Catering and Rental

One way to increase profit at your coffee shop is to add event rental and catering options. This can be as simple as renting a small area of your coffee shop for meetings and catering to-go coffee boxes and pastries. Additionally, you can rent out your entire space after hours for parties and cater meals depending on your kitchen’s capabilities. These options provide additional hours for staff, increase sales, and introduce your coffee shop to party guests.

We currently provide several different rental options at our Sunnyvale coffee shop location. First, we have a nook behind a shelving unit with a few tables and comfortable chairs that we offer as a free reservation option. This spreads the word about our shop, fills a small section of our space, and leads to additional drink purchases. Most often customers reserve that space for meetings, Bible studies, and small parties. We do not offer this area for reservations on Friday and Saturday mornings as that is our busiest time, and we need all our seating available.

Next, we offer rental of our entire space after hours and on Sundays (we are closed on Sundays). There are three different options when they rent our entire space:

1. Option 1: Customers can bring their own catering and simply host their event in our space with one of our employees available to help and oversee building logistics.
2. Option 2: Customers can pay for an open coffee bar to serve guests at their party. By purchasing a discounted gift card prior to the event, their guests’ drink costs are covered throughout the event. This prepaid gift card guarantees enough sales to cover barista wages and product costs, whether or not they spend all of it during the event. This option also provides extra hours for our team.
3. Option 3: Customers receive rental space, as well as catering. We have an excellent chef that makes made-to-order breakfast tacos and sandwiches every morning. He also provides catering for events when requested. Customers typically choose one of these three full-rental options for large events. The most common are wedding rehearsal dinners, birthday parties, graduation parties, baby showers, family reunions, and office parties.

In order to advertise for catering and event rentals, we hang signs on our doors with QR codes that link to our catering and event rental forms. We also promote it on social media and add an advertisement on our customer facing POS screens. Lastly, we reach out to local schools and advertise our space as a great venue for graduation parties. Most of our exposure comes from word of mouth, so we do our best to chat with our customers about it verbally as well.

Adding event rental and catering options to your coffee shop is great for increasing sales. However, it also expands your reach and provides additional hours for your team. You can customize your rental and catering experience to fit your coffee shop’s capability as well. If you have a *mobile coffee cart, advertising your coffee services for events like weddings or corporate parties is also a great option for increasing sales. Visit our website to learn more about our event rental and catering services!

*Our sister company, Shiloh Coffee Supply, offers some unique propane-powered espresso machines that allow mobile coffee carts to operate off-grid. Visit our site to learn more!

Barista Battle and Seasonal Drink Ideas

It is important for coffee shops to add seasonal drinks to their menus. They provide variety, anticipation, and increase sales. We also enjoy doing something unique and fun once a year in addition to our seasonal drinks. We call it the Barista Battle! Our baristas get excited each year when it comes around, and our customers love it. It strengthens the team, creates a fun environment for customers, and boosts sales.

When we create our seasonal drink menus, we add two espresso-based drinks, and one non-coffee drink. Offering a non-coffee drink allows you to cater to a broader audience. Within the two espresso-based drinks, we ensure one of them is a crowd-pleaser and not too outside the box with flavors. Then, we add a second that is more creative. This also helps to cater to a larger audience. When crafting your seasonal drink recipes, it is also best to keep the amount of syrup and sauce about the same for each recipe. This ensures you have consistent sweetness levels across your menu.

Our Favorite Seasonal Drinks

Spring: Honey Caramel Latte, Chocolate Covered Strawberry Mocha, Sweet Lavender Tea Lemonade

Summer: Toffee Brownie Mocha, Roatan Island Latte, Mango Green Tea Lemonade

Fall: Pumpkin Spice Latte, Blackberry Cobbler Latte, Spiced Caramel Apple Cider

Winter: Peppermint Mocha, Gingerbread Latte, Spice Caramel Apple Cider

Barista Battle Steps

We also look forward to our Barista Battle each January! Here is how it works:

1. We divide our baristas into teams (we recommend 3-4 teams), and each team creates a drink recipe for the manager to test and tweak to fit our recipe style.
2. Once the drinks are ready, we add them to our menus and begin fun promos on our social media and in our shop.
3. At the end of each day during the competition, the manager tallies up the number of drinks sold using Toast. Then they send the totals to the team who updates our fun, customer-facing score board.
4. We give periodic scoring updates on social media to maintain the excitement.
5. At the end of January, whichever drink we sold the most of wins and stays permanently on our menu under the “Barista Battle Winners” section.
6. The winning team receives a fun prize!

