It is incredible how much branding goes into a single cup of coffee. Think of all the main coffee shops: Starbucks, Costa Coffee, and Cafe Nero. All of these shops conjure up associations, whether that’s brand values, logos, or memories as a customer. Branding a coffee shop is a task you need to take seriously.
These brand images belonging to the high-flying chains are not just random. They’ve been carefully creating this image over a long period through proactive marketing decisions and, likely, many long meetings. Your brand image is a vital part of your marketing strategy.
Knowing where to start with branding can be tricky. It needs to be something that resonates at the heart of your business. And rebranding is something you want to avoid diving into unnecessarily. Instead, start as you mean to go on by establishing your branding pre-launch, and you’ll notice success for it.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to nail your coffee shop branding from the get-go. We’ll cover the importance of coffee shop branding, provide a definition, and provide simple branding steps. You’ll be ready to brand your coffee shop of a lifetime in as little as ten minutes.
What Is Coffee Shop Branding?
It isn’t as simple as saying coffee shop branding is one thing; it’s a mixture of emotions, associations, and values. Your branding communicates who your business is, almost like a character or a human personality. It removes the boring, uninspiring nature of inanimate objects and brings personality to your cup of coffee.
With good branding, target customers will have immediate associations. A strong brand identity is one with a clear mission statement, iconic logo, and clear associations. You will get a positive customer response just from your coffee sleeve logos and instant recognition.
These are the three main qualities of great branding:
- Positive memories and associations through previous interactions.
- A sense of personality and familiarity from a clear mission statement and service quirks.
- A bold logo that’s quickly recognizable.
When branding coffee shops, in particular, you should focus on the following things:
- Where do you source coffee beans, and what does it say about your values?
- How you respond to customer feedback and provide a memorable service.
- How do you display your logo and coffee sleeve designs?
Of course, branding can also take a turn for the worse. Negative branding is when the associations for your business turn sour, linking you to bad experiences or immoral practices. This is why focusing on your service, reputation, and sourcing as a coffee shop is essential.
Remember, branding isn’t always positive, and you can accidentally flick the switch on the negative kind. This is why being proactive in understanding coffee shop branding is vital.
The most important thing to know about branding a coffee shop is that it’s a long-term process. It is all about continually reinforcing the brand image you want for your coffee shop.
Why Invest in Branding for Coffee Shops?
Investing in branding for coffee shops goes back to what we’ve just said about proactivity: brand your business, or someone else might. Branding isn’t just about creating coffee shop ‘characters’ to boost sales; it’s also about protecting your reputation and establishing consistency. It’s a chance to ensure people remember your coffee shop for the right reasons.
Customers love consistency and predictability, especially with coffee shops, which are prone to regulars and high levels of customer loyalty. Here are a few other reasons you should consider investing in coffee shop branding:
It Brings Employees Pride and Purpose
Having a mission and personality brings employees pride or, at the very least, purpose. Having that understanding of your mission is really vital for motivating team members. This could be as simple as partnering with a local charity and encouraging point-of-sale donations. You may even get staff passionate about sustainably sourced coffee beans.
Whatever your brand values and mission are, they help get your staff onboard and more passionate in their roles. And who doesn’t want their coffee shop staff engaged and excited? It’s great to bring a sense of mastery and greater purpose to simple tasks like making a cappuccino. Having a mission or wider charitable impact will bring this.
It Holds You to Greater Standards
Similarly, having a coffee shop brand holds you to greater standards of behavior. It pushes you to consider what exactly you value in life and how you want the world to perceive you. Building a brand image consciously is great for prompting you to ask yourself those valuable questions.
It Builds Stronger Customer Connections
Branding your coffee shop is a surefire way to build stronger customer connections. Put it this way: how can you possibly make friends if people don’t know your personality? Building a coffee shop brand is like introducing yourself to a new group of friends. You have to get your personality across if you want long-lasting connections.
Branding is the key definer between surface-level, one-off connections, and ultimate customer loyalty. By investing in high-quality branding, your customers will understand your business better. And whenever people positively understand something, it becomes more likable.
Getting your coffee shop’s personality across is a brilliant way to attract the right demographic and build iron-strong customer connections.
3 Stages of Branding a Coffee Shop
Coffee shop branding involves three main stages: research, budget, and planning. These steps are necessary before launching your branding strategy, emphasizing the importance of attention to detail. Branding your coffee business is something to take your time with.
You should prepare to launch this strategy, as it forms the foundations of your entire business. Depending on what stage you are at already, this pre-launch stage could last anywhere between two days and two months. It’s one thing that happens in your own time — on average, it takes around two weeks when outsourcing designs.
Are you ready to build the coffee brand of a lifetime? Here’s how to brand a coffee shop in three simple steps:
1. Research
Your first step is to research. The main pillars of branding are your logo and mission statement. You should brainstorm all the values you hold closest. This way, you can research different ways to uphold and support these.
For instance, you could research ways to support ethical coffee bean harvesting. You could be mindful of suppliers and research their policies. Or you could go down the charity route, donating a percentage of coffee profits to a relevant charity.
