Retail in Store Coffee Experiences to Drive Footfall and Sales
In today’s retail environment, where consumers are king and you don’t even need to leave the house to make a purchase, the experience is vital. The saturated market offers many options and alternatives for consumers, so a first-class customer experience is the foundation of success in the retail environment.
Whether you are a small convenience store in a rural community or a store owner on a busy high street shopping location, you have to make your retail environment stand out from the rest?
So, how do you do that? Well, it’s all about the experience…
The Most Effective Way
In recent years, there has been a shift towards an experience-led retail environment. This is where retailers offer unique or interactive experiences in-store to not only entice new customers into the shop. This leads to improved loyalty amongst existing clients.
To entice your customers to visit your store, you must offer something different. Put a focus on the end-to-end retail experience, not just the specific products or services they are buying. With an ever-competitive marketplace, it’s vital that what you offer is better than your competitors.
The most effective way of improving and diversifying your retail offering is by offering an in store coffee experience with Fresca Coffee.
In-store coffee experiences
The idea of selling or offering coffee in a retail store is not a new one. Apart from diversifying your retail experience, providing coffee to your clients is a proven winner. It can help keep them in the shop longer and build brand loyalty. This ensures they keep on coming back.
A quality coffee experience can also help build a sense of community. To ensure a consumer chooses your store, rather than one of your competitors, it’s essential to offer something different to enhance their experience.
Selecting the right coffee experience for the consumer is really important. Equally important is partnering with the right coffee brand. Your coffee offering must be aligned with your company brand and values or you risk alienating loyal customers. Remember the high street coffee brands already saturate the market so make your offering different from the norm.
Millennials and the new generation’s focus on innovation and specialty coffee. Think about what your customer would really like to drink. The bottom line is that regardless of what you’re selling in-store, survival depends on your ability to adapt to what your customer wants.
Coffee Connoisseurs
Traditionally, coffee offerings in retail spaces been substandard and somewhat seen as an afterthought. However, this will no longer be accepted by the modern consumer. UK consumers are developing a far deeper knowledge of the coffee they drink, and consequently the expectations of the average consumer have grown massively.
UK consumers are becoming coffee connoisseurs. We certainly won’t put up with anything but the best, whether we’re drinking coffee at home, in a coffee shop, in the office, or even a in retail space. So to maximise the potential returns of offering an in-store coffee experience, you must be certain that you’re providing a great cup of coffee.
It doesn’t matter if you have the best coffee beans in the world if you’re using a cheap coffee machine to make it. Similarly, your professional, high-quality machine won’t matter if you buy substandard beans. They go hand in hand.
Getting it Right
You certainly don’t need to relinquish space that could be used to sell your products or indeed spend large sums of money to fit out a big area to offer in-store coffee. Start with a top-quality coffee machine that you can rely on to deliver in a busy environment. Make sure the coffee machine can cope with the demand. You don’t want a machine that is only capable of making 50 drinks a day when you need one that can easily cope with over 200 drinks a day.
If you have room, you can then add a few chairs nearby. Of course, a dedicated “cafe” space can be useful, but many shops offer a great cup of coffee with the expectation that it is consumed whilst customers are browsing.
There are no rules to providing an in-store coffee experience, so you have the flexibility to work it around you and what your customers want.
Similarly, the decision to sell cups of coffee or offer as complimentary is completely unique to you and your business. Offering a complimentary drink as your customers browse can be a great way to attract customers and build loyalty. On the other hand, selling coffee can help bolster your sales and add to your income. If this is important to your business, then ask about the profit margin of the drinks.
The Perfect Partner
At Fresca Coffee, we work with the retail industry to provide a great coffee experience for your customers. Whether that is providing a multi drink option bean to cup coffee machine or the complete fitting out of a café space with professional barista coffee equipment, branding and the supply of high-quality ingredients. We have everything you need to deliver a great in-store coffee experience.
If you thinking about adding retail in store coffee experiences to drive footfall and sales in your business then we’re here to help.
