years without becoming part of anything. Participation is what you’re after.

Why is community so important?

Community gives you something your competitors can’t easily reproduce.

Another café can buy the same coffee, install the same equipment, maybe even better equipment, and hire someone to make really beautiful, polished content.

What it can’t copy are the relationships you’ve built. The barista who knows a customer has a difficult meeting every Monday. The running group that has met outside for two years. Or the regulars who trust one another to watch their laptops while they use the rest room.

Those relationships won’t move because a prettier café opens nearby.

People come back

Customers who only buy the product will keep comparing you with other cafés. Price, quality, distance and convenience are their most important considerations.

It’s once the café becomes part of their routine, that leaving carries more weight. They’d lose familiar staff, familiar faces and a place where they already know how everything works.

The drink is still important. It’s simply no longer the main reason for returning.

They bring other people

Regulars bring colleagues because they trust the team to look after them.

A runner brings the rest of the group. Someone who has just moved into the neighbourhood gets told where to go. A friend visiting from overseas gets taken to the café everyone talks about.

Your marketing becomes easier to believe

A lot of cafés say they care about quality, service and people. A community is evidence.

Customers keep returning. Staff know their names. People come to spend time together.

New customers see that. They don’t need to take your word for it.

The business has some goodwill

Slow months happen. Competitors open. Costs rise. Prices must follow. Someone on the team makes a mistake.

Customers with no connection to the café can leave quickly. Or, even worse, write a Google Review.

A community gives them reasons to stay.

Having said that, goodwill has limits. People will still leave if the coffee gets bad, service slips or the prices stop making sense.

You still have to run the business properly.

The relationship gives you a little room when things don’t go to plan.

You learn what people need

When you have a community, you have people you can reach out to for genuine feedback.

You hear which parts of the menu confuse people. You see what they order, who they bring and when their habits change. People tell you what they wish you sold and why they use the café in the first place.

You don’t need to build the business around assumptions anymore.

How to build a community

You can’t launch a community with a poster and a date. It’s not a button you can switch on or off.

It develops. In stages.

Step 1: Watch who already uses the café

Start with the people who are there now.

Spend a few weeks paying attention. Who returns? When do they come? What do they do while they’re there? Who already knows someone else?

You might think you’re building a destination for serious coffee drinkers. But see that the people choosing you every day are teachers, office workers and parents from nearby.

Don’t work with what you hope for. Work with what you see.

Step 2: Sort out the basic experience

The drinks need to be consistent. The café needs to be clean. Ordering should be easy. People should feel acknowledged.

Because a frustrating café experience doesn’t leave room to build a deeper relationship.

Step 3: Let people feel recognised

Learn names naturally. Remember usual orders. Acknowledge someone when they arrive, even when you’re too busy to serve them immediately.

If a regular disappears for a while, notice when they return.

Don’t be a stalker. Some people want a quiet coffee and nothing more.

The job is simply to make the person feel their presence hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Step 4: Create something that repeats

Give people a predictable reason to regularly come back to the same place at the same time.

It could be a weekly run, a workshop or a monthly cupping.

Keep it manageable. A small gathering that happens regularly will do more than a large event nobody has the energy to do again.

Step 5: Help people meet

When there’s a genuine connection, introduce people.

Two customers work in the same industry. Someone is new to the running group. A regular can help a newcomer with a question.

Watch for the opportunity to make the introduction. And when it presents itself, make the intro. Then get out of the way. Nobody wants a coffee shop to feel like a forced networking event.

Step 6: Let people contribute

Ask regulars what they thought of an event. Invite a local customer to run a workshop. Show someone’s work. Collaborate with nearby businesses and support something people in the area care about.

People feel closer to places they’ve helped shape. Their role doesn’t need to be a big one. A small contribution is enough to change the relationship.

The café becomes somewhere they have a stake in, even if that stake is informal.

Step 7: Show what’s happening

This is where social media becomes useful.

Show the running group, the local artist and the people who keep coming to the workshop. Tell the story of someone who has visited since opening week. Introduce the team as people rather than hands operating equipment.

Step 8: Keep it open

Communities can become cliques.

Regulars get comfortable. New customers walk in and feel like they’ve entered someone else’s private room. Staff can spend so much time talking to familiar customers that everyone else feels ignored.

Watch for that.

Regulars should feel recognised. But a first-time customer should still feel welcome.

You’re building a place people can join, not a private club with coffee.

Keep posting

Keep posting. Advertise when there’s a reason. Improve the website, manage the reviews and run promotions.

Those things do a good job of introducing people to your café.

However, it’s work to build a community that gives them a reason to stay.

I was finishing the first People’s Choice Coffee Awards.

And it turned into a much bigger job than I expected to be. Every vote had to be reviewed. Coffee shop names had to be checked. Businesses had to be verified. And all the comments had to be read. The hundreds of comments.

Somewhere along the way, I realised the awards weren’t just revealing people’s favourite coffee shops. They were showing what people actually value.

Why I started the People’s Choice Coffee Awards

Specialty coffee has plenty of awards. The World Barista Championship celebrates exceptional baristas. Roasting competitions reward great roasters. Latte art competitions recognise creativity. Coffee shop rankings highlight businesses doing great work.

I think those awards have an important place in our industry. They’ve undoubtedly pushed it forward.

But they’re judged by coffee professionals. And I wanted to know what customers thought.

So I created the People’s Choice Coffee Awards.

Why I created the PCCA

The first campaign

The campaign attracted coffee drinkers from 45 countries. The final Top 20 included coffee shops from 12 countries. Canada, the United States and Singapore each placed more than one coffee shop in the Top 20.

People from around the world joined in, and despite coming from different places and different coffee cultures, they often said the same things.

The inaugural People’s Choice Coffee Award went to Roasti Coffee Co. in Sherwood Park, Canada. I’ll be sharing an interview with the founders soon. After reading what their customers wrote, I wanted to hear their side of the story.

Although the rankings were interesting, the comments held the real value.

The Top 20

What customers actually value

I was surprised how many people added comments to their votes. Some wrote a sentence. Others wrote a lot more.

The themes were common.

Coffee came first. That wasn’t a surprise. Nobody gets into this game planning to serve bad coffee.

But after that, people talked about the staff. Consistency. Atmosphere. Service. And community. Yes, people described what they drank. But a lot more described how a place made them feel.

We spend a lot of time in specialty coffee talking about grinders, recipes, extraction and equipment. Turns out our customers spend far more time talking about people.

The Top 10

My takeaway

My takeaway from the first ever People’s Choice Coffee Awards?

Good coffee is expected. It’s the ticket to the game. After that, people remember how they’re treated. They remember the person behind the bar who greeted them, helped them choose a coffee or simply made them feel welcome.

Consistency came up many times. People notice when a café delivers the same experience every visit.

Community wasn’t something customers talked about as a quaint marketing idea. They talked about it because they genuinely felt it.

Technical excellence still matters. But so does hospitality. So does consistency. So does creating a place people enjoy being in.

Register now

When’s the next PCCA campaign?

I’ve already started planning for the next People’s Choice Coffee Awards. There’ll be small tweaks to make things more efficient. For me. But mostly for you.