The past few winning drinks at our Sunnyvale location were a White Chocolate Lavender Mocha, French Toast Latte, and Toasted Butterscotch Latte.

While we leave room for our baristas to get creative with their drink ideas, it is important to have guidelines for the Barista Battle drinks to ensure you are still providing high quality products that appeals to your audience and adds something new to your menu.

Barista Battle Guidelines

First, we require that it be a brand-new recipe rather than changing the name of an existing drink. It also needs to be different from current recipes. Next, they cannot repeat any past Barista Battle drinks. It also must be latte-based so that we can offer each drink at the same price. For example, if one team chose a matcha and another team chose a lemonade, we would need to sell them at very different price points which would create an unfair advantage in the competition. Lattes also allow versatility as lattes come hot, iced, and frozen.

While creativity is great, if it is too outside-the-box, it will likely not sell as well and thus lower our profits and their chances of winning. An example of this was our Spicy Mocha from several years ago. During that Barista Battle, very few people were brave enough to try it, so the Spicy Mocha sadly lost. It is best to aim for a crowd pleaser!

Next, each drink ideally uses our current syrups and possibly one new flavor at most. This prevents us from needing to purchase more than three or four new syrups (inevitably some new syrups will not work, but we like to try a few). Lastly, we allow each team three chances to experiment with their drink. This prevents each team from using too much product in experimentation. We allow our team a free drink at each shift, and they are welcome to use that drink to experiment as well.

Once they have a drink idea, they send their recipe to the manager. The manager ensures that the recipe will sell well, and they also tweak the recipe to fit our recipe guidelines. This prevents one drink from being overly sweet in comparison to another. We typically begin the drink testing phase one month prior to the Barista Battle in order to finalize drinks and prepare new menus and POS buttons.

Both seasonal drinks and the Barista Battle build anticipation amongst both baristas and customers. If you would like to peruse our seasonal drinks or past Barista Battle drinks, here is a link to our HOPE Coffee DTS and HOPE Coffee Sunnyvale Instagram accounts.

The PuQ Press

Increased speed equals increased opportunity with The PuQ Press.

In order to create consistent, high quality espresso shots, it is important to understand each component. Small variables can affect the espresso shot significantly. These variables include:

• Grinder settings (which affects the size of the espresso grounds)
• Amount of espresso in the portafilter
• Cleanliness of the portafilter and espresso head
• Pressure and evenness of the tamp
• Length of pre-infusion
• Temperature of the water

One of the most difficult components to perfect and keep consistent among employees is the tamping process. Thankfully, we found an easy solution to this!

Normally, with a manual tamper, you must place it over the espresso grounds in the portafilter, press down with forty pounds of pressure, and push down evenly so that the surface of the espresso grounds is level. These steps ensure that the espresso grounds are tightly and evenly packed so that the espresso machine extracts the espresso evenly (which affects the taste). Unfortunately, it is difficult to press down with exactly forty pounds of pressure, especially with varying strength levels and heights of employees. Tamping evenly is also difficult to do, especially during a rush. When we opened our second coffee shop with a larger staff and much larger demand, we knew we wanted to create a system that would prevent as much variation in the quality of the espresso as possible.

This is when we discovered an automatic tamping device called The PuQ Press. After grinding espresso into the portafilter, tapping the portafilter once on the counter and smoothing the bed of espresso, you simply set the portafiler on the PuQ Press and wait two seconds for perfectly tamped espresso. You can adjust the pressure of this device to exactly forty pounds, thus eliminating any variants in pressure. In addition, the automatic tamper tamps the espresso evenly every time. With this device, your espresso shots increase in quality and your process becomes faster and easier. It also eliminates the occasional necessity to remake an espresso shot due to incorrect tamping.

