Visit the store | DoDo Coffee: what I want to do is a boutique coffee shop

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Around 2006-2008, drinks such as milk tea, which were popular on the street, were gradually replaced by cups with green girl portraits of logo.

You may not know much about Starbucks at that time, but you must have a little idea of the word "coffee".

The barista of DoDo Coffee made a fine cup of coffee on the spot.

Making such a cup of coffee seems simple, but in fact it takes much more energy and time than an ordinary cup of coffee.

Freshly ground coffee tastes better than instant coffee.

After 2012, coffee is no longer unfamiliar to the public, and even some elders in the family know that a Starbucks tastes better than instant ones. There is a quip in moments, "you are either at Starbucks or on your way to Starbucks." Tasting coffee has become a pleasure in life and a habit on the tip of the tongue.

Habits drive us to be better.

Around 2015, you will find a lot of new, interesting and artistic shops on the streets, which are uniformly labeled as "coffee shops". Friends around me occasionally talk about it. I heard that there is a good coffee shop in the city. I heard that an acquaintance is preparing a coffee shop recently.

While we are looking for a coffee shop, the coffee shop is also choosing us.

Nowadays, too many coffee shops have sprung up, and a wave of messages such as "the top ten coffee shops in Chengdu" occupy the market, and the same industry is not only competing with each other but also growing together.

In this situation of mutual "strength", the owner of a coffee shop gradually began to wonder, "who on earth do I sell my coffee to?" The boss thought that perhaps only after a clear understanding of the answer could her coffee shop always have a place in many competitions.

The shady forest in front of the door is a paradise in the big city.

"Coffee as an imported product with no roots in China, the people who can accept that it likes it and care about its quality and will often consume it must be those who walk in front (except baristas). You need to know who the real audience of coffee is." As the founder of Chengdu DoDoCoffee, Dou Ma, always reflect on this question.

Since 2012, Dou Ma has started and runs her own coffee shop. She, who knows nothing about coffee and does not have a business background, has made it difficult to get off to a difficult start. At first, the shop was located next to the school near Tuanjie town, because there were more students around, so the shop was dominated by milk tea. In 2014, she moved to Beisen North Road, Qingyang District, Chengdu. After much deliberation, Dou Ma and the team decided that the main product was coffee, making this shop a veritable boutique coffee shop.

A corner of the room

The coffee shop on Benson Road covers an area of more than 200 square meters and is divided into indoor and outdoor. There is a long table area in the room, which can be used as a relatively independent small space, suitable for meetings, offices or friends' gatherings.

There is a semi-open bar in the center, which is the territory of baristas and the most direct platform for guests to communicate with them.

Sometimes sitting quietly at the bar is also the most relaxing time of the day.

If you like outdoors, you can choose to sit down and rest in the front yard or backyard. There is a winding path here, and Dou Ma chose it here because it was different from other commercial areas, with less noise and more family atmosphere.

A corner of the backyard

Dou Ma pays more attention to the taste and quality of each type of coffee than how to enrich the drink list in the store. From the first day of the introduction of baristas, Dou Ma asked them to familiarize themselves with coffee knowledge as soon as possible, and also let them participate in relevant training and pass the examination. Dou Ma believes that only the baristas who really understand coffee can gain the trust of the guests, and it is also a respect for the guests who love their own coffee.

On the other hand, in addition to strictly controlling the choice of coffee beans, Dou Ma and the team also pay attention to the purpose of the guests.

There was a small incident when a "star product" was launched in the store, which attracted a lot of customers to the store because of its good appearance. They will serve this cup of coffee in the same place, pose beautifully, and then post photos on the Internet, and more and more guests will be attracted. In fact, when many coffee shops launch coffee, they will also launch a lot of non-coffee drinks. On the one hand, they attract customers, on the other hand, they are rich in products.

When I went to DoDo Coffee for the first time, I also ordered this cup of star style, the purpose of which is to take pictures to look good.

However, Dou Ma gradually found that the guests who came to take pictures did not belong to their real guests, and they came here because of the appearance of another more beautiful and interesting drink from other coffee shops. For a while, the increase in passenger flow caused Dou Ma's uneasiness, which is not what she wanted, and the coffee shop she set up with all her heart should be based on boutique coffee. Soon, Dou Ma and the team took down this "star product".

Komondo raised by his mother: take it all out.

Therefore, the Chinese name of the coffee shop is also "Dou Dou Coffee Shop".

The dessert cook is Lao Fei from Italy.

Dou Ma told the staff in the store that she hoped that the service everyone would bring to the guests was a guide, so that the guests would know what the really good coffee was, and leave the guests one by one, so that when they heard the "boutique coffee", they could think of DoDoCoffee. This is a real success.

The purpose of keeping guests is to play mom, and to really understand this group of guests is the strategy of mom. Dou Ma made a small-scale analysis of coffee drinkers in the current market, and put forward the question "Coffee drinkers: who is consuming coffee?" This topic. Dou Ma mentioned, "there are generally two demands for customers to spend money in a coffee shop, one is to spend money on a place to sit, and the other is to drink a good cup of coffee."

"guests who spend money to buy seats do not care about the environment or the quality of coffee. Such guests will never be regular customers in cafes. They may drink little or no coffee at all, so coffee must not be the main staple in the menu of coffee shops. And food matching should not be dessert and western food, but beef noodles and covered rice. Then the coffee shop is no longer a coffee shop. Can you imagine that a coffee shop is filled with the strong smell of rice covered with meat?... A guest who doesn't need a seat, doesn't care about the environment, and only cares about the quality of his coffee, as long as your coffee can conquer his taste buds, it doesn't matter if you decorate the location, he will come even if you are in a private house outside the third Ring Road, and such a guest can be met and cannot be sought. Just think about it. " The pricing and audience of Coffee Shop

And between these two kinds of guests, there is another kind of group, they happen to be the real coffee guests in Dou Ma's words.

"most of these guests are high-income groups, and they have long been accustomed to a per capita consumption of about 100 yuan. For them, if they are willing to spend about 30 yuan on a cup of latte, they must be willing to spend 40 to 50 yuan to drink a cup of COE-grade hand-made coffee. But they are by no means idiots with a lot of money, and if they want to keep them, the cafe must have a corresponding level of environment, service and product quality. Such guests are absolutely high-quality customers, the rate of turning back will be very high, if you can attract them, then it is not impossible for them to spend every day. Such guests have two characteristics: they are not short of money, they know a little or know a lot about coffee "- -" the pricing and audience of coffee shops "

After Dou Ma made the above analysis, she upgraded the decoration of the coffee shop, including updating the coffee machine and bean grinder, improving the quality of milk and beans, and improving the barista's coffee technology. and then raised the price of a cup of coffee from 28 to 35.

Then almost all the non-coffee customers lost, and the real coffee customers gradually learned that there was a boutique coffee shop called DoDoCoffee. Then Dou Ma found that one day the turnover in the store exceeded 1, 000, and then a few months later exceeded 2, 000, then 3, 000, then 4, 000, while the turnover of the store was still growing at a rate of 16%, 30%, and 30% per month.

Dou Ma said that she finally led the cafe from the difficult step to the sunny day.

This year, Dou Ma is going to open a second boutique coffee shop on Tianfu third Street. Apart from controlling the quality of coffee, providing good service to customers and making her brand better, she said, "We have to stay one by one like the first store."

Venue: building 10, 3 Benson North Road, Qingyang District (in the villa of Benson Garden)