If you’d like your coffee shop to be part of the next campaign, registration is now open.

I’d love to see what your customers have to say.

It’s a barista who keeps making the same mistake. A supervisor who won’t take ownership. A team member who seemed promising during the interview but now does the bare minimum.

The frustrating part is that you hired that person because you genuinely believed they would succeed. And things did go well for the first 6 weeks. The new hire is engaged, eager to learn, asks questions, and wants feedback.

Six months later, you’re frustrated.

So, what happened?

This.

Enthusiasm has an expiry date

Most people don’t join a coffee business, or any business for that matter, planning to be average.

Think about your last good hire. They probably arrived with energy. They wanted to learn. They wanted to impress. They asked questions, paid attention, and put effort into getting things right.

Nobody had to convince them to care.

Then something changed.

Many owners assume the problem was hidden all along. Concluding the employee wasn’t as good as they initially seemed.

Sometimes that’s correct. Often it’s not.

What really happened is that somebody who arrived enthusiastic gradually adapted to the environment around them. They learned what was important, what wasn’t, and how much effort was actually required to succeed.

People adapt to their surroundings. It’s human nature. Rooted in survival instinct.

The issue is not the individual. It’s the environment.

They don’t know what’s expected of them

Think about the way you see a customer, and the way your staff sees a customer.

You see a customer as somebody who’s chosen to return twenty times when they had dozens of other options.

To a member of your staff, that same person is simply be another flat white.

Neither perspective is wrong. They’re just very different.

The problems start when you assume your team sees that customer the same way they do.

Most employees have never been shown how their actions connect to business outcomes. They don’t know the financial cost of waste unless somebody explains it. They don’t automatically understand why a poor interaction matters. They don’t instinctively appreciate the value of a returning customer.

We often expect people to see what we see. They can’t. Not unless we show them.

They learn from what leaders tolerate

To be fair, every business does teach people what matters. But not through staff handbooks. Not through mission statements.

Through repetition.

People notice what gets corrected. They notice what gets ignored. They notice who gets praised and what behaviour gets rewarded.

If somebody is consistently late and nothing happens, that’s a lesson. If tables are left dirty and nobody comments, that’s a lesson too. If great hospitality goes unnoticed but speed gets recognised every day, people learn which one matters more.

Culture isn’t built during staff meetings. It’s built during ordinary shifts.

Owners sometimes underestimate how closely people watch them. Staff are paying attention all the time. And they’re learning which standards are non negotiable and which ones exist only on paper.

Taking initiative feels risky

Staff don’t think ahead. They don’t solve problems. And they don’t make decisions.

Yet, a suggestion gets dismissed. A decision gets overturned. Someone tries something new and gets criticised when it doesn’t work perfectly.

After enough experiences like that, people stop volunteering ideas.

Not because they don’t care. Because they’ve learned that taking initiative comes with consequences.

And doing exactly what’s required feels like the safest option.

People are far more willing to think for themselves when they believe mistakes will be treated as opportunities to learn rather than evidence they shouldn’t have tried in the first place.

Nobody shows them the impact they have

This is the reason that gets overlooked most often. Employees never see the results of their work.

They don’t hear that a customer came back because of an interaction they had three weeks ago. They don’t know a regular specifically mentioned them in a review. They don’t hear about the positive comment left after a busy Saturday morning.

As a result, work becomes a list of tasks. Make the coffee. Take the order. Clear the table. Restock the fridge. Go home.

People become more invested when they can see the effect they have on others. They don’t need constant praise. They don’t need applause every time they do something well.

All they need is to know that what they’re doing has a purpose beyond completing a checklist.

Because when people can see the difference they’re making, standards become more personal. Effort becomes easier to sustain. The work starts to feel connected to something larger than the next task.

A different question

Good employees rarely arrive planning to underperform. Most start with optimism. They want to learn, contribute, and succeed. They want to be part of something they can feel proud of.

Then they enter an environment that teaches them what’s important, what’s safe, what gets recognised, and what isn’t worth the effort.

Over time, those lessons become habits.

That’s why I’m sceptical whenever someone tells me they have a staff problem. Sometimes they do. Most times they don’t.

Before replacing another employee, it’s worth asking a different question.

What are people learning from the way your business is being led?

I think marketing gets deprioritized because of consequences. More specifically, the timing of those consequences.

An espresso machine stops working and there’s an immediate problem. No coffee. No sales. No business.

The AC breaks in the middle of summer and customers don’t stick around. Milk prices go up and margins feel tighter almost immediately. Staffing issues & supplier problems when you least expect or need them. .

Those things demand attention because the consequences are obvious.

Marketing is different.

Ignore Google reviews for six months and nothing dramatic happens tomorrow morning. Fail to build a customer list and next week probably looks normal. Stop paying attention to regulars and business doesn’t suddenly fall apart.

The consequences take a while to show up. And when they do, many try solving it with visibility. More content. More ads. More posting.

Marketing has somehow become shorthand for Instagram

Spend any amount of time doomscrolling and you’d be forgiven for assuming the cafés growing fastest are simply the ones posting the best content.

Sometimes, that’s true. A strong Instagram feed absolutely helps.

People discover cafés there. They send posts to friends. They save places for later.

Some cafés genuinely grow because they understand content.

But Instagram is the invitation. Not the whole experience.

Instagram might get somebody through the door once. The experience is what gets them back.

And more importantly, gives them something worth telling somebody else about.

That’s marketing too. Often the kind that lasts longer.

Marketing doesn’t stop once someone walks through the door

Let’s assume your social media game is on point. That people discovered your shop on Instagram.

The marketing job isn’t done once they walk through the door.

The welcome matters. The music matters. Whether staff make eye contact matters. How confidently somebody answers a question about coffee matters. How problems get handled matters. Whether someone leaves feeling looked after or simply processed matters.

Every interaction becomes part of your reputation. And reputation spreads.

Office conversations. WhatsApp groups. Neighbours. Friends visiting from overseas asking where to get coffee. Parents after school pickup.

Most of the people sitting in your shop today didn’t arrive because of an ad.

Somebody told them to go.

The most overlooked segment of the customer base

That “somebody” is probably a regular. One of the most ignored segments of the customer base.

Coffee businesses spend a lot of time thinking about new customers. Which makes sense. Growth feels visible. More foot traffic. More tags on Instagram. More people walking through the door for the first time.

Regulars are ignored because they’re already coming.

That’s the blind spot.

Regulars don’t just spend money. They shape the atmosphere. They recommend places. They bring friends. Then colleagues. Then family.

Here’s the beauty of the regular. Marketing to them costs nothing.

Loyalty is built through very ordinary moments. A barista remembering someone’s drink. Asking where somebody disappeared to after not seeing them for two weeks. Remembering a customer’s dog before remembering their name.

These things work. And don’t cost a thing.

Google is more important than Instagram

Think about how people actually choose cafés.

You’re travelling. Meeting someone. Working remotely. Trying to avoid bad coffee.

You search:

“Coffee near me.”

“Best café nearby.”

“Specialty coffee close to me.”

Then you scroll. Photos. Ratings. Reviews. Opening hours.

Then you decide.

