While our customers likely don’t know our company mission word-for-word (“To create and sustain a warm and inviting environment while providing the highest quality products and services”), our values come through loud and clear when talking Cabin Coffee and coffee shop franchising with Founder and CEO Brad Barber and Vice President Robert Barber.
From our philosophy on franchising to what makes our coffee just taste better, learn what makes Cabin Coffee different from our competitors in today’s growing coffee shop franchising market.
Q: What makes Cabin Coffee a unique coffee shop franchising opportunity?
Brad: In addition to our unique brand, it’s our on-site roasting—it provides several things. First, it provides freshness because coffee gets stale really quick, after 11 to 14 days. Second, our franchisees and our company have better profit margins on it because we’re buying it green and roasting it. Third, it helps us engage with our customers better because we train our team to roast coffee and understand all the different flavor characteristics of that coffee. They’re a source of information for customers, not just a transaction.
Robert: The unique thing about roasting on site, is it provides a franchisee with an opportunity to have business outside of the working hours within the restaurant. They can sell bags of fresh roasted ground coffee beans in other retail outlets in their community; we have a few franchisees who make them available in their local grocery store.
With our Coffee for your Business subscription program, a bank, auto dealer and other local businesses can purchase bulk from the store and provide Cabin Coffee to their customers and employees. And so, our onsite roasting capabilities provide another revenue stream outside of just who’s coming into their brick and mortar store. Retail beans are also a great opportunity for franchisees to participate in local fundraisers and donation opportunities to build brand awareness and community engagement.
Q: What is your communication strategy with your Cabin Coffee franchisees?
Robert: We’ve always felt that it’s imperative that franchisees can reach us anytime, and we’re small enough to make that a reality. They all have the ability to reach out and express their concerns, questions or if there’s an immediate issue. We continuously work to keep the communication level high. We’re not perfect by any means, but we definitely try to be intrinsic in our communication and inclusive with getting feedback. Each individual franchisee generally has a direct line to us, and I think that’s rare.
Q: Are there qualities that you look for in a franchisee that you know are needed to be a successful Cabin Coffee franchise owner?
Brad: Unlike the larger coffee shop franchising chains, we’re quite involved in the process. We’ve really grown our franchising from our franchisees because it’s the folks that come into their stores that, you know, connect with us. Here’s what I look for right away: Can they just carry on a good conversation? Do they have an optimistic attitude, are they generally interested in people and do they really like to serve? It’s all about others: your employees, your customers, your vendors. And you have to be that person that can keep their composure and vision. That’s what we look for because we can teach him how to make the coffee. We can teach them how to do the books and everything, but we can’t teach those personal people skills.
Q: How would you describe your company culture?
Robert: You’ll see “Just be happy and have fun” throughout our stores. It served as an unofficial tagline in the beginning, back in 2002. We began our first store with the goal of providing a comfortable spot for friends to meet over coffee, and that’s fun and happy.
We also work hard to offer flexibility and continuous learning opportunities. We have different barista levels within our organization. Barista level one can do certain things, barista level two can do other things. So we encourage our employees to keep learning. And with the roasting process in house, it gives them an additional opportunity to learn about what we sell, which in turns helps us engage with our customers.
We believe in promoting from within; an example is our certified trainers that can help us go train other new franchise stores. They have worked hard through all the levels and become our best brand ambassadors and teachers for new franchisees. The thing that sets us apart, I truly believe, is the ability to take care of the employees just as well as we take care of the customer. Because if you take good care of your employees, they’re going to naturally take care of the customer.
Q: What’s been the most rewarding part of growing through franchising?
Brad: For me, it’s seeing communities flourish. It’s exciting when we go into a town like the size of St. Charles or even Waterloo or Avon and seeing how much people enjoy being in our warm, comfortable, inviting environment and the community—they take it as their own. Our customers take ownership; we’ve heard them tell friends and family from out of town say “Hey, we want you to see our Cabin Coffee.”
Robert: It’s about the customer interaction that you’re going to find at every store. We aren’t going to beat Starbucks at some things, but we can win at customer service, and that’s what matters.
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