Inside the play is a character called Old Merrythought. He has spent his money, avoids his responsibilities and sings whenever life becomes difficult.

His frustrated wife finally leaves him, saying:

“Let him stay at home and sing for his supper.”

And that’s where the expression “sing for your supper” comes from.

Sing for your supper

That’s what social media is. Us singing for our supper.

Or, at least, that’s what we think is expected.

The first narrative we’re conditioned to believe is that we need to be on it. If you’re not on Instagram, does your coffee business even exist?

The second is that we need to be seen. You can be on Instagram but if nobody sees you there, does your coffee business even exit?

So do whatever it takes to be seen. Which invariably means we do whatever is trending. Whatever happens to be getting views that week.

So we dance, we perform, we fall to the floor, we spill drinks, we pretend to be a difficult customer, we say things like “f*ck matcha.”

Finally, we’re told that being seen means feeding the algorithm. Chasing virality.

And when we go viral, the job is done.

Is it though?

Attention is not the same as demand

Researchers from Harvard, MIT and the Harbin Institute of Technology matched 2,685 influencer videos on Douyin, the original Chinese version of TikTok, with actual sales of the advertised products on Taobao.

The sales data were collected between May and November 2019. The peer-reviewed study was published in December 2024.

Food was the largest product category in the study. And the average video received 38,515 likes, 542 comments and 936 shares.

None of those numbers had a meaningful relationship with changes in sales.

They then looked more closely at 259 of those videos. The average video generated an estimated $292 in additional sales. The average influencer charged $2,826 to make it.

Attention is not the same as demand.

When someone watches your baristas dance, they may crack a smile. They may even laugh. But they’ll keep scrolling. Because the fact is, they can like the joke without liking your coffee. They can share the video without knowing where your shop is. And they can follow your account without ever walking through the door.

Attention is not the same as demand.

What to do instead

Stop beginning with the question, “What should we post?”

Begin with:

“Why should someone visit us this week?”

Perhaps you want more people to try breakfast. Perhaps weekday afternoons are quiet. Perhaps customers don’t know that you bake everything in-house. Perhaps the menu doesn’t do a good job of explaining your signature drink.

Choose one reason to visit. Build the week’s posts around it.

Customers are already telling you what to post

Write down what people ask at the counter, in messages and in reviews:

• Which drink is not too sweet?

• Do you have tables near power sockets?

• What time do the pastries sell out?

• Is there parking nearby?

• Can I bring my dog?

Each question can become a useful post.

Show what people need to see

Rotate between four simple subjects.

The product

Show the pastry being cut open. Compare two drinks. Explain what the signature coffee tastes like. Show the actual portion size.

The visit

Show the shop at different times of day. Film the quiet tables, outdoor seating, parking entrance or walk from the nearest landmark.

The people

Introduce the baker. Ask a barista what they drink after a shift. Show the team preparing before opening.

The proof

Share a customer’s regular order. Show a tray that sold out. Explain where the beans come from. Place a genuine review beside the item it describes.

Give every post one job

Before filming, complete this sentence:

“After seeing this, I want someone to…”

Try the new drink. Come in for breakfast. Visit during a quiet afternoon. Save the location. Send the post to a friend.

If you can’t finish the sentence, don’t make the post.

Follow a simple plan

You don’t need to publish every day.

• Monday: Show one product and explain who will enjoy it.

• Wednesday: Answer a common question about visiting.

• Friday: Show a person, process or customer favourite.

• Weekend: Give people one specific reason to come in.

If a trend helps you make one of those posts clearer or more entertaining, use it. If the trend is the only reason the post exists, skip it.

Stop performing for the feed

At the time of writing this Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth is $ 253.6 Billion. He doesn’t need your help making him richer.

Use social media to help people choose your coffee shop. Show them the drinks, the space, the people and the experience waiting for them.

Stop singing for your supper.

Brands competed over it, measured it, entered movements into observatory competitions to prove it. And advertised it.

Then, on Christmas Day 1969, Seiko launched the Quartz Astron. It was around 100 times more accurate than a mechanical watch.

That was a problem for Swiss watchmakers. They could spend years developing a better mechanical movement, use better materials, employ more skilled watchmakers and improve their manufacturing.

But they were never going to beat quartz at telling the time.

And if accuracy was what customers valued most, it was a big problem.

Blancpain chose a different competition

In 1981, Jean-Claude Biver and Jacques Piguet acquired the rights to Blancpain, a historic (founded in 1735) but, at the time, dormant Swiss watch brand, for around CHF 22,000.

An extraordinary time to bet on mechanical watches.

