How a Great Coffee Shop manager can make your coffee shop more profits

This is precisely the question that SCI and the SCI certified the team who created the coffee shop manager course tried to answer.  In this article, we will explore how a great coffee shop manager can help your coffee shop make more profit.

The problem

In the coffee industry, it is ubiquitous for coffee shop managers to have little or no actual management training. Typically what happens is if a barista is talented the will get promoted and eventually they will become the store manager. 

However, the skills to be a good barista and be a good coffee shop manager are not necessarily the same.   Often coffee shop managers work for an owner that is involved in the business to some degree. 

However, what authority belongs to the owner and what belongs to the coffee shop manager is not very clear. The job description usually is not clear. 

Moreover, even if it was clear there is normally no training to help the coffee shop manager successfully complete the job in the job description.  This confusion leads to the coffee shop not making a healthy profit.

The owner and the coffee shop manager being stress and a bad relationship.

The customers not getting a good experience.

However big chains like Starbucks are successful because they have good management training and clear systems for them to follow. 

Common Problems in cafe management

1. Inconstancy: or product, service and wait time to make the product.

2. No strategy:  often a coffee shop manager isn’t given a clear strategy of who their target customer is, what their coffee shops value proposition is. Giving the customer what you want not what they want.  

3. Training staff:  Usually staff training is not consistent because standards have never been set. Staff not motivated:  Usually, the team is not motivated because their job isn’t clear and they can feel the “weight” of the coffee shop failing.  Moreover, nobody likes to fail! 

4. Correcting and coaching staff: When there is not standard manager are slow to coach staff.  They are afraid team will take it personally however if there is a clear standard then manager are willing to coach and staff receive it well.

5. Cleanliness: most stores without standards don’t have a consistent cleanliness.

6. Service: Service is normally not at a level that will create long-term passionate fans. 

7. Coffee Quality: Without standards and management coffee usually is inconsistent.  We must understand customers want consistency. 

The background of how the course was developed

We interview the lead content creator for this course Samuel Gurel.

“You might know, I managed a chain of coffee shops.  In the beginning, I made many mistakes but over the years I developed systems and processes like big coffee chains use to be successful. 

Then in April 2017 SCA ask me to share the Chinese coffee market at the SCA expo.  So we researched the Chinese coffee market.  We found that only 30% of the coffee market was making a healthy profit. 

The other 70% were losing profits, which leads to a lot of stress, which long-term will affect one's health, family and enjoyment of life. So I decided to start working on tools that would help make more cafe’s successful.  We realized that a great coffee shop manager was critical to a thriving cafe, but the training program for coffee shop managers is lacking. 

So I worked with SCI to research what a coffee shop manager needed to do and how.  We had participants from big companies like Starbucks and third wave companies like Onyx. 

The results are in SCI’s new Coffee Shop Manage Certification Course.  It is a five-day course with a six-month implementation plan.”

About the research:

We asked coffee shop owners and managers the following questions:

• What are the skills need to be a good coffee shop manager?

• What are the jobs that a coffee shop manager need to do?

• What things in a coffee shop should be the authority and responsibility of the owner?

• What things in a coffee shop should be the authority and responsibility of the coffee shop manager?

• What things in a coffee shop should be the shared authority and responsibility of both the owner and the coffee shop manager?

The results of the of the research: 

When we asked owner and Coffee shop managers about the research we found that their were was a wide range in what how the authority and responsibility were divided between the owner and the manger. 

Through this we realized the only option is for the owner and the coffee shop manager to have candid conversation and put these on paper.  Otherwise it is quite likely the assumption between the owner and the manager are different. 

What Qualities do better than average coffee shop managers possess?

• Friendly

• Soft with staff

• Good personal skills

• Punctual

• Have hard conversations

• View from the customer, staff, business perspective (perspective taking) 

• Share the same philosophy as the owner                    

• Problem-solving skills

• Works on principles, not just rules                                 

Our analysis of the research was that it was clear that

The the coffee shop manager needs a unique balance of being able to follow systems but use people skills to implement these systems in a friendly empathic way.  This was summed up by a Quote from one of our research participants.

“Enforce systems in a kind firm way.”

What you can do to solve the problem. 

The class is only five days. However, there is a six-month implementation plan where the following things are complete.

We give you the tools, not just knowledge.

We form a cohort of people that stay together as a group and mutually encourage each other.

If you follow the plan and your cafe is not more profitable after six months, there is a money back guarantee, and your course fees will be refunded. 

If you know somebody that needs this class let them know the next class will be in Shanghai.”

Mbula Musau - The Talented Taster

Women are the backbone of any economy, especially if it is an agriculture-driven. When they understand their role and potential and feel included and fairly treated, the results are tangible. 

