Are you planning to set up a new coffee shop? Well in this video Luke has some valuable advice you do not want to miss out on! If you're wanting to maximize efficiency and profits in your new cafe then proper design and layout is super important. With a little thought and planning you can make a massive difference in how both your staff and guests move about in your store to avoid constant crossovers, inefficiencies and road blocks.
We hope you find this video hopeful and would love hear any comments in regards to your own experiences setting up a cafe. If you need any advice please leave us a comment and we'd love to see how we can help.
Video Transcript
Are you looking at setting up an espresso bar or a cafe? Maybe you're renovating or looking to update your cafe layout? Either way, I've got a few great tips that I want to share with you when you're designing your espresso bar layout that are going to help you with your efficiencies, your workflow and ultimately increase your profitability.
G’day, Luke from Artisti Coffee Roasters here! I want to share with you my top tips on workflow, especially when you're designing your espresso bar or café. There are so many times when we're in people's cafes and I feel like I'm just working way too hard. There’s some really simple things that you can do to fix that before you even built. So, I've got a couple of plans I want to show you about two options of a build that we've just done.
You can see from a designer versus someone who actually works in the café, if they could communicate better, you can fix so much and get your staff working really well, your customer flow working well and just pumping those meals and those coffees out the door so quick that you don't know what to do with all that money that's rolling in. So, what I've got here to look at today are two plans in the same fit out and I'm going to do something really simple that most people don't think about.
I'm going to use three coloured highlighters. The good old yellow, blue, and pink and they're going to represent customer flow, food flow and coffee flow. It's just going to show you, if you highlight that on a plan you'll start to see where they're going to cross over and have a few issue. It just seems so simple but if you do this you're going to save yourself a lot of heartache, stress and time just not overworking. I'm just going to show you these plans on those three areas. If you take each menu item and actually run through the same process of how you're actually going to serve it how you're going to heat it, how you're going to package it and give it back to your customer, it's going to really help those areas as well. So, you can apply this to a lot of different items when you're designing menus and just in what's happening in everyday processes in your café.
So when we look at these two plans there are two distinct differences. The first one is going to show you that has the coffee machine is running along the main bench here and the other actually has the coffee machine running across the front. Both of these have two great purposes. Everyone thinks putting that coffee machine right at the front is going to attract people and they're right it will. A blingy piece of coffee equipment is certainly going to catch the eye of the next person who wants to grab a great cup of coffee from you. But is it always the best solution? I'll come back to those in a second. The first thing that I can see on both of these plans that are an issue is where the sinks are. If you have a look here you can see there's a hand basin and a wash up right next to the coffee setup or it's actually behind the coffee setup. That needs to move. So if you're entering in from the back here and you're dropping off your cups or plates that you've just got from your customers tables you want to be able to dump it straight in the sink. You can see that we have our display, our ordering, the coffee machine, a pickup area and somewhere on the back for a sandwich press, microwave or just prepping other food goods. You've got your entry at the top. The customers are going to walk up an order and they're going to pick up here. There's a cool little sitting area here which allows a really great spot for your customers to sit while they're waiting for their order.
The three areas I'm going to focus on are going to be your customer flow, your food flow and your coffee flow and then where they're going to be picked up from. So, I'll write that on the side here, customer, food and coffee.
Customer is going to be YELLOW
Food is going to be BLUE
Coffee is going to be PINK
So let's start with the customer. They can enter in the door and we want them to come straight up and order. Then you're going to have to work out where they're going to pick it up. In this case they will walk around the front and pick up from here. They may want to wait. Then exit out the front door. Just a few arrows there to show you the direction. Once the customers place that order we have to produce that food for them. So, they're going to take something
out of a display. Go back to a sandwich press. They'd have to then deliver that to the pickup area. The other side is the coffee. We're going to order. It's actually going to be starting from the grinder side. So, the coffee is going to go from the ordering, across to where the grinder is
located, go to the coffee machine where the milks being frothed, cupped lidded and then go to the pickup area. So, when you start to look at this plan you can see it's getting really tight right here in the middle. Just simply having that grinder on the wrong side with coffee is meaning that the order taker, if they had a Keep Cup or BYO cup, essentially that's such a great thing for the environment at the moment, has to walk behind the barista and place it in the queue on this side. The barista is going to work on that coffee then they're going to turn around and have to bring it back to the pickup area. The order taker is going to take some food, grab it from the display cabinet, make their way to the sandwich press and then put it in the pickup area. The customer here actually has a pretty good flow because they're going to walk in, order, make their way around and pick up and then get their way out nice and easy. You're not bumping into the actual other customers that are in the shop.
So this is the other plan and you can see there is just one small change, where the coffee machine is. We still need to fix where the sink is. So we're going to move those two up to here. If you're going to move a sink away from a coffee area you want to put in a jug washer because that's going to allow the barista to wash his jugs and wash your cloth as well just to keep that service ticking along nice and fast.
We're going to follow the customer first. So, again they're going to come in, they're going to order, possibly going to have a seat and wait. Then they can pick up and get out the door. We can do the food. It's going come out once it's ordered from a display cabinet, make its way to the sandwich press and go straight to the pickup. And then the coffee. It's going to come out, go to the grinder, go across the coffee set up, ready for pickup. So with this option you can see that there is far better workflow than the other one. There are far less points where the coffee or the food is going to be clashing with each other.
The customer flow is fantastic because they can order, they can go have a seat and they can see what's happening with their coffee and their food and they can just pop up and grab it from that counter when it's ready and get straight out the door. Your barista, the coffee flow is going to run perfect. They're not working from one side then having to pass that coffee back along behind them ready for pickup. So, it's such a natural progress there to go from grinder, coffee machine, pouring the milk and just placing it ready for that customer to collect. The food in this is really easy as well because we're not going to be crossing over where the barista would have to turn to place down his coffee in the pickup area. The food can come straight out of
the display straight to the sandwich press and go straight to the pickup area and there is no crossing paths with the barista. So, you can see here that this workflow is really going to allow high productivity, getting your products out really quickly and a great customer
experience as well. If your staff are working in a great environment where they're not running around like headless chickens, that's going to give off a really great vibe to your customer.
They're going to see happy staff. They're going to feel like there's so much love in that product as well but where that's going to make the most effect is your staff are taking orders quickly and getting to the customer in a really great timeframe. So you can produce more
per hour and essentially make more profits. So the money that you're going to spend on a bad layout or design of your cafe or espresso bar can have so much effect of your profitability once you actually open.
You've got to take the time to look at your plans and run through a few of these scenarios. Obviously your customer, your food and your coffee, but why don't you look at some menu items as well. You'll start to see some real blockages in that area of your business. How are you going to wait your tables? How are you going to serve tables how are you actually going to ensure that your customers can come up and pay easily in a busy environment?
So, I hope that's helped you understand how workflow can really have an effect in your business. If you've got any questions about workflow make sure you shoot us a comment. If you've got some plans, hey send them to us. Who knows we might go to help you out. If you know someone that is setting up a cafe make sure you send in this video. They're going to get something out of it and don't forget to Like, Subscribe and hit the little bell button so you can be totally up to date with all the content we're putting out there.
Thanks guys have an awesome day!
Very helpful video, much appreciated.