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What Can You Learn From My Favorite Barista?

espresso

Coffee is for closers!

I regularly make the point that we should look for positive business lessons wherever we find them.

Some lessons transcend all channels and industries. One of those is that the personal connection is everything.

The one person I’ve known who absolutely personified that principle is my friend Barry Candelora.

Barry and I have never worked in the same industry, but I was one of his customers. For years he owned the Second Cup coffee shop franchise down the street from where I worked.

Like all cities, the area where I worked was clogged with coffee shops within easy walking distance of my store. You can get a cup of coffee basically anywhere.

What makes you get a cup of coffee from somewhere more than once is A) the coffee is good and B) the service is above average.

Barry has a rare gift to connect with literally everybody who crosses his path. He has the ability to make you feel like you’re his most important customer. I’ve only ever known a handful of other people who operated at the same level of customer engagement.

It was that level of charisma and genuine interest in his customers that caused me to stop there to pick up a cup of coffee at least once a day, and sometimes two or three times a day.

When he chose to close up shop I was sorry to see him go, and had to buy my daily coffee from decidedly less-elite baristas.

After coffee Barry went into real estate, and it was only after we renewed our acquaintance that I thought about the impact his level of personal service made to his coffee business.

barry c

Coffee. Real Estate. Next up: business guru?

Thinking back, my brand loyalty to Second Cup over rivals like Starbucks was due virtually 100% to Barry’s level of commitment to taking care of his customers.

I continued to patronize Second Cup locations after his departure and corporately it took Second Cup years to slowly erode my brand loyalty through the usual annoyances: indifferent service, adequate but not amazing coffee drinks, etc.

The lesson here is that it’s not the coffee, or any other product that keeps customers coming back to give you their money, it’s how well you look after them.

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