I’ve just spent a few weeks in America’s Pacific Northwest. Specifically, I’d like to reflect on the bustling city of Seattle – birthplace of Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft and other amazing brand names. It’s also the home to the iconic coffee brand, Starbucks, who brought luxury coffee and the high-end café experience to countries throughout the world.
Starbucks has blanketed the Pacific Northwest with retail outlets. It is rare to walk more than two or three blocks without seeing another Starbucks. While the region has a plethora of other chain coffee chains, Starbucks remains visible and top of mind, without question.
But what does expensive coffee have to do with small businesses and tourism/hospitality? A great deal.
Meet Monorail Espresso
If you’re in Seattle, opening a coffee house seems like a totally stupid idea. How on earth could you survive? But that didn’t stop the owners of Monorail coffee, a small coffee chain on Pike and 6th avenue in downtown Seattle. Keep in mind:
- There’s no iconic signage pointing you towards their establishment. A neon sign says caffeine. Persuasive, perhaps, but not outlandish or terribly visible. (it’s not on a skyscraper, folks)
- There’s no indoor seating, let alone free Wifi. It’s a drive-through window on a sidewalk pavement.
- There’s no case full of different sandwiches, cakes, and pastries, only a few select options. And by few, I mean 2 or 3 things.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? A tiny business about to be demolished by goliath for their lack of choice and ambience or experience, right?
How Monorail, the Underdog, Wins
Monorail coffee has queues as long as the block, and is doing bustling trade. What’s the secret? They don’t need all the tourist trade or the traffic. Monorail coffee isn’t something for everybody. It’s really amazing coffee for somebody who appreciates excellent coffee without the bells and whistles. It’s a small business with little overhead, so the services they offer and the revenue they bring in are plenty (I assume – I didn’t ask).
But what makes them a winner?
- Their baristas pour some of the best coffee in Seattle. The people who appreciate coffee talk, and those that respect them listen. How do you think I found out?
- Their pastries are handmade the night before. My chocolate chip cookie tasted of creamy butter, salt, fresh chocolate…as if someone’s grandmother made it fresh that morning. People talk.
- Monorail dominates online media like Foursquare, Yelp, and other review sites – WITHOUT lifting a finger. Looking for the best coffee in downtown Seattle? Yelp says Monorail, not Starbucks. So does him, and him, and him, and her, and her, and him, and her. People like to do business with people they know, and before I even went I knew a great deal about the people at Monorail. If you didn’t know anyone in Seattle but went online to find good coffee downtown, you wouldn’t find Starbucks, you’d find Monorail. Proof that having great products and services works.
- Monorail knows what their product and service is and who their customer is: coffee lovers. It isn’t a café experience. It isn’t a food and dining establishment. They make the best coffee in downtown Seattle, no fluff and no hassle. There’s nothing else in the way of their vision.
- Their service is next to none. From the friendly smiles to the top-notch latte art, every staff member at Monorail knows what their ideal customer, the coffee lover, loves. They overdeliver. As a coffee fiend (come on, people, I’m an entrepreneur what did you expect?), I was blown away.
Ask Yourself
If a tiny coffeehouse can survive in the shadow of the almighty Starbucks, than surely you can do your special thing wherever you are.
- Do you know what your special offer is?
- Do you know who your special offer is for?
- Are you focused resolutely on improving and mastering your game, instead of worrying about what everyone else thinks or what the big guys are doing?
- Are you focused on a mind-blowing experience for your ideal customer?
Big doesn’t mean a winner. Offering a quality product in line what consumers want is what is a big win.
Learn More
Need help understanding what it is that makes you special? And how to find your ideal customers and explain that to them? No problem: we can help. Why not take our free assessment (be sure to tell us what’s bothering or worrying you), and we’ll make you the talk of the town, wherever you are.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Could not agree more. You have hit on the crux of the issue:
Product clarity
Key selling proposition
Competitive differentiation
Operational excellence
Customer focus
That’s a sure recipe for a success.
The great thing about the web is that media and technology are being radically democratized, so smart entrepreneurs can suddenly expand the reach of their communications and effectively engage with their customers.
By the way, growing up in Seattle, Starbucks was a fixture at the Seattle Public Market, but most people I met thought Market Spice, the Pike Place Market tea shop that proceeded Starbucks by 60 years was much more unique and marketable.
The difference was that Starbucks made coffee a social phenomenon by holistically creating its own vocabulary to highly personalize the engagement between the store and its patrons, while simultaneously establishing an environment that helped increase the engagement among its community of customers.
Coffee transformed from drinking a beverage to a social experience. Most interestingly, this had been taking place in coffee houses worldwide for decades – Starbucks turned it into a product.
Now entrepreneurs are finding ways to create better engagement with their customers than Starbucks (starting with serving better coffee) in a more personal and less corporate environment.) And they overdeliver.
Lots of lessons for travel organizations to learn from that example.
Looks to me very much like the small expert travel agent with a great amount of specific know-how and a great customer list full of people that promote her by word of mouth to their circle of friends as the go to person when it comes to booking that special complex vacation. That agent, who deserves the title of Consultant, and can also charge for her services will then use all the web based tool of the trade to increase her own efficiency to find, not necessarily the best and cheapest deal, but the ideal destination and supplier for the discerning client.
Does sound similar, does it?
Thanks guys – glad you enjoyed my little story