The PuQ Press is also easy to clean and maintain and handles high volume coffee shops wonderfully. It is important to use a small brush to dust off any espresso grounds from the metal tamper on the device a few times throughout the day to keep it clean. In addition, there is a button that lowers the tamper for easy cleaning at the end of the day. Our baristas maintain our PuQ Presses well and enjoy this step-saving process. We usually have several hundred drink orders each day, and our PuQ Presses handle the large volume with ease.

We highly recommend the PuQ Press for your coffee shop both to increase your drink quality and to increase your sales. It was well worth the investment for us, and we are thankful we found this option. For more information on the PuQ Press and other products for your coffee shop, visit HOPE Coffee’s sister company, Shiloh Coffee Supply.

How to Set Your Coffee Shop Apart

We live in a time where there are coffee shops on almost every corner, so how do you set your coffee shop apart? While the number of coffee shops to choose from is wonderful from a consumer perspective, it poses a challenge for new coffee shop owners. How do you capture the public’s attention? How do you make your coffee shop more desirable to visit than the one down the street? Is it simply having better quality coffee?

Finding Your Niche

It is certainly important to have high quality coffee and excellent customer service in order to make your coffee shop a desirable place to visit. However, in order to stand out from other coffee shops, it is important to add an additional service or unique product that few other coffee shops have.

To put it another way, you have to find your “niche.” Some examples of unique additions to your coffee shop include:

• Providing breakfast or lunch options
• Creating a safe outdoor green space for kids to play in
• Offering venue rental options
• Playing live music
• Adding a co-working space
• Providing free books to read
• Offering barista training classes for customers
• Hosting weekly art classes
• Adding massage chairs
• Hosting outdoor movie nights.

There are many more unique options, and each of these additions sets your coffee shop apart from others.

Advertising

Once you find your “niche,” it is time to begin advertising. Social media is always a great place to start. Then it is helpful to reach out to people already connected to your chosen unique service. If you have a space for children to play in, reach out to schools, families, and co-ops letting parents know of this new opportunity. Do you want to have live music? Reach out to local bands and their fans will likely come to support their musician and learn about your coffee shop. Plan to offer coffee training? Talk to your existing customers who may have friends interested in learning about coffee. Each unique service gives your customers one more reason to visit your coffee shop.

Of course, it is important to select unique services and products that match your values and atmosphere. These should be a compliment to your coffee shop, not a distraction.

At our second coffee shop location in Sunnyvale, Texas, we currently have an outdoor green space with lawn games for families, rental and catering options, made-to-order breakfast tacos and sandwiches, and occasional outdoor live music. These additional options provide unique and enjoyable options for our customers. We want to create a cozy, family-oriented atmosphere at this coffee shop, and this is why we chose the options we did. Families play lawn games after school, and customers rent our coffee shop for baby showers and graduation parties. Students grab breakfast before school, and the town enjoys live music together a few times a year. These features not only increase our profit and customer base, but it also strengthens the community and provides a healthy work environment for staff.

If you are opening a coffee shop, or if you already have one, we highly recommend you find some unique services or products to set your coffee shop apart from others. To learn more about our services at our Sunnyvale location, visit hopecoffeesunnyvale.com or visit our Instagram and Facebook pages.

Tea and Other Coffee Alternatives

All coffee shops serve coffee, but not all coffee shops expand their menu beyond coffee to tea and other coffee alternatives. It may seem unnecessary to add non-coffee drinks to your menu, but by doing this, your customer base and sales will increase significantly. Not only are you opening your doors to non-coffee drinkers, but you are also extending a warm welcome to families with children who desire kid-friendly options. Once these customers experience delicious non-coffee drinks, word will spread, and sales will increase.

The following are the non-coffee drinks we currently offer on a regular basis at our HOPE Coffee Sunnyvale location: *Compassion Tea, tea lemonades, London fogs, cinnamon orange spice tea lattes, specialty hot chocolates, milkshakes, fruit smoothies, and blue and green matcha.

