FLUID – Specialty Coffee & Sharing: why we’re opening a coffee shop chain in partnership with one of our clients
6 settembre 2022After achieving excellent results from the project developed with Le Piantagioni del Caffè, the Livorno-based specialty coffee roaster ( SCA – What is Specialty Coffee?), our next move was to create a chain of branded venues where our end customer could physically step onto the Le Piantagioni del Caffè experience (from now on “LPDC”).
LPDC was a company that was already seeing healthy growth, thanks to its outstanding ability to roast quality in quantity, while never compromising on product quality. This led to solid, steady development.
The involvement of IDEA Food & Beverage, and the resulting new market strategy and new image, accelerated this growth (especially abroad), making the scope of LPDC’s innovation and quality more swiftly and simply understandable to a wider market.
The new arrangement of the product lines and the new Human-to-Human marketing strategy (Kotler – Human to human marketing), combined with our dedication to building a community through direct, straightforward, clear and fast communication, have created a further trajectory that led to a 35% increase in turnover in the channel in 2021 and a 25% increase in ho.re.ca. customers in the same year.
In some markets, such as Greece, LPDC has rapidly doubled its turnover.
On this journey, LPDC has seen how we approach projects as a partner and not as a supplier: to achieve the result, we have gone above and beyond the contractual relationship and we have been proactive in facing the challenges of the pandemic (re-branding, for example, was launched in January 2021, at the height of the closures during the second wave).
So, when we proposed opening branded coffee shops, we were asked to do so in partnership rather than as external consultants.
We always work alongside entrepreneurs, always with the result in mind and never as “Yes Men/Women”.
Why did we accept?
We are naturally inclined to act as partners and not merely as suppliers. So, this opportunity – which we were honoured to accept – seemed perfect to show how much we believe in our method and our approach.
It can be easy to provide strategies and advice as long as the risk is carried by the client. We couldn’t wait to be able to tangibly demonstrate how confident we are about the effectiveness of our model.
So, for IDEA, FLUID (www.fluidspecialty.com) became an opportunity to directly test and demonstrate a series of innovative approaches that we have brought to our customers and collect a large amount of data while doing so.
Yes, because FLUID – especially the first coffee shop – is a formidable laboratory that, every day, is enabling us to study and understand how hundreds of customers relate to innovative market and operational actions.
Thanks to the marketing database, to an innovative digital ordering system and the daily analysis of the results, we are seeing how the shop and the customer’s relationship with the venue evolves with each new feature or change.
Together with LPDC, we have decided to bring tonnes of innovation to FLUID – and it all deserves separate coverage – but, for example, all our staff have two days off and no split shifts (an incredible innovation for the ho.re.ca. sector).
So, we’re not offloading market competition onto our staff, but rather we are using marketing and strategy to make our strategic features so strong that we can raise the price thanks to the premium experience we offer our customers.
Staff satisfaction is a crucial element when it comes to happy customers!
Click here to check out the reviews we get (Google reviews).
We’ve created a coffee shop where our staff work under the right conditions and at the right pace, and that is why we do not suffer high staff turnover and, more importantly, succeed in immersing customers in our world through a high-quality, comfortable experience combined with a friendly, cheery service.
Another example is the removal of barriers: we have chosen La Marzocco ModBar machines (which cost almost twice as much as conventional ones) to create a direct relationship between the barista and the customer at the bar. We’ve created a large display cabinet that is always open, and we’ve innovated by letting customers brew filter coffee by themselves and thus have an original experience.
In the first few months, this has led to us serving as much as 20% filter coffee, an unthinkable result in any other coffee shop!
We’ve also overhauled our cuisine: our sweet and savoury menu is always available during opening hours (from 7.30 am to 9:00 pm). We’ve been able to build a method that allows us to serve 30 dishes, in 3 minutes each, with a single person at a time managing that department and keeping quality high thanks to outstanding ingredients and a menu that has been designed by a renowned experimental chef.
What results have we achieved?
FLUID has been open for four months, two of them at the height of summer, therefore it is in the next few months that we will see the true potential of this first store unfold, in anticipation of our second opening in Milan in 2023.
Currently we have excellent reviews, happy, satisfied customers who return often, a close-knit team and great feedback from the trade and non-trade press. These are all elements that have generated a lot of interest from Italian and foreign investors.
The next few months will be explosive!
A few articles published about FLUID:
– Modbar: “FLUID is now open, “a coffeeshop for the curious” in Florence Italy”
Want to find out more? Get in touch!
CEO di IDEA Food and Beverage, marketing manager e business developer. In base ai dati raccolti dalle nostre analisi di mercato, creo le strategie ed estrapolo i posizionamenti strategici dei nostri clienti. A seguire, a partire dal business plan delle aziende, elaboro il budget e il marketing plan.