Your Google profile is already doing marketing whether you’re paying attention to it or not. And many of you are not.

Old photos. Incorrect hours. Reviews sitting unanswered. Questions nobody responds to.

Sometimes a café loses the visit before somebody even walks through the door.

The most underrated platform

Instagram has been around for nearly 16 years. During that time, its ranking systems have changed constantly. Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, has publicly said changes happen all the time, not only through major updates. Nobody outside Instagram knows the exact number. But even if the platform changed just once a day, that would mean more than 5,700 changes since launch.

Yet so many cafés are trying to build their business on a platform they don’t control.

You know what hasn’t changed nearly as much?

Email.

It’s been around since 1971. 55 years old and still underrated.

I get it though. Likes and shares feel way more exciting than delivery rates and open rates.

Email feels old fashioned. Instagram feels alive.

But one is rented land. The other is a direct relationship.

A new coffee arrives. You’re hosting a cupping. Brunch launches next weekend.

You have something worth saying. Why say it only on a platform that decides whether people see it? Email lets you speak directly to people who already care.

Not everyone. Just the people who’ve said:

“Yes, I’d like to hear from you.”

A few hundred subscribers who genuinely like your café will often do more for your business than thousands of passive followers scrolling past your posts.

The difficult thing about marketing

The difficult thing about marketing is that it rarely feels urgent. Until it does.

Cafés become forgettable gradually. Fewer people mentioning you. Fewer new faces coming through. Regulars disappearing without anyone noticing.

The kind of problems that don’t announce themselves. Which is exactly why marketing gets pushed aside.

Not because you don’t care. Because everything else feels more urgent.

Until one day, marketing becomes urgent too.

And people are messy. Emotional, habitual, distracted, socially influenced, and often irrational. Usually tired too.

Consumer psychology is the study of how people make decisions, what shapes trust, why people hesitate, and what creates loyalty.

These are some of the key principles worth understanding.

Customers are buying something bigger than coffee

Clayton Christensen, a Harvard professor, made the argument that people don’t simply buy products. They “hire” them to solve problems in their lives.

Coffee is no different.

That morning flat white may be helping someone psych themselves up for a rough day ahead. The café visit after school drop-off may be the first quiet moment someone has had all week. The Saturday pourover may be the only dependable ritual left in a crumbling marriage.

Customers are not buying coffee alone. They are buying comfort, routine, belonging, energy, focus, calm, status, or escape.

When people say they love a café, they don’t give a technical evaluation. They describe how the place make them feel. The coffee matters, but so does the atmosphere, the familiarity, the soundtrack, the ritual, and the role the café plays in someone’s routine.

That is why one of the most useful questions a café operator can ask is this:

What job are customers hiring us to do?

Specialty coffee mistakes confusion for education

Anaerobic, thermal shock, washed, natural, and honey process, white peach, orange blossom and fermented cacao.

One of specialty coffee’s strangest habits is confusing people and calling it education.

Psychologist Sheena Iyengar suggests the problem is not lots of choice. The problem is difficult choice.

When people feel overwhelmed, uncertain, or cognitively overloaded, confidence drops. And when confidence drops, behaviour changes. People hesitate, postpone decisions, default to familiar options, or avoid the decision entirely.

This is why, after you say anaerobic, thermal shock, washed, natural, and honey process, white peach, orange blossom, and fermented cacao, the customer asks for a cappuccino.

You don’t need to dumb things down. You don’t need to lower standards. And you certainly don’t need to stop caring about quality.

You simply need to meet people where they are.

Instead of: “This is an anaerobic natural with pronounced tropical acidity.” Try: “This one is fruitier and a little more adventurous.” Instead of: “You’ll notice elevated malic acidity with stone fruit characteristics.” Try: “If you enjoy brighter, fruitier coffees, you’ll probably like this.” Instead of: “This washed Ethiopian has floral aromatics and a tea-like body.” Try: “This one is lighter, cleaner, and a bit more delicate.”

Because customers don’t become loyal to places that make them feel uncertain. They become loyal to places that help them feel confident.

Customers like familiarity more than coffee people want to admit

Owners want new coffees every week. Roasters want experiments. Baristas want to showcase unusual processing methods.

Customers usually want the drink they enjoyed last Tuesday.

That’s not because customers lack curiosity. It’s because humans like things that feel familiar.

Psychologist Robert Zajonc spent decades studying what became known as the mere exposure effect. His basic finding was simple: repeated exposure often increases preference. The more familiar something feels, the more comfortable people become with it.

This becomes even more powerful in habitual categories like coffee.

For many customers, coffee is not an adventure. It’s structure. A predictable moment in an unpredictable day. Something familiar they can rely on.

Consistency matters more than novelty.

That does’nt avoiding experimentation. Novelty matters too.

But novelty works best when layered onto familiarity. Reliable espresso, consistent service, and a stable core menu create trust. Seasonal drinks, limited coffees, and occasional surprises create excitement.

The strongest cafés understand this balance. Too much predictability becomes boring. Too much novelty becomes exhausting.

Regardless, the insight is this: customers want to feel understood before they are challenged.

Customers remember feelings more than flawless coffee

When a customer is recalling an experience, they’re not recalling the entire experience. They’re recalling moments.

Daniel Kahneman popularized something called the Peak-End Rule, the idea that people tend to remember experiences disproportionately through emotional high points and endings rather than through averages.

A technically perfect cappuccino followed by cold service at the till will weaken the memory of the visit. A mistake handled warmly can strengthen loyalty. A rushed interaction at the end can overshadow an otherwise good experience.

Customers don’t remember every detail of a visit. They remember moments.

Specialty coffee has a judgment problem

Most customers never tell you why they stopped coming. They simply find somewhere else to go.

The default assumption of the problem is price, location, or competition.

Sometimes the problem was simply this:

the customer never felt understood.

He’s the industrial designer behind Slayer Espresso.

Before Slayer, many machines felt engineered first and experienced second. Functional, yes. But also cold. And intimidating. Equipment people tolerated than something baristas genuinely enjoyed standing behind all day.

Chris studied metalsmithing and jewellery design, later completed his graduate studies in furniture design, and spent years building handmade bicycles. He made his living thinking about materials, ergonomics, and the relationship people have with the objects they use every day.

He didn’t come from coffee.

So when Slayer approached him, he looked at espresso machines very differently. He wondered why they felt so cold. Why machines at the centre of hospitality somehow felt mechanical to use. Why standing behind one felt transactional instead of enjoyable.

The result was Slayer. A machine that felt warmer, more tactile, and more human without losing technical credibility.

Years later, he opened Sunny George. A coffee shop in Kyoto. I was interested to understand why. So I interviewed him for FLTR Magazine.

A few things he said stuck with me.

Question the norm

Chris looked at espresso machines and thought they felt cold, industrial, and unpleasant to use. Most accepted that as normal.

He did not.

Familiarity blinds us. Spend enough time inside a business, any business, and eventually you stop noticing what does not work. A menu only regulars understand. An awkward ordering process. The workflow staff complain about so often that everyone eventually stops mentioning it.

Nobody creates those problems deliberately. People simply adapt to them.