We serve both iced and hot tea, and we have several different tea options to accommodate a variety of preferences. It is important to provide both caffeinated teas and decaf teas. We serve black teas, green teas, white teas, and herbal teas. Our customers are very grateful for the wide selection!

We also serve a few different tea lemonades. Our most popular is our Peach Strawberry Tea Lemonade. Additionally, our two most popular tea lattes (The London Fog and Cinnamon Orange Spice Tea Latte) are served hot, iced, and frozen. Next, we serve hot chocolate and add additional flavors on a seasonal basis.

We also serve multiple flavors of milkshakes, which are a hit for our younger audience in particular. Recently we added fruit smoothies to our menu due to the number of requests from our customers. They are a great seller during the summer! Lastly, we offer both green matcha (made with crushed green tea leaves) and blue matcha (made with crushed butterfly pea flower petals). These are delicious with vanilla, lavender, honey, or white chocolate and cinnamon. Matcha is also available hot, iced, and frozen!

Non-coffee drinks are particularly important when you craft your seasonal menus. For example, when your non-coffee drinking customers notice that you have Spiced Caramel Apple Cider instead of just a Pumpkin Spice Latte and Blackberry Cobbler Latte during the Fall months, they will be thrilled! Now non-coffee drinkers and children can visit for a special fall treat along with their coffee drinking friends. We choose two espresso-based drinks and one non-coffee drink for each seasonal menu to consistently cater to both crowds.

In addition to these handcrafted non-coffee drinks, we also provide bottled drinks in our grab n’ go cold case. In order to maintain quality and aesthetics, we typically fill our cold case with glass bottled drinks rather than canned sodas. We want to match our high-quality menus with high quality grab n’ go options. Beyond glass sodas and sparkling waters, we also sell kids juice boxes and sports drinks. These are great sellers for kids and for busy, on-the-go customers.

When crafting your menu, we highly recommend adding drinks with several different demographics in mind. There are two primary benefits from this. Firstly, it will make everyone feel welcome and served well. Customers notice when you provide their favorite drinks, and this strengthens your relationship with your customers. Secondly, the more customers you cater to, the more your sales increase. We highly recommend adding Compassion Tea and non-coffee drinks to your coffee shop menus.

*Not only does our coffee have an eternal impact, but so does Compassion Tea! The profit of this high-quality tea helps to support medical clinics in Africa. Learn more at CompasioNow. Want to try some of our most popular teas? Order our sample pack here.

Hiring and Scheduling of Employees

The employees you hire and schedule become the face of your coffee shop. Despite the important logistical and design details you add to your space, customers will primarily associate your shop with your team members and their customer service. Your team will also influence the Google reviews and social media attention your coffee shop receives. This makes the hiring and scheduling process vital for sales and for proper representation of your brand.

Hiring

While searching for trustworthy, hardworking, kind employees can seem daunting, we believe it is better to wait a little longer for a solid hire than to settle for someone you do not feel comfortable representing your coffee shop. We use the following steps to search for excellent new hires. First, we ask existing baristas if they know anyone they would highly recommend for the job. Of course, we do not guarantee that we will hire their recommendation, but we thank them for their suggestion and follow up quickly. Next, we consider our customer base and reach out to eligible candidates for an interview.

After this, we post jobs on joinhomebase.com (we also use Homebase for shift scheduling). Homebase’s job posting function allows you to post your job on additional job sites and to link these job listings to social media posts. We also convert our online application into a QR code and add it to our “Now Hiring” posters that we hang around our coffee shop. This allows customers to apply instantly or to send the link to interested friends. As people apply online through these links, it creates a database of potential baristas for our manager to consider when it is time to hire.

Once you schedule interviews with potential candidates, it is important to ask both logistical and meaningful questions during the interview. This helps to better understand the candidate’s personality, work ethic, and values. When we perform interviews, some things we look for are kindness when they speak about others and their past work experiences, maturity and confidence in conversation, humility, punctuality and professionalism, a desire to go above and beyond, and an appreciation for our company values.