The Swiss watch industry was being devastated by quartz. Since the beginning of the Quartz Crisis employment had fallen from about 90,000 to 45,885. Entire companies were closing down.

Mechanical watches looked like outdated technology.

Biver and Piguet could have tried to make Blancpain more competitive by launching a quartz watch. They didn’t.

Instead, they made being mechanical part of the reason to want one.

Blancpain’s advertising famously declared:

“Since 1735 there has never been a quartz Blancpain watch. And there never will be.”

Think about what they were doing. Quartz was more accurate. So Blancpain made accuracy less important.

Instead, it asked customers to value craftsmanship. Mechanical complexity. Tradition. Human skill. Heritage. The pleasure of owning something made in a way that was increasingly unnecessary.

The very thing that made a mechanical watch technologically obsolete became what made it desirable.

Blancpain still made excellent watches. Quality was still important.

But quality wasn’t the whole proposition.

Eleven years later, Blancpain was sold for CHF 60 million.

Coffee has its own version of this problem

Specialty coffee has spent years getting better.

Better green coffee. Better roasting. Better grinders. Better espresso machines. Better water. Better extraction. Better training.

And that’s been enormously good for coffee.

It’s been good for everyone. Including your competitors. More and more of them can access the same things you can.

A great espresso machine is available to anyone who can afford it. So is a great grinder. Exceptional green coffee is more widely available. Knowledge that once belonged to a relatively small group of specialists can now be learned online. Talented baristas move between businesses. And, in the age of Instagram, the aesthetic of a specialty coffee shop can be copied very quickly.

So what happens when everybody has a great machine, a great grinder and really good coffee?

Those things stop being enough to make you different.

Being better isn’t the same as being different

Biver didn’t decide that quality no longer mattered. He recognised that quality alone couldn’t win the competition he was in.

Of course your coffee needs to be excellent. But if the café down the road also serves excellent coffee, telling customers yours is excellent doesn’t give them a compelling reason to choose you.

You need to create other reasons for them to care.

Maybe that’s the producers you choose to work with and why. Maybe it’s an uncompromising approach to sourcing. Maybe it’s your relationship with a particular community. Maybe it’s a distinctive point of view about roasting. Maybe it’s hospitality. Maybe it’s the reason you opened the business in the first place.

The answer will be different for every business.

That’s the point.

Find something your competitors can’t buy

You can buy a La Marzocco. Your competitor can buy one too. You can buy an exceptional grinder. So can they. You can source an outstanding coffee. So can they.

Those things matter enormously. But they’re becoming the price of entry, not a guarantee of differentiation.

What is much harder to buy is a distinctive reason for people to care about your business.

That’s where story, identity, relationships, beliefs and point of view become valuable.

And you don’t need Blancpain’s marketing budget to communicate them.

They’re already being communicated through your menu, your packaging, your website, your Instagram, your café and, most importantly, the conversations your team has with customers every day.

The difficult part isn’t finding somewhere to tell your story. It’s figuring out what story is actually worth telling.

What are you making valuable?

Blancpain couldn’t control the fact that quartz was more accurate. It could control what Blancpain stood for.

So instead of spending its energy trying to win on the attribute where its competitors were stronger, it gave customers entirely different reasons to value its watches.

Coffee operators should be asking themselves the same question.

If great coffee and great equipment are increasingly available to everyone, what are you giving people that they can’t get from the café down the road?

They decide who gets recognised. They help baristas build careers. And they show the rest of us what excellence is supposed to look like.

That last part is where I have a problem.

Because once you decide what gets rewarded, you also decide what people spend their time learning.

We train people to impress judges

Baristas spend months practising competition routines.

They learn how to describe flavour. They perfect their latte art. They refine recipes, workflows and presentations for people who already understand coffee.

Don’t get me wrong - these are real skills. Developing them has helped move specialty coffee forward. Undoubtedly.

But very few customers need a barista to explain a coffee beautifully.

Instead, they need somebody to notice that they’re waiting. They need help ordering without being made to feel stupid. They need the coffee to taste as good as it did yesterday. They need a place that feels welcoming enough to visit again.

We train for technical consistency. We don’t spend nearly enough time training people to be patient, observant or kind.

We don’t train hospitality.

Customers are keeping the doors open

The people judging coffee competitions know more about coffee than the average customer. That’s precisely why the industry values their opinions.

But customers know whether a coffee shop is worth returning to. They know how the room makes them feel. They know whether the team seems pleased to see them. They also pay the bills.

Without customers, a coffee shop is an expensive collection of equipment.

I wanted to know what customers would reward

That is why I created the People’s Choice Coffee Awards (PCCA).

