I recently went to an official Stumptown Coffee Roaster location in downtown Portland, OR. Now, I've been to a couple of shops in my day that served Stumptown coffee but I had never previously been into the belly of the beast. I loved this place. The atmosphere and people screamed "Portland" to me. It was like walking into an episode of Portlandia (if you've never seen Portlandia, look it up on Hulu. It's fantastic). It was a huge space with an understated bar and loud music blaring from ... you guessed it, an honest-to-God vinyl record player. The menu was entirely coffee with a few baked items labeled with prices, in a case. Every barista was sporting gauged ears, hipster looks, and a really chill attitude. There was a line to get a drink for the duration of my visit. This place was busy and it was a coffee lover's paradise; it got me thinking about the business of running a coffee shop.
I haven't been around the coffee industry long but I have already seen several quality shops like this go out of business for lack of customers. It seems like so much of the success in the food and hospitality business is based in dumb luck; nothing, however, could be further from the truth. I think the potential success of any coffee shop can be summed up in three words: location, vision, and location. I've heard the marketplace talk about location a lot. As a matter of fact many -- no -- most articles on starting your own business will come back to location, location, location! but location is one of, in my opinion, two major factors in determining a coffee shop's likelihood of success.
If there is one thing that I can really appreciate about this Stumptown above everything else, it's their distinct and compelling vision. It's not displayed on any of the walls or written on the menu but from the moment you enter their shop you know exactly what they are about. Art and coffee. Maybe an even simpler version would be creativity. Everything in this shop and about this shop just screams creativity. It screams so loud that you cannot shut it out, even with headphones. This distinct vision is what makes this Stumptown Coffee Roasters distinct.
The location of a shop can either amplify or muffle a vision and a vision can do the same for a location. Stumptown's location in downtown Portland puts it at the center of an eclectic metropolis and, in doing so, the town amplifies their vision while the shop reinforces the nature of downtown Portland. The best way to describe how a vision and community can help each other is to think of a chorus of voices, the coffee shop being one voice. If the vision doesn't match what the rest of the voices are saying, it will either have to get much louder, to be heard above the chorus, or be drowned out. If, however, the shop starts joining voices with the community then both will be heard and amplified. The vision will be joined by hundreds or thousands of other voices until it seems to scream out.
In short, to stack the cards in favor of success for a coffee shop one should consider their vision and location. If they do not compliment each other, then one should be altered to fit. In doing this, an owner of a coffee shop can magnify his or her voice in the community by joining with the voices already speaking to create a vision that screams.
I haven't been around the coffee industry long but I have already seen several quality shops like this go out of business for lack of customers. It seems like so much of the success in the food and hospitality business is based in dumb luck; nothing, however, could be further from the truth. I think the potential success of any coffee shop can be summed up in three words: location, vision, and location. I've heard the marketplace talk about location a lot. As a matter of fact many -- no -- most articles on starting your own business will come back to location, location, location! but location is one of, in my opinion, two major factors in determining a coffee shop's likelihood of success.
If there is one thing that I can really appreciate about this Stumptown above everything else, it's their distinct and compelling vision. It's not displayed on any of the walls or written on the menu but from the moment you enter their shop you know exactly what they are about. Art and coffee. Maybe an even simpler version would be creativity. Everything in this shop and about this shop just screams creativity. It screams so loud that you cannot shut it out, even with headphones. This distinct vision is what makes this Stumptown Coffee Roasters distinct.
The location of a shop can either amplify or muffle a vision and a vision can do the same for a location. Stumptown's location in downtown Portland puts it at the center of an eclectic metropolis and, in doing so, the town amplifies their vision while the shop reinforces the nature of downtown Portland. The best way to describe how a vision and community can help each other is to think of a chorus of voices, the coffee shop being one voice. If the vision doesn't match what the rest of the voices are saying, it will either have to get much louder, to be heard above the chorus, or be drowned out. If, however, the shop starts joining voices with the community then both will be heard and amplified. The vision will be joined by hundreds or thousands of other voices until it seems to scream out.
In short, to stack the cards in favor of success for a coffee shop one should consider their vision and location. If they do not compliment each other, then one should be altered to fit. In doing this, an owner of a coffee shop can magnify his or her voice in the community by joining with the voices already speaking to create a vision that screams.
No comments:
Post a Comment