"Welcome to Five Senses Coffee"

One of our mantras at Five Senses is ‘it’s all about the result in the cup’.

After the last couple of weeks I’ve realised the cup itself may be just as important. Let me explain…

For the past few weeks, my team (Mark, Jeremy and Ben) and I have been hitting a bunch of our cafés, checking out how they were operating and seeing if there was any room for improvement. At the first café we visited, Mark and Jeremy were trying to assist the owner to work out why a neighbouring café was pulling trade away from them when their coffee and techniques were better.

On closer analysis, we watched as they pulled beautiful shots … then totally camouflaged their good work with way too much milk. If you are making great coffee — let it shine.

The second café took the same problem even further. Their cups were really better suited to eating cereal out of than drinking coffee! Not only did this totally swamp the coffee, it also killed any potential for second cup sales. A better sized cup would have allowed the coffee to shine and also encouraged the customer to have another cup in the same sitting, or return later in the day.

In many ways, the cup says a lot about your venue. Most cafés trying to do great coffee are looking for stylish cups of medium size (somewhere around 200mLs) that allow the coffee to shine and give them a point of difference from their competition. What does your cup say about your café?