Innovating Business Model for a Coffee Shop

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pasotraspaso/

Ever since I've read The Undercover Economist's chapter on how coffee shops make money, I have been fascinated by the "Job To Be Done" at a coffee shop. I was deliberating this with a group I was facilitating and we arrived at "Replenish Self" as the core job to be done. 

Perhaps there's more money from the related jobs than the core job of making coffee. This is primarily because in order to make it a profitable business, coffee alone is insufficient. You may read a detailed article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/12/20/whats-the-secret-to-a-successful-coffee-shop/ The point #10 is critical in the article. I quote the same below:

Understand what you are really selling – Too many businesses, including coffee shop owners, don’t fully understand the need they are really satisfying for their customers, and so they often concentrate on the wrong parts of their offer. Customers frequent a coffee shop for many more reasons than just hunger and thirst. There is the escape from a stressful office, the chance to maintain or grow a relationship, a place to get away to do some reflective work, a chance to engage with familiar coffee shop staff at a particularly lonely time, or as a place to do business and reach an agreement. Understanding the needs you are really catering to will help you better construct your offer and make decisions that keep your customers returning and so maintaining the coffee shop’s success.

Today, selling coffee alone is not profitable, there is too much competition and the market is served quite well. In order to make people enter the coffee shop, one has to make it lucrative and how much can one make coffee lucrative? 


The core job of making coffee is no longer the only value expected by the customer. The related jobs need to be explored and there are a lot of opportunities that exist in this space. This needs to be exploited and leveraged by the coffee shop for a profitable growth. The solution a customer is looking for in a coffee shop is no longer having coffee.

The most recent addition to this additional job is the sound of a coffee shop: http://coffitivity.com/ Even the sounds of a coffee shop can be sold! So, if you own a cafe and are reading this, how about live streaming the sounds of your coffee on the internet or for a set of specific subscribers? Much livelier than the recorded sounds, right?