We live in a small town of about 8,000 people. It has always been a dream of my husband's to own a coffeehouse, so when the opportunity arose we went for it. We have now been open for nearly 4 years and have a second location in the local hospital (it is in our sister city 5 miles away that has 5 coffee shops). We not only serve coffee drinks but smoothies and have cold lunches.
We have indoor seating and a drive-thru window. The window is very popular. We have very friendly staff. We use high school students for after school. That really helps bring in more kids. We also have wireless internet and a meeting room in the back. Business picked up after we started the lunches. We had been pretty dead from about 11am till 2 or 3pm. But now we have business nearly non-stop. The hospital location has been pretty good. It is located outside the gift shop in a busy part of the hospital. Our building was painted gray outside when we first opened, but after a year we painted it a bright orangy color and one of the girls that worked for me painted a large mural down the side of the building where the drive-thru is at. You can see the mural from several blocks away and has drawn a lot of attention. Several people commented that they used to drive right past until we painted, now they have a bright color to draw them in.
We host an Art Show each year that brings in more people. But we also have a portable machine and go to some of the community events to serve coffee and smoothies. Some of those events include: The Arts Festival (held in the park); Orgon Trail Days Food Festival; Kennel Club Annual Dog Show (it's 2 days); Festival of Hope (Cancer survivors event); Craft Fair (2 day event); and a few other small ones. By going to these events we have really gotten our name out in the community. People now just expect us to be there.
We really don't have a specific age group. We get a wide variety of people depending on the time of the day. Probably the biggest group that we have specifically gone after are the kids. We advertise in the high school newspaper and use high school kids as the models with different kinds of drinks. That has been very successful. We have 5 schools in our town and teachers are a big group of customers. Lunches are usually older people. The kids don't have enough time to get here and back.
A month after we opened another coffee shop opened one block from us. That was a real blow. But fortunately people had already gotten to know us and loved our coffee. Some went to try out theirs but came back to us. We just kept our friendly happy atmosphere and after 2 years they closed their doors.
We would love to have a bigger building with lots more parking. We are squeezed between other businesses and don't have very much parking. We would like to have a full kitchen with a lot more storage, but need a bigger building to have that. I'm not sure how that will happen without moving. We would like to buy the one business next door to us and connect their building to ours. That would take care of both problems. The other business is on the corner and that would give us a lot more parking and then our current meeting room would be made into a full kitchen.
