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Are you concerned that you might be drinking too much coffee? There is no exact amount of coffee that is considered too much since it can vary a lot from person to person. Nonetheless, the following information can still help you to get a better idea of how much coffee you can drink a day without experiencing any issues.

Maximum Recommended Daily Caffeine Intake

The FDA recommends that healthy adults limit their caffeine intake to no more than 400 milligrams per day. If you drink regular brewed coffee, this means you should try to drink no more than four or five 8-ounce cups in a day. However, women who are pregnant or people with serious health problems should limit their caffeine intake to a maximum of 200 milligrams a day.

Many people are surprised to learn that they can actually have more individual shots of espresso in a day than cups of coffee. According to the USDA, a single 1-ounce shot of espresso contains around 64 milligrams of caffeine on average compared to approximately 96 milligrams in an 8-ounce cup of coffee.

Of course, this number can vary quite a bit based on the type of coffee you drink and how it’s made. For instance, there can be a difference between light and dark roast. Although both types have essentially the same caffeine content, a pot of brewed light roast coffee will usually have more caffeine than a pot of dark roast coffee.

The reason is that light roast coffee is denser and thus takes up less volume. This means there would be more coffee in the scoop of light roast than there would be in the same size scoop of dark roast. However, this isn’t the case if you drink k cups since these are always measured and packaged by weight and not volume. K cups are an easy way to keep track of how much coffee you’re drinking so you don’t have to worry about measuring every cup out.

How to Know If You’re Drinking Too Much Coffee

It is usually fairly easy for a person to tell when they’re drinking too much coffee, but this isn’t always the case especially if you have been drinking many cups a day for years. Still, if you find yourself experiencing side effects like headaches, nervousness, anxiety, insomnia or a fast heartbeat, it’s a good idea to cut back and see if this helps.

Caffeine affects people in different ways, and what is just fine for some may be too much for others. Still, one obvious sign that you’re drinking too much coffee is if you find yourself getting jittery or experiencing other issues as soon as you drink even a little bit more. For instance, if you find yourself getting a headache every day as soon as you have your fourth cup, this is a sign that you should limit yourself to three cups at the most.

The good news is that it’s basically impossible to overdose on caffeine by drinking coffee alone. It would take the average person well over 100 cups to approach anything near a lethal dose of caffeine. Nonetheless, if you find yourself experiencing any adverse effects from drinking coffee, you should probably consider cutting back your intake.

People love going out to cafes to share a cup of coffee or a sandwich with friends and family. For many consumers, dining out is their entertainment for the week. As such, it’s important that cafe owners and staff make guests feel welcome. Here are four tips that will help them do that.

Acknowledge Them When They Come In

No one likes to go into a restaurant to eat and feel like they are invisible to the staff. Hosts, waitstaff and other front-of-the-house workers should acknowledge new guests when they come in. If the server who will wait on them can’t get to them right away, he or she should at least say hello. Even taking a drink order can go a long way toward making guests feel like they’re not being ignored.

Get the Whole Staff Involved

In recent years, team service has become more popular. Team service is where everyone in the restaurant takes care of guests. This might mean a server may run another server’s food out to a table or a bartender may deliver a drink to guests in the dining room. A manager or a busser may box up food for a table. This ensures prompt service and makes guests feel at home.

Train Your Staff Well

When you don’t properly train your staff, you’re asking them to give poor customer service. What may be obvious to you is not obvious to them. For example, you know it’s best to pick up dirty dishes as you walk by a table. An untrained person may not know this. Don’t expect them to. If you can train in-house, do so. If not, there are plenty of online restaurant training resources that will help you get your staff up to speed on topics, like upselling, listening and dining room awareness.

Avoid Overbooking

It’s also very important to avoid overbooking. Few things will irritate customers more than having to wait 30 or 40 minutes past their reservation time. However, as a small café that may or may not even take reservations, this means that it’s hard to anticipate when the influx of customers will come. However, whenever you know that you’re reserving lots of space for a party, call in the cavalry of your staff to make sure that you don’t become understaffed for the rest of the café that’s open.

No restaurant guest wants to feel ignored and unwelcome. However, this can happen if a cafe’s staff isn’t well-trained or if the restaurant gets overbooked. Good service requires dedication and teamwork. If you follow the tips listed in this post, you’ll go a long way towards ensuring that your guests feel taken care of.

