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Permalink Reply by Brady on July 28, 2012 at 5:41am

We had a shop in suburban Charlotte for 4 years. Location was in the neighborhood's main shopping center, lots of vehicle traffic and some foot. Neighborhoods with $200-$400k homes for miles in every direction. Sales were mostly drink, then food. Bean sales were always a disappointment though.

I'm not sure that I agree with your statement. I do agree that some locations may be more receptive to bean sales than others, but I would not expect that coffee sales would be weak in those locations. Even a kiosk in a grocery/market location would probably be fertile ground for drink sales.

As I think about cafes that seem to have strong bean sales, they either roast onsite or are strongly and visibly tied to higher-profile local roasters. If you are neither, the real coffee lovers should still recognize the benefit of buying from you, but your average customer may not.

Yes, the older neighborhood centers in suburbia tend to be drive to/drive from without foot traffic. The newer live+work "villages" look much more promising, yet even these seem to lack much foot traffic most of the time.

If you don't have the benefit of foot traffic and an existing central gathering place, you'll need to create that gathering place. You can certainly do that though.

Hope that helps.

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Permalink Reply by Jay Caragay on July 30, 2012 at 10:10pm

Personally speaking, I think suburban operations for a truly specialty coffee shop is difficult. Suburban types are big into places like PF Changs, Red Robin, etc.  If you want to operate in that environment, have a hard look at the chains and emulate them.  I did suburban coffee operations for nine years and I'm not particularly eager to go back - even though I live in the 'burbs.

Of course, there are exceptions.  Have a look at Barefoot Coffee's Santa Clarita location. Suburban strip mall, packed and you'd think you walked into an urban coffee shop.

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