Design for the behaviour you want

Sunny George has no WiFi. Seating is communal. People are nudged toward conversation rather than disappearing into laptops.

You may love that idea. You may find it horrifying. That is beside the point. Chris clearly thought about how he wanted people to behave once they entered the café, then designed around it.

I think most cafés accidentally encourage the opposite of what they claim to value. You talk about community, but your space pushes people into isolation. You want customers to stay longer, but the seating isn’t comfortable. You say hospitality matters, but ordering feels transactional.

The useful question is this: what does your business actually encourage once people walk through the door? Not what you hope happens. What actually happens.

Atmosphere shapes experience more than coffee does

If you’re deep into this hobby, you probably judge cafés based on coffee quality. You notice grinders, roast profiles, water chemistry, recipes, and extraction yields.

Regular customers, i.e. most of the people who walk through the door, experience cafés differently.

They notice whether the place feels welcoming. Whether staff seem happy to be there (this one really bugs me). Whether the music feels irritating. Whether ordering feels awkward. Whether they feel comfortable enough to stay or subtly pushed to leave.

Most people are not mentally scoring your espresso recipe. They are asking themselves something much simpler: do I want to come back here?

Chris spoke about how experience begins before the first sip. The machine matters. The movement behind the bar matters. The confidence of staff matters. By the time coffee reaches the table, people have already formed an opinion.

That doesn’t mean coffee quality is unimportant. Of course it is. The point is that customers experience the coffee and the café as one thing. If ordering feels awkward, staff seem stressed, or the space feels uncomfortable, people remember the experience before they remember the coffee.

Simple experiences outperform complicated ones

Chris wanted Slayer to feel approachable. Premium, yes, but approachable.

Specialty coffee still struggles with this idea. We mistake complexity for expertise. So, menus become intimidating, ordering feels uncomfortable and customers worry about saying the wrong thing.

Customers are not trying to earn a diploma in coffee. They want something that tastes good and a place that feels welcoming enough to return to.

Confusing experiences rarely feel premium. And simplicity feels thoughtful.

Small frustrations become big problems

Chris spoke a lot about repetition. The feeling of using something again and again. Tiny frustrations stop feeling tiny when somebody repeats them hundreds of times a day.

I kept thinking about café workflows. The grinder that forces a barista to take unnecessary steps every shift. The prep station nobody enjoys using. The equipment placement that looked logical on paper but is frustrating in reality.

The fact that people stop complaining is not a sign things are fine. It only means they don’t expect change.

Build around what you believe

Neither Slayer nor Sunny George feels designed to appeal to everyone. I suspect that’s why people remember them.

Chris seems comfortable disappointing some people if it means staying consistent. Sunny George doesn’t sell matcha.

In Kyoto.

He explained that choice was simple. Because everyone already sells it, and more importantly, it didn’t fit what he wanted Sunny George to be.

Customers don’t need to agree with every decision you make. But they should understand what kind of business you’re trying to build.

The cafés people remember are built differently

The longer I sat with my conversation with Chris, the more I found myself wondering how many coffee businesses are built around habit rather than design. Habit in menus. Habit in workflow. Habit in assumptions about what customers supposedly want.

Most café owners spend enormous energy trying to improve coffee quality. But the cafés people remember are built differently. Somebody noticed something everybody else stopped seeing.

Then decided to change it.

Blue Bottle is the kind of brand most people in coffee respect. Strong identity. Clear point of view. The sort of business people try to build. The kind of business I once dreamed of building.

So if Nestlé is willing to let that go, it’s worth asking what they’re putting their energy into instead.

How big Nestlé actually is in coffee

They reported about $28 billion in powdered and liquid beverages in 2024. Most of that is coffee. Nespresso alone did roughly $7.3 billion.

For perspective, Starbucks did about $36 billion in total revenue last year.

How the Nestlé coffee business is structured

The volume comes from Nescafé. Which is not surprising because it’s everywhere.

Nespresso is machines, capsules, repeat buying. And like Apple, once you’re in that ecosystem you don’t leave.

Then there’s the Starbucks retail deal. Nestlé paid $7.15 billion for the rights to sell Starbucks coffee outside Starbucks cafés. So now you can find Starbucks in supermarkets.

Why they sold Blue Bottle

They sold Blue Bottle Coffee but kept the capsule rights.

Nestlé runs Nespresso stores. So why not Blue Bottle cafés? Because those stores aren’t doing the same job.

Nespresso stores support something that already exists. They bring people into the system and keep them there.

Blue Bottle is the system. Each café has to work on its own. Location, staff, daily execution. Every day.

That’s a very different job.

So they let it go.

How people are drinking coffee now

Specialty coffee consumption is increasing, while traditional coffee has stayed flat. At the same time, non-espresso drinks like cold brew and blended coffee have grown by around 42% since 2020.

People aren’t replacing one type of coffee with another. They’re adding to what they drink. They move between formats. Between styles. Between occasions.

That’s the change Nestlé is responding to. And this is how they’re responding.1

Move 1: who to speak to

Nespresso didn’t drop George Clooney. They added Dua Lipa.

Clooney still represents what the brand has been for years. Familiar. Consistent. Recognisable.

Dua Lipa brings in a different audience. She reaches people who wouldn’t have connected with the brand before.

They haven’t cut one off to make room for the other. They’ve kept a link to the past while changing how the brand shows up now.

Most cafés find one audience and stay there. Same tone. Same visuals. Same idea of who belongs.

You should absolutely know who your core audience is. And speak to them clearly. And often. That’s a good thing.

But leave the door open. Make it easier for someone new to see themselves in what you do. Don’t let the brand turn into something only a small group feels comfortable walking into.

Move 2: what the product can do

Older Nespresso machines didn’t give you much more than a short coffee. Newer machines allow you to make more choices. Larger cups, milk drinks, cold options.

So when someone’s preference changes, they don’t need to leave Nespresso.

Café menus are usually built to help someone order quickly. And that’s as it should be. The issue comes after that first decision.

Most people find something they like and stick to it. Not because they’re not curious, but because trying something new feels like effort.

You have to think about it. Ask questions. Take a small risk.

So they default to what they already know.

You don’t need to rewrite your menu. You just need to make the next step easier. If someone orders a latte, give them a clear, low-effort way to try something slightly different next time. A cold version. A different milk. A small variation.

Nothing that forces them to rethink the whole order. If it feels easy, they’ll try it. If it feels like a decision, they won’t.

Move 3: cold coffee isn’t an afterthought anymore

Cold drinks are still treated like an extra in most cafés. A small section. A bit of an afterthought.

That’s not how people are drinking anymore.

Nestlé has built cold coffee into everyday use. It’s part of how the machines work. It’s part of how drinks are designed. It’s just there.

If you run a café, give cold drinks proper space. Keep them consistent. Make them easy to understand.

You don’t need more of them. You just need them to feel like they belong.

Move 4: when someone walks in

Nespresso stores used to be about getting in and out. Now they give you a reason to stay a while longer.

You can taste something. Ask a question. Spend a bit of time before deciding.

A busy café can’t afford five-minute conversations at the till during morning rush. The amount of money you make is directly proportional to how many cups you sell.

