By MARK RIFFEY for the Flathead Beacon
This past weekend, I checked off two to-do list items with one coffee stop.
First, I was looking for a good place to sit, sip and write.
Second, I was meeting with the founder of a @StartupWeekend-born startup to discuss how it would go forward.
I got more than I expected.
It started off with a chat with the baristas about the Northwest (one of them was from Pullman, WA), including agreement that the current 18%gray winter sky is classic Northwest winter.
After some solo writing time, my meeting guy arrived. As we finished our discussion, a group of people entered together, filling the table’s remaining 10 seats. Soon after, the shop’s owner came over and started assembling a mass of small coffee cups, bottled water and other gear.
Turns out that a couple of hours earlier, I had settled into a seat at the shop’s cupping table.
Lean Customer Development
What I witnessed next was a nice session of customer development.
Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/waferboard/
In addition to enjoying some new-to-me coffees, I watched as the owner exposed already-bought-in customers to new products that he’s considering for their product mix. None of the coffees we tasted are available for sale – the owner was still determining which ones he liked and presumably was using the reaction of this group to refine his opinion.
Later, I found out that the shop does cuppings (think “wine tasting” for coffee) almost every Saturday at 10 am. Sometimes they discuss different brew methods or other coffee geekery – always with a dual focus on education (building a better customer/spokesperson) and the coffee itself. This week, the education component included some help understanding how the coffee business grades coffees, ie: specialty vs run of the mill vs “not-so-specialty” coffee and how the various acids and sugars in the bean result in what we taste and feel when we have a cuppa Joe.
I didn’t discuss this with the owner after the cupping, but I suspect this was not only done in the interest of Lean Startup style customer development, but also to gather some feedback from those bought-in customers – presumably some of their biggest, best-engaged fans – as well as to build on their fanbase while pulling existing fans a bit closer.
I wish these sessions were on YouTube. They’d make a nice series for new fans to review as they choose their next “thirdplace“, much less for fans who missed a Saturday.
Oh yeah, the coffee
Coffee nerds, if you’re wondering what we tasted, we had:
- Brazil Caturra
- Burundi Bourbon (pronounced burr-bone, which has nothing to do with Jack Daniels)
- Guatemala Geisha (no, nothing to do with Japanese bathhouses)
- Ethiopian Heirloom (this one seemed to be the crowd favorite)
I preferred the last two, but I wonder if the order of their presentation provoked that result.
All in all, it was a great combination of StartupWeekend, coffee and the use of Lean Startup principles. Yet there’s one more lesson you can take from it.
In what position do they see you?
How can you can tweak and use this for your business? By understanding that a cuppings aren’t just about coffee, they’re about positioning.
- The owner shares his coffee insight, education, expertise and knowledge with a group of customers who appear to be insiders. Almost everyone else in the shop is watching and listening intently since they don’t have a seat at the table (it’s first come, first serve). Some of them want a seat at the table.
- The owner gets to meet with customers who have raised their hand to show they’re interested at a level beyond the customer norm. These folks will talk about the shop, its coffee, the cupping and anything else they felt was important. These people have other friends with common interests – including coffee. You know it’ll be discussed. In fact, you just read what I shared about it.
- “Raising their hand” says “I care about, enjoy, have enthusiasm about coffee at a higher level than your average customer.” Just being a customer at a “coffee lab” shows a higher than typical interest in coffee. These guys go beyond that norm. Those are the customers for whom your positioning is most important. They are also the customers whose feedback you want.
How you can accomplish these things for your business?
Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on Twitter, or email him at mriffey@flatheadbeacon.com.
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Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on Twitter, or email him atmriffey@flatheadbeacon.com. Check out the Flathead Beacon archive of all of Mark’s blogs.