Whether they make it at home, go to a café, or get a cup from their local gas station, many Americans drink coffee to start the day. If you’re interested in dipping your toes into the exciting market of fresh ground beans, here are five tips for building your own coffee brand to help get you started.
1. Decide on Your Image
One of the first things you need to figure out when creating any brand is your target audience. For some products, it’s easy to narrow things down, but coffee drinkers make up a lot of different demographics.
Do you want to appeal to a younger crowd of college students or try to make a brand for blue-collar workers? Figuring out your target audience is vital when settling on a name, logo, and other fundamental parts of creating your company. For example, a logo of a coffee cup made from a skull with steam floating out may not appeal to the mother of young children at the grocery store.
2. Get Your Beans
You won’t have much of a coffee company if you don’t have beans to sell. Many coffee companies reach out to local wholesale roasters, so it may be a good idea to look around there. You want to find a retailer to supply your brand with beans, but you also want to work with one whose views align with your own. For example, if you’re going to advertise as a greener option, your wholesale provider shouldn’t supply coffee grown with pesticides.
3. Create Your Store
An essential tip for building your own coffee brand is building a retail presence. This will involve having both an online and physical storefront. Online storefronts are essential and beneficial, but it may also be a good idea to have a physical storefront to sell beans and coffee to your local customers. Creating a café from a modified shipping container is a low-cost, trendy way to accomplish this.
4. Build a Reputation
Once you have a brand, product, and storefront, it’s time to build a positive reputation through quality customer service. Consider selling physical products like mugs or shirts with your logo on them. Also, raising your social media presence is a great way to get customers to invest in your brand.
5. Keep Things Steady
Remember not to let your ambitions overshadow smaller successes. Growing any business is difficult, and you may not succeed immediately with so much competition in the coffee market. Keep things steady and focus on your product and brand to keep things moving.