But if that’s all that happens, you leave a lot on the table.

You don’t need to redesign the shop or slow everything down. You need to pick your moments.

While someone is waiting, give them something to engage with. A small sample. A quick recommendation. Let them smell the beans.

Those small interactions do two things. People stay a little longer, and they try things they wouldn’t have ordered on their own.

Move 5: after someone leaves

Nespresso doesn’t lose the customer after the machine is bought. Machines get registered. Capsules are ordered directly.

They can see exactly what coffee people are buying. And they stay in touch. Suggest things. Send reminders. Introduce new products.

Through direct communication. Through their app.

You don’t need an app.

You already know who your regulars are. You know what they order. Acknowledge it. Remember it. Respond to it. Suggest something new.

Where this leaves you

Nestlé hasn’t changed what it is. They’ve just adjusted to how people behave.

You can do exactly the same.

Passion keeps founders going when money’s tight. It fills gaps when there’s no budget, no team, and no safety net. It carries the business through long days and uncertain months.

Passion is necessary.

In the early stages, it’s often the most, and sometimes the only, valuable resource a founder has.

What passion does well

Passion pushes founders to learn quickly and work hard. It compensates for missing experience and limited capital.

For a while, that’s enough.

When the business needs more

But there comes a time when the business needs more than your passion.

Early on, effort solves most problems. You work longer. You stay closer. You step in when something goes wrong.

As the business grows, that stops working. Decisions matter more than effort. Consistency matters more than energy.

What once worked because you were always there now needs to work when you are not.

Why caring makes things harder

Founders care because the café’s personal. That care creates identity and culture. That same care can also make decisions harder.

Letting go feels like giving something up rather than building something stronger.

Why leadership feels unfamiliar

Passion keeps you close to everything. Leadership asks you to step back.

Leadership isn’t about caring less. It’s about deciding more clearly on things like standards, roles, and systems.

But to founders who built everything themselves, this can feel unnatural. Distance can feel like disengagement. Structure can feel impersonal.

What teams actually need

Teams already know you care. What they need now is clarity.

Clear expectations. Clear responsibility. Clear direction.

Because clarity reduces hesitation. It creates confidence instead of dependency.

What customers respond to

Customers respond to reliability more than enthusiasm. They trust places that behave predictably.

A café driven only by passion can feel exciting. But also erratic. A café supported by leadership feels dependable. And dependability is what turns liking a place into a repeat visit.

Leadership protects passion

Leadership doesn’t replace passion. It protects it.

Structure reduces burnout. Clear decisions reduce frustration. Systems stop everything from resting on one person.

Leadership allows passion to last longer than your energy.

It’s not about changing who you are

The shift from passion to leadership isn’t about changing who you are. It’s about responding to what the business now requires.

Passion gets the café off the ground.

Leadership keeps it running.

The coffee is often excellent. Better than it was ten years ago. Cafés look better too. Owners care more about design. Baristas know more than ever. Most people in specialty coffee are doing good work.

And yet, most places are forgettable. Not bad. Forgettable.

Because they’ve optimised for admiration, not habit.

So if it’s not great coffee, why, pray tell, do customers come back?

The customer you already have is worth more than the one you’re chasing

I understand the focus on new customers.

A busy café feels good. Marketing feels productive. A successful promotion feels like progress.

But let’s do some math.

The average coffee shop customer spends around $8 per visit. If somebody visits your café four times a week, over fifty weeks, that customer is worth roughly $1,600 a year.

Now compare that to ten first time customers spending $8 once and never returning. That’s $80 total.

Focus less on finding new customers and more on building repeat business.

Why people actually become regulars

It’s not the quality of the coffee. If quality alone created regulars, the busiest cafés would always be the ones serving the best coffee.

People become regulars for reasons that aren’t rocket science.

Familiarity

Customers don’t wake up wondering who’s pulling the best espresso in the city.

They’re late. Tired. Thinking about work. Trying to get through the day.

The café that wins is often the one where you know what you’re getting. You know where you’ll sit. And you know how long it’ll take.

Recognition

People like being recognised.

Not celebrated. Not over welcomed.

Recognised.

Somebody remembering your drink. Knowing where you normally sit. Realising you’re clearly in a rush.

Small things. To you.

Not to a customer.

Friction

Customers stop coming back because of small annoyances. Not one major issue.

Accumulation.

Parking is frustrating. Music is loud. WiFi won’t connect. Getting someone’s attention just to place an order is a chore.

Comfort

Specialty coffee still has a bad habit of making people feel stupid.

Sometimes unintentionally.

A customer asks a basic question and gets a complicated answer. Menus are overly technical. Ordering feels like an exam.

So how do you actually turn customers into regulars?

You don’t need a complicated loyalty strategy. You don’t need to suddenly become everybody’s best friend.

You need consistency. And you need to remove reasons for people not to return.

A few things genuinely help.

Think about the second visit

Most obsess over first impressions. Fair enough. First impressions matter.

But ask yourself: Why would somebody come back next week?

Not someday. Next week.

What practical reason have you given them? Fast service before work? Reliable coffee? A place to work? Friendly staff who remember them?

Most cafés spend too much time asking:

Did people like us?

A better question is:

Did we make it easy to come back?

Teach staff to notice things

Not scripts.

Patterns.

Who orders the same thing. Who likes chatting. Who clearly doesn’t. Who’s always in a rush. Who sits in the same place every time.

You don’t need staff to memorise biographies. Start with drinks.

Walk through your café like a customer

Walk in. Order. Wait. Sit. Use the WiFi. Go to the bathroom. Pay. Leave.

What feels annoying? What feels confusing? What takes longer than it should?

Become part of somebody’s week

I think cafés sometimes ask the wrong question.

Instead of:

Who is our customer?

Try asking:

When are we useful?

Morning commuter. School run. Lunch break. Saturday ritual.

People build habits around moments. Recognize the moments.

One thing to do this week

Spend an hour watching your café.

Not managing.

Watching.

Who comes back often? Who do staff already recognise? Who seems comfortable? Who looks slightly lost?

Then ask yourself, if your regulars stopped coming tomorrow, would you know why?

It starts the moment somebody walks through the door, looks at the menu, or speaks to your staff.

These are the 5 most common marketing mistakes.

Copying trends

A lot of cafés copy what other cafés are doing. The same drinks. The same menu items. The same interior style. The same social media posts.

Customers stop seeing a reason to choose you. If your café looks and feels like every other café, why would they?

What to do instead:

Decide what you want your café to be known for. Then stay consistent.

Trying to do too much

Most cafés start with a clear idea. Then keep adding things.

Matcha. Espresso tonics. Giant croissants. Seasonal drinks. More food. More options.

The menu gets too big. Customers take longer to order. Staff spend more time explaining. Service slows down.

What to do instead:

Decide what you want people to come to you for. Focus on that. And remove the things that are not that.

Thinking Marketing can fix bad customer experience

Some cafés spend heavily on content. The reels are beautiful. The influencers are paid/ The posting is constant.

Then you visit the café. A takes more than a while to get wait staff attention. And even longer for the food to reach your table.

That is not a marketing problem. It is an operations problem.

What to do instead:

Fix the customer experience before spending more money on marketing.

