Maximizing on-site coffee sales opportunities

Sponsored by Smucker Away from Home

Operators in the college and university, health care and lodging segments are boosting coffee business in an exciting way. They are launching diversified menus of traditional hot and specialty coffees — including cold and flavored choices — that satisfy customer needs that vary by time of day. Coupling those menus with familiar national brand coffee and labor-saving, on-demand brewing systems, they are driving higher coffee revenue all day.

In today's marketplace, it is crucial for operators to keep pace with coffee trends or risk losing customers. After all, coffee remains a hot opportunity. Sixty-four percent of U.S. consumers drink coffee daily — up from 57 percent in 2016, according to the 2018 National Coffee Drinking Trends report by the National Coffee Association. Coffee drinkers consume about three cups a day on average.¹

Diversifying the menu
The first step to driving coffee revenue is to treat coffee as a menu category of varied beverages served in multiple dayparts, not just as a hot morning drink. Research shows that consumers crave different types of coffee depending on the time of day.

Hot coffee and hot specialty coffee consumption occurs mainly in the morning. It tapers off dramatically after breakfast, but remains continuous throughout the day, suggesting sales opportunities at lunch, snack and dinner times.²

The highest iced coffee and iced specialty coffee consumption occurs at lunch and afternoon snack times.³ Yet both hot and cold consumption patterns overlap to a certain degree. The fact that some patrons enjoy iced coffee in the morning and some like hot java in the evening makes it wise to offer both options all day.

In effect, a diversified menu provides whatever consumers want, whenever they want it. It may be traditional hot coffee as a morning eye-opener, a cold-brew coffee for an afternoon pick-me-up or a hazelnut latte as a sweet treat after dinner.

It is wise to build the coffee menu around the core offerings that are growing in popularity:⁴

Interestingly, specialty coffee is on pace to surpass traditional black coffee by 2020-2021, according to NPD Onsite.

The call for customization

Many consumers enjoy tweaking traditional black, iced and specialty coffees to their personal taste. Operators should keep an assortment of syrups, sweeteners and creamers on hand to accommodate the customization urge. Research shows that only a quarter of consumers drink coffee with nothing added and almost half (47 percent) drink coffee whitened and sweetened.⁵

The power of branding

Another key for a menu that works all day is specifying national brand coffee. Consumers expect to see recognizable brands with a reputation for quality, not generic, no-name offerings, in a college and university, health care or lodging coffee outlet.

Select Brew makes a difference

At one time, a skilled barista was a requirement for a high-performing coffee program. But not anymore. The Select Brew Coffee System is an on-demand coffee solution that makes high-quality hot and iced coffee convenient and accessible with just the press of a button.

It does away with high skill requirements and training costs. Various Select Brew models are suitable for any size operation, from a college dormitory coffee bar to a hospital coffee shop to a high-volume cafeteria or convention hotel. The fact that on-demand coffee is brewed as needed gives it a freshness advantage over batch-brewed coffee made in advance and held for periods of time. Often, an expired batch must be discarded, costing the operator product, labor and energy. That’s never an issue with on-demand coffee.

Other key advantages of Select Brew include:

Variety

Sanitation

Simplicity

No waste

Consistency

There is a strong call for on-trend coffee all day in college and university, health care and lodging operations. Diversifying the menu, highlighting the power of brands and using efficient on-demand coffee systems are key steps that operators can take to realize this lucrative opportunity.

For more information about ways to drive coffee revenue all day, contact Smucker Away From Home at www.smuckerawayfromhome.com or (877) 693-6543.

<sup>Sources:
1. National Coffee Association Blog, By the Numbers: U. S. Coffee Research, Sept. 2018
2. Datassential, BUZZ Coffee and Tea Tracker
3. Datassential, BUZZ Coffee and Tea Tracker
4. Datassential, BUZZ 2017 Annual State of the Category Report, April 2017
5. National Coffee Association, National Coffee Drinking Trends</sup>