We do not require past barista experience, though it can be helpful. However, oftentimes previous baristas have poor technique that needs to be retrained, so we typically prefer employees with no experience. This way we can train them properly without worrying about bad habits affecting our drink quality. No employee is perfect, but overall we look for employees who desire to grow their skills and serve others well. We hope these interview questions provide a helpful guide for you as you search for quality baristas.

Scheduling

Next, your shift scheduling method for your baristas makes a huge difference in your staff turnaround and coffee shop environment. We choose to treat our team members like we want to be treated, especially when it comes to creating a shift schedule. Rather than creating an unpredictable shift schedule that changes each week, we decided, as much as possible, to create a consistent base schedule for a 2-4 month period of time. While the base schedule remains constant, team members may still trade shifts with managerial approval for various legitimate reasons.

We want our baristas to have dependable work schedules so they can live their personal lives more freely. The consistent weekly schedule also simplifies scheduling for management. After trying this method, we found that our team members’ trust in management increased. Additionally, employment turnover decreased, and barista relationships with customers grew. These intentional relationships built between baristas and customers increased sales and grew our customer base. We value this mutually beneficial environment between management and staff as it effectively communicates our care for employees and customers.

In order to cultivate a welcoming, caring atmosphere in your coffee shop, it is important to begin with your baristas. When your baristas feel cared for and respected, your customers will feel cared for and respected. Taking the time to find quality candidates and create consistent weekly schedules can be overwhelming. However, the many benefits certainly make it worthwhile. We highly recommend you consider our interview methods and scheduling methods as you grow your coffee shop!

Iced and Frozen Drinks

When you think about owning and running a coffee shop, the initial focus is often on piping hot americanos, cortados, latte art, and the fanciest loose-leaf tea. I think it is also worth considering adding iced and frozen drinks to your menu.

Here’s why: these items are not only delicious, but they will likely make up 20%-30% of your sales. It can seem overwhelming to add several new recipes at first. This is why we created an easy training system that focuses on repeating concepts rather than memorizing 100+ individual recipes.

Iced Drinks

Iced drinks are quick and easy to create, though many coffee shops make the mistake of performing the steps in the wrong order. For example, if an iced latte is not made in the proper order, it will be watered down, and the ice will melt too quickly. For this article, I will specifically explain our iced latte process (there are many other drinks that can be iced as well).

To begin, add your desired syrup into a shot glass. Next, pull the espresso shot into the shot glass with the syrup. While the espresso is filling the shot glass, fill your iced cup halfway with ice. Next, pour the desired milk into the cup, leaving about an inch of room at the top.

It is important to pour the milk first rather than the espresso shot. This is because the hot espresso shot will immediately start to melt the ice (which waters down the drink) and melt the cup (which releases toxins into the latte). After the shot is finished, whisk the syrup and espresso together thoroughly. Then pour into the cup of ice and milk. The reason we mix the syrup and espresso together rather than pumping syrup into the bottom of the cup is to ensure the flavors are mixed and distributed evenly.

Lastly, put on the lid and swirl until the drink is one solid color. The ombre effect of the espresso on top of the milk definitely looks nice. However, if a customer were to stick their straw in the cup and immediately take a drink, they would primarily taste plain milk. We value flavor most, and thus swirl everything together. You can repeat this concept with tea lattes, matcha, and chocolate milk!

Frozen Drinks

Frozen drinks often seem intimidating due to their finicky consistency. We decided to develop a reliable process that eliminates much of the guesswork. Our staff does a great job following this! Again, I will explain our basic process using a frozen latte as an example.

It is important to note that the number of espresso shots in your drink affects the amount of milk needed. In total, you should have the equivalent of a glass full of ice and liquid (espresso + milk) in your blender by the end of the process. For our 12oz and 16oz lattes, we add 2 shots (2oz) of espresso along with half a glass of milk. This is the equivalent of a glass full of liquid. However, our 20oz lattes have 3 shots (3oz) of espresso, so we add 1/3 glass of milk into the blender to compensate for more espresso. In both cases, there will be a glass full of ice and liquid.

