Opening up a café in your town or city might sound idyllic. You can focus on real customer service and become a hub in your local community. You can make something really exciting that reflects your personal ideals and, ideally, those of your target market.
Yet as exciting as owning and running a café might sound, it’s important to know that there will be competition. To begin with, there will be other similar establishments in your area (if there aren’t, this is something worth investigating the reason behind before you start), and next, many people now work from home, and foot traffic might not be as busy as you are expecting.
Despite these potential issues (and others), you should not give up on your dream of opening a café if that’s what you truly want to do. It can be a lot of fun and highly lucrative. You’ll need to work out how to stand out, and that means understanding how to brand your café to create a buzz and to keep that interest going. Read on to find out more.
Have A Mission Statement
If you want your café to have a strong brand and to be interesting to those who might want to visit, you’ll need to have a strong mission statement that you’re not shy about letting other people know about. This mission statement isn’t just for other people either; it’s what will guide you in making decisions and pushing your café business forward in the future.
In order to craft a mission statement that will actually help you with your branding, you’ll need to ask yourself some important questions. These are:
- What is the purpose of the café?
- Why are you opening it?
- Who is it going to serve?
- What is it going to serve?
- What are the ultimate goals?
- What is the USP?
Answering these questions might be a challenge, especially if you haven’t yet done your research, but knowing the answers will be a crucial part of your branding. For example, if you know your target market is older women, you can choose a style that works for them. If it is younger parents, you can decide on the best music for coffee shop that they’ll like. Each different market will have its own needs and preferences, and if you can ensure your brand reflects that, you should do well.
Work On Brand Positioning
Brand positioning isn’t about where you are physically located; it’s about how you can stick in your customers’ minds, and therefore it’s about how you can show yourself to be different from everyone else, even those who are doing something similar to you.
There are many ways you can position your brand so that it stands out and is unique, and it’s a good idea to look into each potential idea to see what you might be able to do for the best. You won’t be able to include everything, and it may not make sense to either, but if you can include what does make sense, that will help you to be different and exciting – it will help you be remembered.
Some of the ways you can position your brand include the theme of your café, the type of food you serve, the décor, the staff, the special offers you have, competitions, and so on. Ideally, you should explore the strengths and weaknesses of your closest competition and compare them honestly to your own. In that way, you can make sure you stand out by providing different things (or better things) than your competition.
Customize The Look Of Your Café
Of course, the first thing that most people will think of when it comes to branding is the logo and signage of the café. Although this is not the only part of branding you need to come up with, it is a big part, and it’s important to work on getting it right. One thing you’ll need to bear in mind when you are determining the look of your café is that you’ll need to make sure it is cohesive. There is nothing that can turn a customer off using your services more than a confusing brand. The logo, colors, lettering style, décor, and so on must all come together to be a whole. Anything that looks out of place or anything that doesn’t match (such as your website branding not matching your café’s branding) will turn people away.
It’s also important to ensure that the branding you choose matches the style of the café you’re opening. A cute traditional teashop would need branding that looks vintage, for example. A more modern café would require modern styling. You’ll need people walking by to understand exactly what you do and how you do it from the outside of your café, so they know what to expect inside. Again, you won’t want to confuse people.
Personalize The Menu
When you are branding your café, you mustn’t forget about the menu. That doesn’t mean the physical menu you hand to customers (although this must be branded in keeping with everything else, of course), but instead, we mean the food people can choose from the menu. If you can, this should be part of your branding, and you must work on personalizing the menu to fit.
You can make special dishes that work with your theme; for example, if you have an Italian coffee shop, you might want to include cakes and treats that are specifically Italian. However, even if you don’t have a theme as such, you can still brand your menu by coming up with names for each dish. Rather than just offering a slice of chocolate cake or a panini, why not give them a name that links to your café’s name or the theme of the décor? Even if the food is similar in nature to your competitor’s, people will remember it more if it has a fun and unique name. You might even be able to charge a little more because of it, although you must always be mindful of your prices compared to other cafes in the area.