Mbula

I am a coffee enthusiast, educator and social entrepreneur based out of Nairobi-Kenya but serving the wider African region for the last 11 years. 

I am a certified Q grader instructor with the CQI for Arabica and AI for Robusta, AST for Sensory Skills module of the SCA Coffee Skills Program, Coffee Corps volunteer with the CQI for 11 years, trained WCE judge and working with farmers through coffee quality improvement programs to help sustain specialty coffee production in Africa for the world.

This is through national and international cupping competitions and marketing programs with partners from the world over. I am passionate about gender equity in the sector and actively involved in the formation and growth of 7 International Women in Coffee Alliance chapters in Africa, where I serve as chapter Facilitator. 

As a result, I represent the entire value chain, youth, and women in coffee, governments, the private sector, community-based organizations and individual coffee professionals eager to hone their skills in the industry. I am also a member of the SCA inclusivity and diversity committee 2018.

I set up Utake Coffee Limited, an innovative company specializing in coffee quality and Marketing Consultancy and Development Management. The company works to promote a better understanding of these practices through training, mentoring and consultancy. 

Utake Coffee also has a state of the art coffee quality teaching Laboratory, in the outskirts of Nairobi. This laboratory is the first certified Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) Premier Training Campus (“PTC”) in Africa with an in-house CQI Q instructor and Authorised SCA Trainer, AST.

I also hold a Coffee Dealership Licence which allows me to the source, roast, import, and export coffee to facilitate and participate in its trade.

By the third sip, I was hooked!

While vending some items at a neighborhood (cheap toolboxes to be precise), I decided to approach a building under construction, and while trying to sell them my toolkits they informed me that they were constructing the first specialty coffee chain in Kenya.
 

I asked them if I could drop them my (1-page) CV and the General Manager said they were looking for enterprising ambitious personnel and no experience was required as it was the first of its kind.

I was delighted, went home and typed my CV and delivered it the next day. A few weeks later they called me and took me through all the interviews, I landed a job with the negotiated option to work on weekends and holidays once my college semester began.

I went through all the company’s departments but was most interested in the coffee division; I was fascinated by all the equipment I had never seen, the espresso machines, the roaster, the grinder… Then when I drank the first cup of specialty coffee, I was taken aback by how nice and strong it was, because all I knew was tea. By the third sip, I was hooked.

I worked through University and got hired to head the wholesale coffee division that we had set up when I completed my first degree. 

Why Coffee

Coffee and I bumped into each other, and I was amazed at all the opportunities it had given me to figure it all out, based purely on my potential. 
 

So when I completed my studies, I decided I would apply my skills to the same sector and have never regretted this decision.

What's the "a-ha" moment you encountered when you feel like giving up from the industry? 

While studying at Nairobi University, I was tempted to take the offers for an internship with all the big international banks and audit firms that would come and recruit talent from the college.

My friends were all applying and getting selected and making more money than I was when we were studying, but I still had the best coffee in my campus room than anyone in the entire university and I could brew it in ways many were fascinated about.

I kept them alert and energized, and had something cool to talk about, and got to hang out in the mushrooming cool coffee houses.

The success of the chain was another a-ha moment. Kenya was in need of a specialty coffee scene. Our coffee was renowned worldwide, but we never had the opportunity to drink it locally or even enjoy the ambiance of “any-wave” coffee shops. 
 

I knew we were pioneers and was determined to learn as much as I could and ride the wave before I could contemplate letting it go.

After working in the chain of specialty coffee shops, Eastern African Fine Coffees Association idea came around, and they were going across the continent collecting signatures to enable its registration, and I happened to sign it on behalf of my company.

Once EAFCA was established, it grew phenomenally as well and received funding for international training which I signed up for. 

Eventually, I got hired into the association and grew from dealing with just Kenyan coffee to 10 different African producing countries, the differences in coffees, the learnings and experiences were other A-Ha moments, at which point I realized this is what I was meant to do.

The industry that lacks conviviality

The plight of coffee farmers in terms of revenues received for their coffees. It should not be left to price discovery. Their costs are not.

I also think it is one industry that lacks conviviality, compared to Wine industry for example where growers and partakers are at almost the same levels of enjoyment and benefit from the beverage. I wish this were different.

What would you be if everyone were to stop drinking coffee? And why?

I would probably be a Marketing Executive for a Brand, or in the Development field, as I studied a Masters in Development Management and living in Africa, I believe it is applicable in more ways than coffee.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

Running, Dancing, Reading and Traveling to new welcoming sites.

Vote for Mbula Musau



SCA Members will receive an email ballot on November 1st from vote@ukevote.uk. If you don’t receive your email ballot by that date, please email elections@sca.coffee.