Make ordering easier. Simplify the menu. Speed up service.

Good marketing gets people through the door. A good experience brings them back.

Talking like coffee people instead of normal people

Specialty coffee can make customers feel intimidated very quickly. And it seems to take pride in that.

Anaerobic. Thermal shock. Extended fermentation. White honey.

The customer just wants to know whether they’ll enjoy the coffee.

What to do instead:

Explain coffee in practical language. Focus on taste, texture, and whether something pairs well with milk.

Marketing to other coffee people

A lot of café marketing is really just cafés trying to impress other people in coffee.

Complicated brew bars. Extremely technical captions. Espresso recipes that look like science experiments.

Content designed to signal expertise.

What to do instead:

Speak to customers in normal language. Explain things simply. Make people feel comfortable ordering without needing specialist knowledge.

When to spend money on marketing

More marketing doesn’t fix a bad experience.

Fix the café first.

Make ordering easier. Simplify the menu. Speed up service. Make people feel welcome.

Then spend money on marketing.

That’s one way to do it.

The real growth opportunity is hiding in plain sight. It’s the people already standing in front of you.

What the data actually says

Upselling works because it increases the value of customers you already have.

There’s data to show that increasing customer retention by 5% can lift profits by 25% to 95%. The money is often already in the room.

If you serve 200 customers a day and increase average spend by just USD 1.50 per customer:

That’s roughly $300 extra per day. That’s around $9,000 per month.

Same space. Same team. Same number of people.

Just different conversations.

Why it feels uncomfortable

Most staff hear “upsell” and think they’re supposed to push.

“Do you want anything else?”
“Make it large?”
“Add something?”

It feels awkward. Staff hate to do it. Customers hate to hear it.

But good upselling doesn’t sound like selling.

This is good upselling

The milk upgrade

Customer: “Flat white.”

Your staff: “Regular or large?”

Try this instead: “Want to try that with oat milk? It brings out the sweetness.”

You’re giving them a reason to spend more, instead of just asking them to.

The pairing

Customer: “Cappuccino.”

Your staff: “That’s $6.”

Try this instead: “Our almond croissant works well with that. It’s fresh.”

You’re helping them complete the experience, not just selling them more stuff.

The size

Customer: “Latte.”

Your staff: “Small or large?”

Try this instead: “If you’re sitting in, the large holds its heat better.”

Now it’s about use, not price.

The upgrade

Customer: “Filter coffee.”

Your staff: “Sure.”

Try this instead: “We’ve got an Ethiopian on pour over today. Brighter, more expressive. I can make that instead.”

You’re giving them an option they didn’t know to ask for.

The extension

Customer: “Just this.”

Your staff: “Okay.”

Try this instead: “If you like this, we’ve got the same beans for home. I can grind it for you.”

You’re turning a one-time coffee order into a possible repeat retail customer.

What’s under the hood?

Every good upsell does something useful:

• It improves the drink.

• Or it solves a problem the customer hasn’t said out loud.

• Or it connects to what they’ve already chosen.

If it doesn’t do any of that, it feels forced.

How to teach this upselling

Scripts don’t work. You get scripted conversations.

You need to build instincts.

Start with observation

Before anyone says anything, they need to notice what’s in front of them:

• Is the person staying or leaving?

• Are they in a rush?

• Are they on their own?

• Do they know what they want?

Someone running in for a takeaway doesn’t want a long explanation. Someone sitting down might.

You can train observation.

At the end of a shift, ask each person to describe three customers they served. What they noticed. What they missed.

Change the language

“Would you like…” puts pressure on the customer.

“You might enjoy…” feels different.

It gives them an idea without forcing a decision.

One suggestion only

Too many options slow people down.

“Do you want cake, croissant, cookie…”

It’s noise.

Pick one thing. Make it relevant.

Make sure they know the product

If your staff haven’t tasted it, they won’t sell it. Everyone should know one reason to recommend each item.

Not tasting notes. Not jargon.

“This one is sweeter.”
“This one works better with milk.”
“This one’s lighter.”

Practice when it’s quiet

Don’t try to fix this during a rush. Do it before opening. One person plays the customer. One plays the barista. One order. One suggestion. Quick feedback.

Ten minutes is enough.

Do it every day for a week.

Track one thing

Average order value.

That’s it.

If it gets better, something is working.

If it doesn’t, go back to how people are speaking.

This is how you know the upsell worked

When it’s done properly, the customer feels understood. They feel like someone helped them make a better choice.

It doesn’t feel like a sale.

What happens over time

When people trust your recommendations, they start to lean on them. They try things they wouldn’t have picked on their own. They come back. The café becomes a place that guides them a bit.

That’s what you’re aiming for.

What the Home Barista Show is

It’s for people who brew coffee at home and want to get better.

They don’t watch. They make coffee. Ask questions. Get it wrong. Try again.

That’s the point.

What happened in Johannesburg

We capped it at 70 people. Tickets sold out in two days. A waiting list followed.

People arrived early. And as soon as they could, they got stuck in.

Four cities, four different rooms

I’ve done this in Dubai, Sharjah, Cape Town, and now Johannesburg.

Dubai and Sharjah were packed.

Cape Town was the biggest. One hundred tickets sold online. Forty more walked in. One hundred and forty in total.

Johannesburg was smaller by design.

The rooms felt different. The way people behaved once they were inside didn’t.

What I’ve taken from this so far

I had some time after Johannesburg to think about the Home Barista Show. Not just the Johannesburg event. All of them.

Here’s what I’ve learnt so far:

1. A good location gets people in once. It doesn’t bring them back

These events move cities. People still show up. So it’s not the location. They come for something else.

2. A specific audience is easier to build around

The Home Barista Show is clear about who it’s for. People who brew at home and want to get better.

That makes it easy for the right person to say yes. And easy for everyone else to ignore it.

3. People feel more connected when they take part

The best parts of every event come from people doing something. They make coffee. They ask. They compare.

That’s what keeps them there.

4. If your idea isn’t clear, nothing else will save it

Each event had a different partner. Different setup. Same response.

So it’s not the venue. It’s not the sponsor.

People are responding to the idea.

5. A strong idea can bring new people

In Johannesburg, most people in the room were new to Bean There. But they didn’t come for the café. They came for the event.

If you have something that people want to be part of, it can bring in people who wouldn’t have walked in otherwise.

The plan is simple

The plan is simple. Keep going. Take the Home Barista Show to more cities. Different countries. See what holds up when the context keeps changing.

I want to take this as far as it can go.

And as I do that, I’ll keep writing about what I’m seeing. The parts that work. The parts that don’t. The things I get wrong along the way.

If you’re building something of your own, you’ll get a front row seat to it here.

That’s a different problem.

Content is going out constantly. Every day, something gets posted. A reel. A carousel. A photo. It looks good. It gives the impression that things are moving.

But stop for a second and ask a simple question.

What is this piece of content meant to do?

Not in a general sense. Not “drive sales” or “build awareness.”

Specifically.

What decision is it helping someone make?

Most of the time, there isn’t a clear answer.

Who is actually making the content

In most businesses, content isn’t treated like something that carries real commercial weight.