No judges. No industry panel. Just coffee drinkers voting for the coffee shop they genuinely love.

I didn’t know whether anyone would care. Then the first season received votes from 45 countries. Hundreds of them.

People added comments too.

They mentioned the coffee. Of course they did. But they also mentioned that they kept coming back to the coffee shop. The welcome. The consistency. The feeling that a particular coffee shop belonged to them.

Roasti Coffee Co. in Sherwood Park, Canada, won the first season. Season 2 brought votes from 28 countries across six continents. Flat White Specialty Coffee & Kitchen in Qatar came first.

PCCA rewards a different kind of excellence

I’m not trying to replace professional coffee competitions. The industry needs them. But they measure excellence as coffee professionals experience it. We’re doing them to impress each other.

PCCA measures whether a coffee shop has earned the affection of the people it serves.

That could be the most technically ambitious shop in the city. It could also be the small neighbourhood café where the coffee is always good, somebody remembers your order and you never feel as if you need to prove that you belong there.

Both deserve recognition.

Season 3 is coming

The first two seasons convinced me that PCCA needed a permanent home. So I built a new website at peopleschoicecoffeeawards.com.

Any coffee shop, anywhere, can receive votes. There is no entry fee. No application. No pre-determined shortlist.

Season 3 of the People’s Choice Coffee Awards is about to begin.

If you run a coffee shop, let your customers know. Don’t tell them what to write. Don’t tell them why you deserve to win.

Let them tell you.

Their answers might reveal what your team should’ve been training for all along.

Customers are different in the sense that they are not uncomfortable communicating the minutiae of their wants and needs. They ask for more drinks, more food, longer opening hours and more alternatives.

So the menu grows. More stock comes in. Preparation becomes slower. Waste increases.

Where they are the same as my sister is that what they’re communicating is not always what they want.

Turns out the customer isn’t always right.

A request isn’t demand

Someone asking you to add matcha to the menu isn’t going to order it three times a week. A customer may want better coffee but only until better coffee costs more. They’ll appreciate the barista’s craft only until the queue stops moving. They love a hidden café until they can’t find parking.

Watch what happens at the till

Customer feedback can tells you what people find interesting. Sales tell you what they’re willing to pay for.

A new drink might attract plenty of attention, look fantastic on instagram and sell well during its first week.

The more useful question is whether people order it again.

Repeat purchases reveal demand. Compliments don’t.

When several customers ask for something, test it before making it permanent. Run it as a special. Bring in limited stock.

Then watch what happens.

Did people buy it? Did they come back to buy it again? Did it increase the bill, or replace something that was already selling? Did the extra preparation affect service?

Listen for the problem

Customers often suggest a solution when they’re trying to describe a problem.

“We need more choice” could merely mean they haven’t found a drink they like. “You should stay open later” may come from somebody who visits once a month. “The service is too slow” might have more to do with ordering, payment or collection than the time spent making coffee.

Take the comment seriously. But look beyond what was suggested as a fix.

Build around repeated behaviour

Customer comments shouldn’t automatically become operating decisions.

Listen to what they ask for. Look at what they buy.

Pay even closer attention to what they buy again. That’s when preference becomes behaviour.

What people say is a clue. What they repeatedly do is what you build around.

Customers see things differently. They care about good coffee, feeling welcome and wanting to return.

So I started the People’s Choice Coffee Awards. No judges or scoring panels. Only customers voting for the coffee shop they love and telling us why.

The shop with the most valid votes wins.

Season 2 of the People’s Choice Coffee Awards brought in votes from 28 countries across six continents. Flat White Specialty Coffee & Kitchen in Qatar won.

To me, the most interesting part of the process was the comments people left when they voted. Insights I think you might find useful.

Coffee quality is still important

Around three quarters of the comments mentioned coffee.

People talked about flavour, quality, beans, brewing and specific drinks they loved. They praised shops that offered something interesting without making coffee feel intimidating.

Takeaway:

Protect your core drinks. Set clear recipes. Taste them during the day. Check calibration after busy periods. Track remakes and repeated complaints. Offer choice, but don’t let the menu become confusing.

Customers want to find a drink they enjoy and trust that it will still taste good next time.

Consistency builds trust

Consistency was a common theme. Across comments about coffee, food and service.

Customers noticed when a shop delivered the same experience across different visits, teams and locations.

Takeaway:

Choose the parts of the experience that should never change. The taste of core drinks. How quickly customers are acknowledged. Food presentation. Cleanliness. Music. The way problems are handled.

Measure those things regularly.

