On Thursday my wife walks back in after a coffee date with her friend.
She had that walk on that tells me she’s got something to say.
“You’ll love this.”
I look up, and wait for it. She knows I love stories of small biz and in particular cafés (if you’ve read my blogs, this isn’t news to you).
She drags it out. I would too. She’s enjoying the fact that I’m slightly frustrated I don’t have this story myself, and that she’s got the stage…
“We’re having coffee together on the back table in the corner by the entrance, and there’s a screen door that you go through as you come in off the street.”
I wait.
“Well, the screw on that top part of the door was obviously loose… Every time people come in, the door would slam. Like right in our face.”
“When you walk in, you’d notice that it slams, but still, when people left, they would ignore that, and just let it bang closed! The whole time we’re having coffee… Slam. Slam..!”
I’m still looking at her.
“What did you do?”
“I thought, nope – not good enough. At the end, I walked right up to the barista and told them I’m sorry, but we could hardly hear each other over that slamming door, and they need to fix the little screw on it to make it quiet. It’s an easy fix.”
The barista looked back at her.
“Sorry, it just does that… It’s been doing it for a while. Nothing we can do”
They paid, and left.
Rather than a story about how she connected with her friend over a nice coffee, I now got to hear the story of the overpriced chai and slamming door that was driving people away. And not only that, but a story of staff who obviously hadn’t been trained in a way that encouraged them to find solutions to unique problems.
A café is only partially about the coffee.
Your business is only partially about the explicit service that’s on your website.
A big part of the transformation you help to make is about the people, the experience, the connection and the emotion that the product, service or space creates.
Is part of the story your customer wants to create here about feeling relaxed and connected with their friend? Or perhaps it’s about the 30minutes that day they get to carve out alone without the three kids, like the woman two tables down…
If so, the slamming door is right up there as a priority alongside the grind consistency of the bean that day.