It gets pushed down.

A junior person ends up handling it. Or it gets outsourced to a freelancer or an agency.

They’re given a product, a few talking points, and a deadline.

Then they’re judged on what’s easy to see. Likes. Reach. Comments.

So that’s what they optimise for.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a criticism of those people. They’re working with what they’ve been given. But the setup itself is off.

Because the people making the content aren’t the ones carrying the number. And the people carrying the number aren’t shaping the content.

So you end up with work that looks right, but isn’t doing the job.

What the content ends up doing

Look at most coffee content today.

It looks good. Really good.

Clean edits. Slow pours. Close-ups of equipment. Careful lighting. Everything feels considered.

It tells you the brand knows what it’s doing.

And people respond to that. It gets attention. It builds a certain kind of confidence.

But that’s where it stops.

Because when someone’s actually about to spend money, none of that carries weight. At that point, they’re not looking for something that looks good. They’re trying to avoid getting it wrong.

What the buyer is actually thinking

The person about to buy isn’t watching content passively.

They’re working something out.

They’re trying to see if this will hold up in their world.

Will it fit under my counter?
Will my staff be able to use this without messing it up?
What happens when something breaks?
How often does it need maintenance?
Is this going to slow us down during peak hours?

You can see it in the questions that come in.

Not “Is this beautiful?”
Not “Is this well shot?”

They’re practical questions. Slightly tense questions.

They’re trying to reduce risk.

Those are the questions that matter. And most content doesn’t answer those questions.

Where most content goes wrong

Most content assumes the decision’s already been made.

It shows why the product is good. It highlights features. It presents the brand well. It makes the product look like the obvious choice.

But that’s not how people buy.

They hesitate. They compare. They look for reassurance.

And when your content doesn’t answer the questions they actually have, they go somewhere else.

Another brand. Another video. A review.

And that’s where you lose them. Not because your product is worse.

But because someone else made it easier to decide.

What the content should be doing

If the goal is to generate sales, then content has one job.

Make the decision easier.

That’s it.

Not louder. Not more polished.

Easier.

Easier to understand where this fits.
Easier to see who it’s actually for.
Easier to know what might go wrong.
Easier to trust that it will hold up over time.

That means answering the questions people are already asking in their heads. It means showing the product in real conditions, not ideal ones. It means being clear about limitations, not just strengths. It means helping someone picture it in their own space, with their own constraints.

What changes when you do this

The content starts to look different. It’s usually simpler. It often gets fewer likes. Because it’s not built to entertain. It’s built to resolve something.

But the people it reaches behave differently.

They spend less time second-guessing. They ask fewer basic questions. They move faster.

You’re not trying to win attention anymore. You’re removing doubt. And when that happens, people buy.

That’s when content starts doing its job.

You know it. I know it. Most people in hospitality know it. We just don’t say it out loud because, in the moment, it’s often easier to keep things moving than to deal with conflict.

Especially during a rush.

Most issues are simple

Most issues are straightforward. A drink is wrong. You remake it. Someone has waited too long. You apologise.

That’s the job.

When it stops being about the drink

But sometimes it stops being about the drink.

Sometimes someone comes in looking for a fight. They raise their voice. They demand instead of ask. They make it personal.

At that point, you’re not solving a service issue anymore. You’re managing behaviour.

This is where most people avoid dealing with it.

Because now there’s a risk. If you push back, things might escalate. If you don’t, you’re telling your team to accept it.

Neither is neutral.

When both the customer and your barista get it wrong

You’ll also get situations where both sides are off. The drink is wrong, and the customer is out of line. Or your barista handles it badly. They rush. They get defensive. They say the wrong thing.

When that happens, don’t try to decide who’s right.

Fix the drink if it needs fixing. Then deal with the behaviour. On both sides.

Your team is watching

Your team is always watching how you handle this.

If someone speaks to them badly and you allow it, they notice. If a customer pushes and gets something extra, they notice that too. If you step in and override them just to end the situation, they learn that their judgement doesn’t matter.

Over time, they stop taking ownership. They play it safe. They do the minimum to avoid trouble.

And that, my friend, is on you.

When you should step in

You don’t need to step into everything. If your team is handling it well, let them.

Step in when:

• they’ve tried and it’s not working,

• the tone has clearly crossed a line, or

• it starts affecting other customers.

You won’t always get the timing right. Sometimes you’ll step in too early. Sometimes too late.

That’s fine.

What to do when you’re there

What matters is what you do when you’re there.

Look at what’s actually happening in front of you.

If your barista is right, support them. If they’ve made a mistake, fix it. And do it without exposing them.

If both sides have handled it badly, you step in and take control of the situation.

What you don’t do is give the customer whatever they want just to finish the situation. That might solve it in the moment, but it creates a bigger problem later. It teaches the customer that pushing works. And it tells your team they were wrong to hold their ground.

At the same time, don’t back your team blindly if they’ve handled it badly. That doesn’t help either.

You’re there to correct and protect at the same time.

When you hear about it later

Most of the time, you won’t even see it happen. You’ll hear about it after.

When you do, don’t just ask how it ended. Ask what actually happened.

If your team handled it well, say that clearly. If they didn’t, correct it. Keep it specific. Don’t turn it into a long discussion.

Then close it.

What to set up in advance

You also need to make this simple for your team before anything happens:

• They should know where the line is without having to think about it.

• Give them something clear to say when someone crosses it. One or two lines they can use under pressure.

• Be clear on escalation. Try once. If it’s not working, call for help.

Some people are just a**holes

Be clear about the end point.

If someone keeps pushing, you stop serving them. You tell them you’re not going to be able to serve them today, and you leave it there.

No debate.

What this changes

If you get this right, your team stops guessing.

They know where the line is. They know when to handle something themselves and when to call you. And they know that if things go sideways, you’ll step in properly and you won’t leave them exposed.

That’s all you’re trying to do.

But there’s always something else to deal with.

So it stays.

You don’t know what you actually sell

You focus on the coffee. Because that’s what you control.

But customers are reacting to everything around it.

How long they wait before anyone acknowledges them. Whether they understand the menu without asking questions. Whether the drink they get matches what they expected when they ordered it.

If those things are off, the coffee won’t fix it.

You’re inconsistent

Mornings are controlled. By the afternoon, people start cutting corners.

Doses aren’t checked as often. Milk is handled differently. Drinks go out slightly off, but not enough for anyone to stop service and fix it.

A regular comes in three times in a week and gets three different versions of the same order. They don’t say anything. They just stop relying on you for that drink.

You make ordering harder than it should be

Watch someone new order.

They look up at the menu. Then back at the barista. Then back at the menu. They hesitate. Not because they don’t want coffee, but because they’re not sure how to order it here. Some ask questions. Some don’t. The ones who don’t usually pick something safe or leave.

You don’t hear about it. You also don’t see them again.

You guess your pricing

You don’t know which drinks actually make you money. You don’t know if your best-selling drink is also your lowest margin one.

You know your costs went up. You adjust prices. Or you hold them because you’re worried about pushback.

What you don’t know is which drinks are carrying the business and which ones are barely covering themselves.

You hire whoever is available

You need coverage. So you hire based on who can start quickly.