When making a frozen latte, first pull your espresso shots so that they can run while you prepare your next step. Next, fill your cup completely full with ice. It is best that the ice sticks out above the top of the cup. Then, fill the cup half full with your milk of choice. Next, pour your milk and ice combo into the blender, and then pour your espresso shots in.

At this point you can add any syrup or sauce into the blender, rather than melting it in with the espresso like we did with the iced latte. The blender will mix it thoroughly. The most important step is to add your emulsifier. The emulsifier is key in achieving a smooth, thick consistency. We recommend Ghirardelli as the added sweetness boosts flavors. Lastly, blend together using a high-powered commercial blender (we recommend the Blendtec Stealth), pour, and serve with whip on top if desired!

Is your frozen latte is too thin? Simply add a few ice cubes and blend again to thicken it. If it is too thick, you can add a tablespoon or two of milk to thin it out. However, it is best not to add too much at the end as it dilutes the drink.

We recommend having a few hot, iced, and frozen staples on your menus that your customers can rely on. In addition, we love changing our seasonal drinks a few times a year to maintain excitement and to add freshness to our menu! For seasonal iced and frozen drink ideas, visit HOPE Coffee Sunnyvale’s Menu.

How to Make Cold Brew for Your Coffee Shop

Are you wondering how to make cold brew for your coffee shop? It isn’t as complicated as you may think.

Cold brew is a simple yet profitable option to add to your coffee shop’s menu. It is easy to make, has a long shelf life, and is highly versatile. The majority of a latte’s preparation happens once the drink is ordered, but the beauty of cold brew is that most of the work is done in advance. The convenient process of cold brew cuts down wait time without sacrificing quality.

Cold brew initially takes a few minutes of prep time, followed by 12-24 hours of steep time. While 24 hours seems like a long time to wait, its two-week shelf life makes it worth the wait. The long shelf life allows plenty of time for the product to sell, eliminating waste and increasing profit margin. When selecting a roast for your cold brew, is best to select a medium or light roast. The cold brew process boosts the flavors in these roasts well and even decreases some of the acidity. We highly recommend our Honduran Medium Roast Coffee or our Mexican Light Roast Coffee for your cold brew.

There are two different approaches in the cold brew making process. You can choose to make a room temperature cold brew concentrate or a chilled ready-to-drink cold brew. If you are unable to chill your cold brew during open hours, a concentrate is the best option. Once you pour the cold brew concentrate over ice, the ice will begin to melt. However, since the cold brew is concentrated, it will not water down the cold brew. If you use a dispenser that chills your cold brew, then a ready-to-drink cold brew is best because it will not melt the ice as quickly. If you would like to make your cold brew in bulk, we highly recommend this 5-gallon cold brew system from Toddy.

Below are the recipes mentioned above. We provided two different size options depending on the volume you desire.

Cold Brew Concentrate

• 2 lbs. of ground coffee + 1.25 gallons of cold filtered water
• 5 lbs. of ground coffee + 3 gallons of cold filtered water

 Ready-To-Drink Cold Brew

• 2 lbs. of ground coffee + 2.5 gallons of cold filtered water.
• 4 lbs. of ground coffee + 5 gallons of cold filtered water.

Once the water and coffee grounds are combined, put on the lid and let steep for 12-24 hours in room temperature. Once the cold brew is complete, you may add it into another covered container to chill or let sit. We recommend that you chill both the cold brew concentrate and ready-to-drink cold brew at night to help retain its freshness for customers. Once the cold brew is ready to serve, you simply pour it over ice (flavors and cream may be added as well).

For seasonal cold brew recipe ideas, visit our HOPE Coffee Sunnyvale menu to browse through our cold brew options and more! For a simple at-home recipe, check out our cold brew coffee page.

*It is important to note that cold brew is not the same as iced coffee. Iced coffee is technically hot brewed coffee that you chill and then pour over ice. Our current coffee culture often (understandably) misuses the term “iced coffee” by using it to refer to any cold drink with coffee in it; cold brew, iced americanos, iced lattes, etc. Thus, “iced coffee” has become more of a genre of “cold coffee techniques.” It is important to explain the differences between each cold coffee technique to your baristas. This will enable them to avoid miscommunication with customers.