According to Forbes, 84% of companies that boost their efforts to improve customer experience see revenue increases. If you want to improve the experience of visiting your cafe, these are some helpful tips.

Make Waiting Easier

One of the most common complaints about cafes is wait times. Since mistakes and order influxes that increase wait times are inevitable, it helps to give guests a reason to enjoy the wait. For example, if you anticipate a delay, offer the guests a small snack or free coffee while they wait. To make hungry guests more satisfied even during short waits, you can also provide free Wi-Fi. If you discourage phone use in your venue, you can put erasable game boards and markers at each table to let people play hangman, tic-tac-toe or another game.

Be Responsive and Caring

The key to improving customer experience is finding out exactly what customers want. Provide comment cards with feedback loops at important intervals. For example, find out what they think when they enter, while they wait, while they eat and after they leave. Ask about the service, atmosphere, food quality, and everything else. Provide a blank space for them to leave specific suggestions. Use these cards to identify trends and make changes.

Also, take this level of care to online feedback. Respond to reviews. Thank positive reviewers, reach out to negative reviewers and offer solutions to anyone who voices concerns. Today, your online reputation partially depends on how you respond to positive and negative feedback.

Use Card Processing Consultants

With cashless and touchless payments growing in popularity, it is important to offer customers the convenience of card processing. However, you must also consider fees for credit card transactions. Fortunately, there are fee-eliminating solutions for smaller businesses today. There are plenty of other features that allow you to accept and process card payments without losing your hard-earned profits. Card processing consultants can provide you with affordable pricing structures, devices, and plenty of other resources.

Involve Your Customers

To build loyalty, find creative ways to engage your customers. Start by making social media posts that ask for their feedback or require action. For example, ask them to share a post and leave a comment to be entered into a random drawing for a 10% off coupon to use during their next visit.

You can also make customers feel important by involving them in decisions. For example, you can designate one day of the week for trying new recipes for food or drink specials. If you make several items and offer free samples for a two-hour period, you can ask guests to fill out vote cards to vote for their favorites. This helps you make sounder investments in menu choices and gives customers something to look forward to that they already like. Additionally, it keeps them interested in future events or promotions.

Depending on how your cafe is set up, your budget and other factors, you may find more unique ways to create loyal customers. The key is to continually monitor your competitors, identify their strengths and try to find ways to offer unique advantages that set you apart from the competition.

Everyone loves visiting a favorite café for snacks or meals. As much as the food, however, is the camaraderie and social environment that customers enjoy when patronizing a local eatery or coffeehouse. If you have recently launched a café and want to boost business, try the following tips to make your place the local hotspot. 

Update Your Décor and Atmosphere 
Evaluate your customer base to determine the demographics of those who most often frequent your café. Based on their general age range and interests, decorate your interior with a theme, colors, or style that will cater to the customer base. Select appropriate background music, and adjust servers' uniforms to match the décor. You may want to create a niche theme for branding purposes so customers can readily relate to your café. Menu items should be organized appropriately with names that link to the theme. 

Get Connected on Social Media 
Publish a weekly blog with café updates, customer favorites, and even profile regulars who don't mind being showcased at your establishment. Start a Twitter account to build a following, and do the same for Instagram and Facebook, adding photos of special events like a Halloween party or outdoor barbecue to attract viewers. Keep the website updated and post favorable customer reviews. 

Enhance the Signage 
Make sure outdoor signs are visually appealing and easy to read. Have a licensed electrician install a neon sign for night-time flash, and it can also be used by day, if desired, to increase traffic to your cafe. Indoor signs like a posted menu, marketing slogans, and restroom directions should be clearly printed and posted in an accessible area for convenient viewing. Parking signs should be visible at all hours and in all weather for safety considerations. 

Offer Special Discounts 
Using print ads, customer email lists, and social media, provide occasional coupons for discounts. You might want to sponsor fun events, like a craziest hat contest or a Father’s Day special rate. Home team sports championships are often a cause for celebration. As customers begin to turn to your café for fun times and community activities, they are likely to tell others about your great place. 

Making your café more visible and exciting than the competition will give you an edge that can increase the cafe's popularity. Customers love something new and fun, so give your café a makeover if needed to upgrade your image and your strategy. With minimal effort, you can soon expand your customer base.