Important: if you operate several locations, experience each one as a customer. Your weakest branch still represents the whole brand.

Coffee is still about people

A lot of comments mentioned staff, service, owners or hospitality.

Customers remembered friendly baristas, welcoming teams and owners who took time to speak with them. They noticed when people seemed genuinely happy to be at work.

Takeaway:

Hire for warmth as well as skill.

Train people to notice the room. Who has been waiting? Who is a regular? Who needs help? Who wants to be left alone?

When somebody praises a member of staff, share it with the team. It shows everyone which behaviours customers remember.

Comfort changes how people use a coffee shop

Around one third of the comments mentioned atmosphere, comfort or the space itself.

People talked about seating, music, design, views, WiFi, parking and whether they could work or study. Some valued somewhere social. Others wanted somewhere they could sit alone.

Takeaway:

Walk through your shop as a customer. Order. Wait. Find a seat. Connect to the WiFi. Use the bathroom. Pay. Leave.

Watch how people use the room. Moving chairs, searching for sockets and avoiding certain tables are signs that the space isn’t working as well as it could.

Food is still important too

Around one quarter of the comments mentioned food.

Breakfast, brunch, pastries, sandwiches, cakes and healthier options gave customers more reasons to visit.

Takeaway:

Review your menu by occasion. What works before work? What suits a long breakfast? What do people order when they stay for two hours? What brings groups in at the weekend?

Kill any food items that don’t generate demand.

People want to belong

About one in five comments mentioned community, belonging, loyalty or feeling at home. People described coffee shops as part of their neighbourhood or weekly routine. They talked about friendships with staff, local partnerships and businesses they had supported for years.

Takeaway:

Decide where your shop fits into people’s lives. It might be the morning stop before work, somewhere to study or the place friends meet every Saturday. Make that use easier.

Support local organisations. Remember regular customers. Tell stories about the people and places around you.

Customers experience the whole business

Many voters mentioned coffee, people, food and atmosphere in the same comment. They weren’t separating departments or judging one part of the operation.

They were describing the complete visit.

Season 3 of the People’s Choice Coffee Awards is coming soon. Click here to find out you can take part.

I flew to Istanbul to host the first Home Barista Show in Europe at Espressolab’s roastery in Merter.

The Home Barista Show is an event I created where home brewers gather to play with equipment, ask the questions no-one at a coffee shop has time to answer, and meet fellow coffee obsessives. It was the fifth Home Barista Show so far, after Dubai, Sharjah, Cape Town and Johannesburg.

And like the others, the Istanbul event sold out.

The show went as well as I could’ve hoped. As usual, I loved seeing a group of people who mostly brew alone at home learning together in the same room.

And what a room it was. A small part of Espressolab’s 6,000 square meter campus.

The scale is difficult to explain

When I approached Renato Correia, Espressolab’s Global Coffee Director, to host the Home Barista Show at his coffee shop in Cape Town, he suggested I take the show to the roastery in Istanbul instead.

Espressolab converted Turkey’s first cardboard factory into an entire coffee campus. Its head office is there. So are the production and packaging operations, three coffee shops, a bakery, an outdoor stage, an auditorium and the experience centre where we held the Home Barista Show.

Just in case I’m still not doing good job of explaining the scale, let me pause here and talk about the roasting operation. Espressolab currently has two Loring S70 Peregrines, the largest roaster Loring makes. Each one can roast up to 70 kilograms in a batch. Beside them is a S35 Kestrel, which can roast up to 35 kilograms. A third S70 is on the way and will replace the S35.

Together, the current machines have a maximum batch capacity of 175 kilograms. Once the new S70 arrives, that’ll rise to 210 kilograms.

Most of the coffee for its international network of more than 400 coffee shops in more than 20 countries is roasted in Merter.

There’s something about the word “gobsmacked” that makes me feel uncomfortable. Like the word “moist”. But that’s what I was as the team took me on a tour of the facility.

Gobsmacked.

The word community gets used a lot

Coffee companies love talking about community. I do too.

The word appears in brand presentations, Instagram captions and almost every description of a new café.

Espressolab is the first I’ve seen in a while actually doing the work to build one.

The roastery runs coffee workshops, which you’d expect. But it also hosts ceramics classes, candle making, canvas painting, yoga, Pilates and theatre. Artists perform on the outdoor stage every Sunday. The venue has held concerts, film screenings and a latte art championship.

The range of activities is what interested me.

People have many reasons to visit the roastery. Coffee is one of them, but it’s not the only one.

Someone may arrive for a ceramics class and discover the coffee. Another might come for Pilates, then return with a friend. A family watching a performance may decide to stay for something to eat.

