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!

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