Traits You Need to Be a Great Coffee Shop Owner

Traits You Need to Be a Great Coffee Shop Owner

Traits You Need to Be a Great Coffee Shop Owner

Traits to Manage Your Coffee Shop Better

If you have been dreaming about starting your coffee shop, it's a safe bet to assume you love coffee. I sure do!

But what else do you need to be a successful coffee business owner?

Over the years, we've been discussing the traits that often determine the success of coffee shop owners, and several traits keep coming up repeatedly.

Managing a coffee shop can be challenging. Certainly, there is always something that we can do to manage a coffee shop better.

We decided to write a post listing some of the traits that we find helpful in starting a coffee business. Undoubtedly, many traits can be important to coffee shop owners, which we found most prevalent.

As you go through the list below, consider your qualities and how they would ultimately help you open a successful coffee shop business, mobile coffee truck, or drive-thru coffee stand.

Traits You Need to Be a Great Coffee Shop Owner

#1: Flexibility

We have seen that a large number of successful coffee shop owners have the ability to be flexible. Flexibility is a personality trait that often goes underestimated but can be valuable when managing different elements of your coffee business.

Opening and running a successful coffee shop business requires adaptation. Being flexible means adapting as the business strategy changes. From executing marketing to pricing your items, adapting to constantly fluid market pressures is typical.

Flexibility goes a long way to starting and maintaining a successful coffee shop business. Being able to experiment with wholesale coffee roasters, vendors, brewing techniques, or essential business practices like inventory management, scheduling, and marketing will play a key role in your long-term success and viability.

#2: The Ability to Delegate

Some people have a hard time delegating anything. Coffee shop owners and managers are no different, but if you want to grow and be profitable, you must learn quickly that you cannot do everything every day – all the time.

Even if you think you can do a job better – even if you believe it will save you time to do it yourself – delegating is part of the overall solution to your profitability and success.

If you are the type of manager who has difficulty delegating jobs to others, start mall. Delegating small items at first can be beneficial, rewarding, and profitable.

From there, once you foster a culture of trust with your employees, you can move forward to more “important” things on your business “to-do” list. If you feel like you can't delegate to your current employees, you may need to hire baristas with whom you can develop confidence.

Additionally, creating a “system” where essential tasks are embedded into your workday schedule will allow you to have more time to grow the business. If you are spending too much time in the weeds, you'll never be able to grow effectively.

#3: Be Passionate

Have you ever walked into a low-energy coffee shop? The coffee is mediocre. The customer service stinks. And the entire experience makes you regret you ever stepped foot in the coffee business?

Some coffee shop owners we met are not passionate about anything regarding their coffee business – and it shows! Your passion (or lack thereof) is contagious! It impacts your baristas and your customers. It also affects your bottom line! And isn't that the whole point?

Be passionate about your coffee shop business! Be passionate about your coffee and for the love of your business – be passionate about customer service every day.  

If you stay passionate, you'll watch your coffee business grow! It's easy to be passionate about your coffee shop in the beginning when you are doing all you can to succeed. But too often, once a business is past a certain point, you may start to get overwhelmed; they will begin to get overwhelmed by the day-to-day operations. Passion soon fades.

Over time, passion can be hard to maintain, so it's essential to be creative with your customer service, product offerings, and baristas hiring.

#4: Ability to Lead

Being able to lead a business is critical to your success. But what does it mean “to lead”?

Leading means forging your path based on your goals and vision. Teaching and leading others in your organization to achieve your business goals together is the cornerstone of leadership.

Leaders teach, inspire, and accept responsibility for the fate of your coffee shop. Being a great leader means acknowledging your weaknesses and working hard to strengthen them. First, you should do all you can to learn as much as possible about the retail coffee business. Your knowledge, expertise, and growing confidence will help you steer your business in the direction you believe is the right one.

Traits You Need to Be a Great Coffee Shop Owner

#5: Being able to Teach

Being a successful business owner means you must be a good teacher. It's important to realize that knowledge and teaching that knowledge is not the same thing.

How do you want things done?

You will need to teach and instill the processes and culture of your coffee business effectively to each employee. Everything from how you want your coffee pulled to your inventory management and customer service will (and should) be directed by you.