Each visit gives Espressolab another chance to become familiar. That’s how a place begins to mean something to people.

Of course, Espressolab has money behind it

The campus reportedly cost €5 million.

Independent cafés don’t have anything close to that budget. They also don’t have an auditorium, an outdoor stage or 6,000 square metres.

But the useful part of the idea doesn’t depend on any of those things. When you strip away the scale, the model is simple:

1. Give people a reason to gather.

2. Let them do something while they’re there.

3. And make the experience worth coming back for.

You can do that with one table.

Look at the space you already have and the hours when people rarely use it. Maybe it’s a Tuesday evening. Perhaps it’s the period after lunch. It could be the hour before the shop usually gets busy on a Sunday.

What could happen there?

Ten people could join a tasting. A local photographer could teach a small class. A book club could meet once a month. Someone who already visits your café could share a skill with a few other customers.

The room doesn’t need to be full. It needs to feel useful.

Let people take part

Like all Home Barista Shows I’ve hosted so far, the room in Istanbul only really came alive when everyone started brewing. Before that, people had listened and watched. Once the kettles came out, they began comparing recipes, looking at each other’s technique and tasting the results.

It’s the activity that sparked the conversation.

Nobody needed to walk up to a stranger and introduce themselves for the sake of networking. They could simply ask what coffee the other person had chosen, how fine they had ground it or why their brew tasted different.

People connect more naturally when they have something to do together.

So when you plan an event, think about the role you’re giving the people in the room. Can they make something? Taste something? Learn something? Compare something?

By the way, there’s another fringe benefit to getting people talking. It takes some of the pressure away from the person hosting. You don’t need to fill every minute with a presentation.

Give people the right activity and they’ll begin creating the experience themselves.

You don’t need to teach everything

Espressolab can run a ceramics workshop because a ceramics teacher brings the knowledge. The same goes for painting, yoga and theatre. The roastery provides the space, the hospitality and the coffee.

Someone else brings the subject.

You can do the same thing.

You may already know a photographer, baker, artist, trainer or musician looking for somewhere to bring people together. One of your regulars may have a skill they’d love to share.

They bring their knowledge. You provide a place where their people can meet.

Both sides have a reason to talk about the event. The café meets a new group without buying advertising. The person hosting gets access to a welcoming space and customers they may never have reached alone.

Start with people you already know. You may be surprised by how much knowledge is sitting at your tables every week.

Go beyond coffee

Coffee events make sense for a coffee business. Cuppings, brewing classes and latte art sessions use the equipment and knowledge you already have. And they give customers a better understanding of what you do.

Keep doing those.

But remember that most of your customers don’t spend their free time thinking about extraction. They have other interests.

Espressolab’s programme reaches beyond the small group who identify as coffee enthusiasts. A person can join a yoga session or watch a play without knowing anything about processing methods or brew ratios.

They still experience the building, meet the staff, order something and decide whether they’d like to come back.

A broader programme gives more people a way into the business.

Make it a regular feature on the calendar

One successful event can give you a full room and some good photographs to put on Instagram. Repetition gives people a habit.

Many of Espressolab’s workshops happen every month. Artists perform on the Roastery Stage each Sunday. If someone misses a date, another one is coming.

That also gives the team time to improve. The first event may start too early. You might offer too many tickets. The format may need more time for conversation. By the third one, you’ll understand what people enjoy and what gets in their way.

Choose something you can run three times before deciding whether it works.

Keep the first group manageable. Notice who returns. Watch who brings a friend. Pay attention to the people who stay after the official part has finished.

That’s where you’ll learn whether something real is beginning to form.

Ask people what they want

If you’ve been wondering how to build more community around your café, start with one unused period in the week. Choose a group you’d genuinely like to welcome. Find one person who can give them an enjoyable or useful hour. Keep the first gathering simple enough to repeat.

Then ask the people who came what they’d like to do next.

That last part is important.

Operators sometimes decide what their community should want before speaking to anyone in it. You can end up producing an event that looks good but doesn’t inspire people to come back.

When I developed the first Home Barista Show, the launch event in Dubai, I thought it was a good idea to have every national coffee champion in the room to teach home brewers the recipes that won them their titles. I thought it was a good idea because that was something that was interesting to me. It’s something the home brewer in me would have wanted.

No one cared.

In fact, the only negative feedback I received about that first event is that home brewers wanted more time making coffee themselves, with knowledgeable people coaching them through the process. What they didn't want it is to sit and listen to a champion pontificate about the minute details they think won them the competition.

Ask people what they want.

Then give them that.

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.