He said, for example, that glass-pot coffee has a shelf life of about 20 minutes. "If you are working that system and you [image-nocss] are throwing away the coffee and you are brewing fresh and you are doing what you're supposed to do, wonderful. I'd say most that have glass pots don't."
Also important is the visual on the equipment. "I would say that over 50% of the stores that I go to, the equipment is bare. It has no graphics, it has no branding, it has no point of sale, it has no bundling, it has no brand," he said. Lawshe suggested that retailers work with their coffee providers to get those visuals in place.
The challenge in coffee sales, he said, is customer awareness. "It's a difficult challenge to get them to know the quality of product that you're delivering," said Lawshe. "To build that awareness, you have to make a commitment."
He examined the competition for coffee customers, such as Starbucks and Caribou Coffee, both of which create an experience around the beverage. "The challenge here is, can you create that in a convenience store environment?", he said.
According to Lawshe, "The answer is yes."
He added, "Instead of inserting coffee in an eight-foot section in the middle of an entire foodservice bar, give it the attention it deserves. Separate with materials, separate with lighting, change up everything about that area--and just say this is something different, this is something special."
Other ideas worth examining to build up coffee business, added Lawshe, include drive-thrus, social media-oriented loyalty programs and giving free product to customers to try.
He said that c-store operators who have not had success with drive-thrus often have "cut a hole in the wall" and had clerks "running all over the place." Although he concedes that it is not easy to have a successful drive-thru, having higher-volume items nearby, and also inspiring impulse through product displays at the window can help build up drive-thru business.
Social media is the future, Lawshe said, and it is the way to communicate with "20-somethings"--with technology such as voice-texting and apps becoming more sophisticated. "Technology is a funny thing. You've got to stay on that cutting edge, you've got to try it, you've got to be willing to fail in order to stay current."
As for providing free products, Lawshe pointed to the success of McDonald's free coffee Mondays in getting the word out about its coffee program. "I know free is easy to sell, but sometimes you've got to do that to get the product in the mouth of the customers," he said.
He added, "Coffee is a great market, and I just think that sometimes we look at it too small. It's much bigger than we realize."
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