They learn how to make drinks. They can get through a shift. But they don’t take responsibility. They don’t notice when things are slipping. And they don’t step in unless asked.

You struggle to delegate

You say you want people to take ownership. Then you correct details during service. You redo small things after close. You step in when something isn’t done exactly how you would do it.

People adjust to that. They stop making decisions on their own. They wait for direction.

And you get pulled into more of the day than you planned to.

Your best people leave

After that, the shift feels different. Drinks take longer. Communication gets looser. Small issues aren’t caught early. You realise they were holding more together than you thought.

You don’t know your numbers

You know which days feel busy. You don’t know what those days actually produce. You don’t know how much each category contributes. You don’t know where margin is strong and where it isn’t.

You chase new customers

You put effort into getting people through the door. But you don’t notice people who used to come in regularly start spacing out their visits. You only realise it when a quiet week hits and you can’t explain why.

You don’t say no

A customer asks for a change. You say yes. Another asks for something slightly different. You say yes again.

Over time, the menu grows without being designed. Prep gets more complicated. Service slows down. Staff have more to remember.

You run a shop, not a brand

The café operates. People come in, order, and leave.

But if someone had to explain your place to a friend, they’d struggle to be specific. They might mention the coffee. Or the location. But nothing about your point of view.

What to do with this

Don’t try to fix everything. Pick the one thing that you know shows up every day. Not the easiest one. The one that affects how the place actually runs.

Fix that properly.

Then move to the next.

Where do I stand? Where do I order? What happens first? How long is this going to take? Am I about to get this wrong?

If the space answers those questions quickly, you move. You order. You leave. You come back without thinking about it.

If it doesn’t, you feel it. You might still buy a coffee. Most people do. But you’ll think twice about coming back for another.

The part most cafés get wrong

Most cafés start with how the place looks. Identity, interiors, menu design, tone of voice.

And, make no mistake, all of that matters. But it doesn’t tell the customer what to do.

You can have a well designed space that still takes too long to use. You see people hesitate. They look at the menu, then around the room, then back at the menu again.

The staff step in to help. They answer the same questions again and again.

That’s not a service issue. It’s a setup issue.

What actually creates the hesitation

It’s rarely one big problem. It’s small things that stack.

The menu is not visible until you’re already in the queue. The queue itself is not obvious, so people form two lines, or none. The order point is off to the side, so first time customers walk past it. You order, then realise you were meant to pay somewhere else. You get your receipt and don’t know where to stand next.

Small moments where the customer has to think when they don’t want to.

You can watch it happen. People look at each other to confirm what to do. They follow someone else’s lead. They wait half a second longer than they should before stepping forward.

That’s the cost.

What easy looks like in practice

There are cafés you can walk into anywhere and use without thinking.

You see the menu before you join the queue. The queue is clear. It forms in one place. The order point is obvious. The handoff point is separate. You pay once. You move aside. Your name is called where you expect it to be called.

No one explains anything because nothing needs explaining.

The coffee is consistent. The process is consistent. You don’t have to adjust your behaviour to fit the space.

That’s what people return to.

Where independent cafés lose people

Independent cafés put their energy into standing out.

They build a strong point of view. The design is considered. The language is specific.

That work shows. You can see the intent. And it’s beautiful.

But when the basics aren’t settled first, the experience becomes harder to use. The menu needs explaining because it wasn’t designed to be read quickly. Customers hesitate because there’s no clear place to stand. The barista fills the gaps, which slows the line, which makes the room feel more crowded than it is.

Everything still functions. Drinks go out. People get served. It just takes more effort than it should.

What actually drives people back

Most coffee buying is habitual. People are fitting it into a routine. On the way to work. Between meetings. On the way home.

That only works when the process doesn’t demand attention.

You can have better coffee. You can have a stronger identity. But if the experience takes effort every time, many people will still choose to go elsewhere. To the place that’s easier to use.

What to pay attention to instead

If you want to understand your brand, stand in your own café and watch what people do when they walk in.

Not what they say. What they do.

Where they stop. Where they look around. Where they ask for help. Where the barista has to step in and explain something that should already be clear.

Those are the points that matter. Fix those, and the place starts to feel easy.

And when it feels easy, people come back.

At the beginning, it’s easy to focus on what’s visible. Design. Equipment. Menu ideas. Branding. Social media. These things feel concrete and satisfying to work on. They also feel like progress.

What gets less attention are the parts that don’t as sexy.

Mistake one: treating the idea as the business

Most cafés start with a clear idea. A concept. A look and feel. A sense of what the place should be. Early feedback is often positive. People say it sounds good. They say they’d come.

That reaction can be misleading.

The idea isn’t the business. The business is rent, staffing, suppliers, waste, maintenance, and cash flow. It’s knowing what an average weekday needs to earn and how tight that number really is.

Many first time owners can explain their concept clearly but struggle to explain their daily breakeven without guessing. The story is well formed. The numbers aren’t.

Mistake two: assuming confidence means responsibility

Early hires often sound capable. They speak clearly. They have opinions. They’ve worked in cafés people recognise. That feels reassuring.

But confidence is easy to confuse with ownership.

A lot of people have worked in cafés without ever being responsible for outcomes. They know how to do the job, but not how to protect the business. They haven’t had to deal with the consequences when costs creep up or margins tighten.

When problems appear, responsibility can become unclear. Owners assume staff are watching the details. Staff assume the owner’s are.

Mistake three: underestimating how tiring the work becomes

Making good coffee once isn’t difficult. Doing it well all day, every day, while managing staff schedules, suppliers, equipment issues, and customer expectations is another game altogether.

Opening energy carries a café only so far. After a few months, the pace is different. Decisions pile up. Small compromises start to feel acceptable.

Standards usually slip slowly. Not because people stop caring, but because they’re tired.

Mistake four: assuming demand will take care of itself

There’s a common belief that if the coffee is good, customers will come. Sometimes they do. Often they don’t come often enough or predictably enough.

A busy weekend can hide a weak weekday. Footfall doesn’t mean repeat visits. Rent and wages don’t adjust based on how good Saturday felt.

Cafés that last tend to look for patterns. When people arrive. What they order. What doesn’t sell. Decisions are based on what actually happens, not what should happen.

Mistake five: delaying clear decisions

Pricing conversations get postponed. Performance issues are softened. Changes are delayed. Waiting is easier and less uncomfortable.

But waiting usually makes the problem bigger.

Clear decisions feel awkward early on. Later, they become unavoidable. By then, options are fewer and conversations are more difficult.

Cafés that last tend to deal with issues sooner than feels comfortable.

Mistake six: building for personal taste instead of customer behaviour

Many early choices are driven by preference. Music. Menu size. Opening hours. Service style. That works only if the owner closely matches the customer.

Often, they don’t.

Cafés that last tend to watch what people actually do. They notice what sells. They notice when people show up. They change things without turning it into a statement.

This doesn’t mean lowering standards. It means responding to reality.

None of this is a reason not to open a café. It’s a reminder to be clear about what running one involves.

If you’re still planning, you have room to get the basics right before they matter. If you’re already operating, many of these issues can still be addressed.