nickshanagher

Sometimes local shops are ahead of the game when it comes to shopper trends. And sometimes they are not. As a general rule, people don’t expect to be marketed to by independent shopkeepers. But there are many exceptions. This column is for the exceptions: Those retailers who are always searching for great products to share with their shoppers. But it is also a challenge for those who don’t push the boundaries of their assortment of products. Mike Brehme is an entrepreneur that I had never heard of until last month. He spent 23 years building up the tea brand Clipper to sales of £50 million before he sold it in 2007. Along the way he pioneered the UK market for green tea, Fairtrade tea, and organic hot drinks including herbal and fruit infusions. For most of the time since he sold Clipper he has been working on a new product, a hot drink that is not tea or coffee and that will sell better than fruit teas. This spring, in London, he unveiled FruitBroo, a range of “insanel...

A friend of mine whipped out this booklet of vouchers that he was handed in Starbucks, with a 50p off your favourite beverage voucher for each day starting 4 January and lasting about a month. Mark quoted me the total value of the coupons and how pleased he was to be handed them when he visited the coffee shop for a drink. Thinking about it, he said that he probably would use less than a fifth of the vouchers. However, Starbucks had achieved a little bit of a coup in turning Mark into an advocate of its attitude to shoppers and its approach to the VAT rise to 20 per cent. Many local shops do something similar. Any examples would be welcome.

I was reading an interview with Howard Schultz, the man who made Starbucks into a global phenomenon, and he described how he developed his ideas while in Milan. He was captivated by the showmanship of Italian baristas and how they created a sense of community in their coffee shops. I seem to recall that the experience of Starbucks was once like that. Someone asked what type of coffee you wanted and appeared to put some effort into making it specially for you. Today, the experience is simply about standing a queue. But if you are a storekeeper, the ideas of showmanship and creating a community are two that you would do well to keep in mind. Once, they made Starbucks great.

True in part to my New Year resolution, I held a business meeting in an independent coffee shop today just next door to a Starbucks. The cafe was presented well and four staff were busy preparing for the lunchtime rush, at 11am. As my guests were late, I had a half hour overview of footfall on the street outside and in the restaurant. Six customers. Barely enough to form the queue in Starbucks or Pret-a-Manger just down the road. Plus one Italian girl who dropped off her CV. Some people stopped to look at the posters in the window and moved on. The owners seemed quite happy. When I left just after 1215, they were doing brisk trade. However, I have the impression that the business is not working hard enough. It could easily have managed 120 customers between 11 and 12, instead of 12. This is lost profit as the fixed overheads and staff costs are already in place. The owners are clearly busy - perhaps too busy to take time to look at the potential that their cafe has. What shou...