Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Andrew Jensen on March 11, 2009 at 4:53pm

Great advice Jon, another option would be to get your sandwiches catered off-site from a local vendor. This would eliminate the need for a few equipment items in your kitchen, and still be able to utilize the panini grill like you suggested. It really just depends on how fresh you want your product to be. Are all of the items in your display case going to sell by the days end? If you are making sandwiches at your location, maybe consider adding the sandwich prep table to the back counter line rather than in the kitchen. This would at least give you the option for made-to-order service, or pre-making sandwiches during off-times while still remaining in the service area.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jon Mitchell on March 11, 2009 at 6:58pm

Good ideas Andrew with regards to the prep-table on the back of the bar. I guess through trial and error and just observing you can get close to know how many sandwiches to prepare each day. Obviously if you run out then you can prepare more when they're ordered.

Andrew Jensen said:

Great advice Jon, another option would be to get your sandwiches catered off-site from a local vendor. This would eliminate the need for a few equipment items in your kitchen, and still be able to utilize the panini grill like you suggested. It really just depends on how fresh you want your product to be. Are all of the items in your display case going to sell by the days end? If you are making sandwiches at your location, maybe consider adding the sandwich prep table to the back counter line rather than in the kitchen. This would at least give you the option for made-to-order service, or pre-making sandwiches during off-times while still remaining in the service area.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Black Sheep Coffee North on March 12, 2009 at 3:47am

I guess it depends on your operation. you're absolutely right on what people expect. We unfortunately offer all of the above...
Don't get me wrong, we have die hard coffee- regular customers, however we also have people who come for lunch as well, that don't even really care for coffee (BOO!). Depends on your location, I think.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Katherine on March 12, 2009 at 4:54am

I completely sympathize with you. Only my coffee shop is connected to a full-scale Italian Trattoria, so besides worrying about not competing with them, I also have to think of things that we can make only out of the ingredients we already have. That can be hard when you only have one kind of bread, and it's not really sandwich material.

Cedric said:

This was what I was telling the owner. He didn't want to put a food menu because he also owned a sandwich shop 2 doors down from us and didn't want take profits away from them. I really tried to convince him that we needed some kind of food besides the cheesy looking pastries from Sam's Club and Sysco. I even made up a menu that was simple and was nothing like the sub shop. But all he wanted was muffins, crossaints, and scones. Then he wanted to add pastries from a local bakery....awesome stuff!!! The only thing was food costs was extremely high. I would have had to sell a muffin at about $4 just to keep the food costs at 30%. I don't think there would be many customers that can afford $4 muffins in a campustown. The current location that I'm at right now is right next door to a bagel shop. Great combo at first, but it seems more like we help them out than them helping us with sales. Their customers would come to our place and eat their food and not order anything from us. Wow, I guess I'm venting too. Sucks to manage a place when it feels like I'm working with handcuffs on =/

Brady said:

I'll go out on a limb and say that most of us do it so that we'll have customers during hours that tend to be really slow otherwise - 11am-1pm.

Think about it, who's going to go into a coffee shop at lunchtime? Why?

When we first opened we tried running without sandwiches for a few months. We saw very, very little business during this time period and threw away lots of drip.

We found that once we added (and advertised) sandwiches we not only got people coming in for sandwiches... they would come in for coffee first thing in the morning too. Also, our all-morning working or studying campers would buy lunch too and stay another hour. Ours are simple - chicken salad, pimento cheese (its a Southern thing), ham, turkey, cheese. Contemplating getting a toaster oven to toast them.

I really think that unless you have 2-3 hours worth of prep work that your staff can do over lunch, you gotta have sandwiches if you are going to be open a that time. Nothing complicated or smelly, just a few tasty options.

My 2 cents.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Cedric on March 12, 2009 at 5:44am

Thanks for your replies. Its giving me some really great ideas for another store. I found out that there's all these non-compete clause in the lease at the current location. I feel like adding food to the menu is a good thing and wouldn't hurt.....just need to make sure food costs are kept minimal. Anyways, this site is awesome for advice because you guys rock!!!

• ▶ Reply

▶ Reply to Discussion

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page