You should also research your target customer at this stage. You want to know who they are, what they care about, and how best to connect.
2. Budget
Branding shouldn’t be the largest cost of opening a cafe. However, you still need to budget for it. Will you hire a branding expert? Or use specific tools or hire a graphic designer for your logo.
Think about the steps you want to take to brand your coffee shop. You could start small with a coffee shop logo and designer coffee sleeves. Or you could want to put together a website or social media account that resonates with your image. Alternatively, it could be about the design of your coffee shop’s interior and furnishing — much like designing a restaurant.
You’ll need to figure out a budget for all these small steps and changes. You can complete some things yourself to cut costs, while you may need to outsource others.
Either way, this budgeting stage is vital. It’s time to figure out just how much all your ideas from researching will cost. Then, you can calculate your coffee shop start-up budget.
3. Plan
Planning is the final stage in creating a coffee shop brand before the launch of your branding strategy. This is where you think about the budget and all your ideas. Weigh up which ideas are compatible with your budget and write out a coffee shop business plan for branding.
This plan will contain the branding methods you’re taking forward, how you will do so, and how much each costs. You’ll establish a timeline, who you need to hire, and have a clear plan to launch your sparkly new brand. For instance, your first task might be to hire a graphic designer for $250 to create your logo. Then, you might focus on thematically furnishing your coffee shop and adding your logo to your website and menus.
Essentially, the planning stage is where all your hard work gets prepared to see the light of day. We are talking about big dreams and goals broken down into achievable, actionable steps.
How To Maintain Your Branding
Lastly, branding isn’t a single race to the finish line. You must maintain your branding if you want a long-term successful coffee shop. You build branding through consistency, so you need strategies for upholding your brand in every customer encounter.
A customer’s interaction with your business reinforces a reputation and association. These interactions eventually end up as your brand image. There’s no point in deciding on a set brand image if that isn’t the impression or experience your customers have. As a business owner, you must strategize ways of reinforcing the brand image you want your coffee shop to have.
Luckily, this task is straightforward, and you can get creative to have fun maintaining your branding. Check out our top three suggestions:
Staff are at the forefront of your business. In a coffee shop, you have baristas and wait staff, and these are often the first point of customer interaction. This means that if you want a fantastic brand image, you’ve got to start with staff training.
Staff responses that align with a brand are just the cherry on top. This could be staff chatting to customers about the importance of ethically sourced coffee beans. Or it could be staff using initiative to provide paper and pens if you are a family-friendly coffee shop. When staff are onboard, you reinforce your brand effortlessly.
There’s no point investing hundreds or thousands into a brand image and not having your staff onboard. Staff training is vital to achieve consistent coffee shop branding. You should always be mindful that your staff knows your mission statement, values, and ideal brand image. And you can regularly run staff training sessions to keep this fresh in their minds.
Performance reviews and meetings like this are excellent ways to reinforce branding goals amongst staff. You can also reward high flyers to reinforce team branding efforts positively.
2. Consistent Social Media Posts
Just as staff must display branding consistency, so does your social media. Social media marketing is nothing to scoff at or take lightly; it’s how you present your business to the world. Consistency is vital if you want to build a strong brand image.
If you are stuck on what to post, just check out these social media post ideas. As an extra exercise, you can go through and see which resonates with your coffee shop brand. It may also be worth investing in a social media marketer long-term.
3. Guest WiFi
Having high-quality coffee shops with WiFi is vital for so many reasons. Firstly, it attracts regular customers, especially remote workers. You can hijack remote workers’ routines by providing great WiFi, which builds a consistent crowd.
However, guest WiFi also allows you to increase brand awareness in the long term. You can design a captive portal that features your logo or colors. You might also use the captive portal to collect email addresses through your guest’s WiFi. This allows you to regularly contact customers through email marketing, reinforcing your branding through relevant newsletters and promos.
Having guest WiFi hands the reins back to business owners, giving them control over how they connect with their customers. When it comes to reinforcing branding, this is really valuable. Reinforcing branding is about controlling customer interactions, so why not use your WiFi to encourage more controlled interactions? You’ll have a solid coffee shop brand in no time.
Beambox: The Essentiality of WiFi in Branding
WiFi is essential for branding your coffee shop. Once customers enter, they want access to great-quality WiFi. Cafes are hotspots for remote workers, social media scanners, and social butterflies snapping art pictures. Providing WiFi is a reality of running a coffee shop and reinforces your brand.
When you offer guest WiFi, you have a captive portal system. This pop-up web page stops customers from immediately accessing your network. Instead, they have to fill in the details you request via the form, after which they are free to browse.
At Beambox, we know that branding trickles through every aspect of your business. That’s why we have personalized captive portals. You can change the wording, the details you request, and even the design by adding things like logos. We put you at the helm, making those vital choices with easy-to-use software.
Having a captive portal system also increases the trustworthiness of your brand.
Captive portals are fantastic for network security. Start your Beambox free trial today as an essential part of branding a coffee shop.
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