By Julia Nikolaus, Contributor
Coffee is an ever-expanding industry, with more and more farms, cafes, and roasteries being opened every year. As the industry grows, more consumers are brought to the marketplace as well, making visibility to potential guests paramount to any business’ success.
With such a large pool of competitors and peers in the industry, it can be difficult to attract attention and stand out among the crowd. Difficult doesn’t mean impossible, though. Let’s explore a few ways to be seen in the coffee marketplace!
Highlight Ethical Coffee Farming
Much like many organic and culinary industries, coffee is an industry that is fraught with exploitative practices and unsustainable operations. As such, a large push has been made in the industry to promote ethical coffee, creating a marketplace that necessitates visibly fair and uplifting commerce.
Coffee companies should highlight personal and well-developed relationships with coffee farms around the world, creating a clear view of the entire production cycle for the consumer and giving clarity from the farm to the roastery and to the cafe it may be served in. All coffee has to come from somewhere, and obfuscating those origins can create distrust or wariness in a consumer.
Advertise Your Coffee Locally
Coffee is best when fresh, and advertising and selling locally can entice your consumers with the promise of a fresh, local cup. Whether coffee is being sold wholesale or direct-to-consumer, the freshness of coffee is paramount, and focusing on markets that cannot consistently receive fresh coffee will prove to be a detriment to business.
Selling coffee out of warehouses, or solely through online marketplaces and supermarkets can mean that coffee may not be sold to a consumer until over a month past the roast date, well beyond the ideal freshness of a coffee bean. Advertising locally and focusing on a consumer base that can consistently get fresh coffee from the roastery will ensure that the quality of the product maintains a high level, and enables the business to reach larger markets in the future.
Promote Unique Origins & Processing Methods
An experienced coffee consumer can predict almost everything about a coffee based on its origin, varietal, and processing method. Different growing conditions create different flavor profiles, and the choice of processing style can be a large selling point for green and roasted coffee alike.
Promoting unique origins is one way to create interest in the product, as well as developing an opportunity to further highlight where the coffee comes from, and how it’s grown. Clarity in coffee origin generates trust and interest in a consumer, encouraging them to spend more time in a business’ market and can even generate return visits.
Highlighting processing methods is a way to further provide clarity. There are many unique processing methods being developed today, such as Honey and Anaerobic processing, that experienced consumers are always looking out for. Origin and processing methods are the most diverse selling points of a coffee, and a business always benefits from marketing them.
Sharing all this info also shows that you’re serious about your coffee and want to share that knowledge and passion with your guests.
Follow Trends & Maintain Flexibility
Coffee has surpassed being just a consumable good — it has developed its own drinking culture, and with social media being so crucial to a business’ presence, coffee trends are an excellent way to stay relevant and stand out.
Using social media trends to predict what kinds of coffee will be popular, or which brewing methods are currently in the cycle, will ensure that a business maintains relevancy, and in turn promotes commerce and growth for a coffee business. Seasonal beverages like Pumpkin Spice and Peppermint Mochas are easy to prepare advertisements for, while short-term trends like Dalgona Coffee and Cafe Freddos are quick-fire ways to get small pushes in relevancy and interactions for a company.
Relying solely on trends won’t get a business far, however. Trends and social media are a great way to supplement a company’s visibility and growth, but can be too unreliable to use as the only form of generating business interactions. Flexibility is paramount when operating around social media, as the memory of the internet is incredibly short, and what may be popular one day may not be relevant at all the next week.
As such, be sure to create a varied portfolio of focus markets to advertise in, and see which possible trends may align with a business’ previously planned goals and operations.
Growing a Reputation Requires Consistency
Following all of these guidelines is a great way to start, but to truly succeed, a business has to maintain consistency. A dedication to ethics, local communities, and clarity in business should be maintained at all levels of a company, and regularity in business practices creates a trustworthy reputation for a business that can only result in growth and prosperity on all fronts.