Being in the café business means that you need to stay current in order to keep attracting customers. How you go about changing your look will depend on how long it has been since you last upgraded. Here are some ideas that you can use to get you going with creating a more modern café experience.

Improve Your Lighting

Lighting is critical when it comes to creating the right look for your café. This could mean that you want to have lights over your tables to provide a more intimate feeling or that you upgrade your existing light fixtures to make your café more inviting. The style that you choose will depend on the result that you want to achieve. You can go with pendant lighting to give your café a more artsy feel or traditional can lighting.

Create Focal Points

Having a focal point is what will help draw customers to your business and be memorable. For example, using plastic sheets to create new product displays can give your customers a better idea about the things that you offer. Some companies, like Perspex, know that you can also use plastic sheets to create a backdrop for your café. This could come in the form of a centerpiece on one of your walls or even behind the counter to go with the image that you want to present.

Get Down to Basics

Updating your café should be about more than just changing the physical appearance. A really good way to modernize your café is to refresh your menu. You may want to change out the selections that you offer or just the format in which you’re presenting them. Which route you take will depend on the clientele that you want to attract and what’s been successful for you in the past. If your business can handle it, you may want to expand your options to draw in more customers.

Replace Furnishings

Furnishings help to complete the look of your café. You may have passed up cafes in the past because they didn’t look inviting. New or well-maintained furnishings set the tone of the rest of your café. If you don’t bother maintaining items that the customers see, this gives the impression that things may be worse in the kitchen. Use your furnishing choices to add a splash of color or pull the whole thing together.

How you go about updating your café will depend on the needs and services provided by your business. Use these basic guidelines to give you some inspiration for how to get it done.

Regardless of where your coffee shop or café is located, you understandably need to remain competitive in a tight marketplace. Your customers may have at least a few other options in the vicinity, and they can always choose to drink coffee or tea at home or at work as well. You need to give them reasons to stop by your coffee shop or café specifically. In addition to providing amazing beverages, pastries, and other menu items, you may consider adding some of these additional items to the offerings.

A Wireless Internet Connection

Many people now can connect their laptop or tablet to a wireless hotspot on their smartphone without hassle, so it may seem as though offering a hotspot through your café or coffee shop is not important. However, some people may not want to use so much of their data by linking to their smartphone’s data. In addition, by simply marketing that you offer a free WiFi hotspot, you may encourage customers to think ahead about bringing their laptop on their next visit to get some work done while they enjoy their drink. Hiring an electrical service to help install wiring and outlets that provide accessible power for laptops and phones is a good idea if you expect customers to spend a lot of time in your shop.

Call-Ahead Ordering

Many restaurants are now offering call-ahead ordering. This is used for carry-out as well as dine-in experiences, and it can save your business customers valuable time. With call-ahead ordering, the customer may place an order over the phone or via your website or your app that has been downloaded on their phone. Then, they can simply walk in to pick up the order without having to wait in line. While some people visit your coffee shop or café with the intention of staying for a while, others may be in a hurry to get to work or to tend to other responsibilities.

Table Reservations

When people think about spending time in a coffee shop or café, they understandably may be concerned about finding a spot where they can sit down and relax once they arrive. This may be particularly true if they are arriving at a peak time and if they are bringing a business client or meeting a friend to catch up. Table reservations are not commonly associated with coffee shops, but it makes sense to offer this type of service. By doing so, you can ensure that your customers have the best experience possible at your restaurant. Consider creating a reservation feature on your smartphone app.

As you look toward the future, spend time reviewing the experience that your competitors are offering. This should serve as a baseline, and you should actively look for how these or other thoughtful ideas may be used to take your customers’ experiences to the next level.

A few nights ago I was with a good friend, hanging out in the garage, as he taught his young teenage daughter how to change the oil on a SUV. They were both under the truck, poking around, as he explained everything about oil's function in engines.

This time they spent together was pretty awesome to witness. I saw a dad and daughter bonding, as she understood that her dad was giving her life-skills toward independence. More importantly, he was spending time with her.

As they emerged, task completed, I handed both of themsteaming hot chocolates. I then intentionally wandered off for a walk down the street, to give them space to chitchat.

Jeff from Mocafe