Yet, teaching your employees (and maybe your customers) what your coffee business strives to become may need to be done delicately (at times) but effectively and consistently if you want a successful coffee shop business.

While it may seem that some people are natural teachers, it can often take practice. Teaching others requires the dedication and promotion of learning. Some businesses struggle with this because they lack the “culture of learning” needed to excel and remain passionate about coffee. If you need help, invest in training. Training for you or training your baristas can go a long way to teach you “how to teach” and manage your coffee shop better.

#6: Having the Ability to Listen

Having the ability to listen is critical to your success in life, as in your coffee shop. Whether you are listening to your employees or whether you are listening to your customers, the ability to listen can help you pivot or rethink your process, adapt, change, and evolve into something better.

The ability to listen, reflect, assess, and make the necessary changes to drive your business forward doesn't make you look weak – instead, it makes you adaptable. Your business needs to adapt to changing times, changing needs, changing customers, changing employees, changing markets, etc. The ability to listen is the first step in adapting to those changes.

#7: Being Able to Trust the Math

Learn to trust the numbers.

Whether you are counting customers, estimating revenue, or developing your coffee shop budget, you will need to trust what the numbers say. As long as the numbers are accurately gathered or arrived at, it would be best to trust the math.

While balancing your “hunches” and gut feelings is always essential, having the ability to see and read what the numbers are saying is important for your business planning and general coffee shop operation.

This requires taking the time to budget and assess your budgetary goals, analyzing your inventory, your pricing models, etc. The math will help you reach your business goals every time.

Traits You Need to Be a Great Coffee Shop Owner

#8: Be Meticulous

The details will always determine your coffee shop's success. Being meticulous about everything is essential.

Everything from your inventory management and money management to the quality of your coffee and starting your coffee shop on a budget – being consistently meticulous will help you succeed. Suppose you are meticulous enough to deal with the small details that add value to your coffee customers and your bottom line. In that case, you will better position yourself as an excellent coffee shop business owner.

#9 Ability to Stay on Top of the Paperwork 

Paperwork isn't exciting. Paying bills, reviewing invoices, and dealing with financial statements may not be fun. It's easy to put it off.

However, you have to make time to “honor” the paperwork that comes with your coffee business. Yes, there will be a lot of paperwork. Accept it. Embrace it. Learn to enjoy it.

Make time to do your paperwork at least two times a week. Staying on top of your paperwork is an ability – a positive business trait – that may not guarantee your success. Still, it will undoubtedly make your life easier, from developing your coffee shop budget to taking care of your business insurance, payroll, invoices, and taxes.

#10 Ability To Plan & Execute 

Having the ability to plan and execute your vision is an enormous trait to have. Is this ability inherent, or is this learned? It may be both. Stay focused on your goals and move forward every day.  Plan out and break down your plan to open and operate your coffee shop into small steps.

#11 Being Likeable

Being likable makes your life much easier- from work life to your personal life. Being likable is especially important as you develop relationships with your employees, customers, and your community in general.

While it is essential to be respected by your employees, being likable also ties into your ability to lead a coffee shop business, keep and maintain customer loyalty, generate goodwill, and develop the relationships you will need to succeed.

#12 Set Clear Goals

Setting clear goals for your coffee shop is an important trait to have as a coffee shop owner.

Whether you want to increase your sales, reduce your waste, or promote your coffee business with a new marketing strategy, setting clear goals is essential to a thriving coffee business.

#13 Having Empathy

The ability to empathize with your employees will help you understand their needs and help you determine those things you can do to best support their growth.

Additionally, having the ability to empathize with your customers in any given situation may also provide you with the ability to anticipate their needs.

Empathy makes you a better leader, teacher, and problem solver – all things you need to run a coffee shop successfully.

Traits You Need to Be a Great Coffee Shop Owner

#14 Decisiveness

When you own a coffee shop, various decisions and courses of action need to be taken.

At times, you will need to be decisive.

Being decisive will help you move forward and achieve the business goals you’ve set out.

You may need to hire someone, fire an employee, or invest in a new piece of coffee equipment. On the other hand, indecisiveness can eventually ruin your coffee business and lead to bigger problems, loss of income, or other opportunities.

#15 Communication Skills

Among the highest and most important traits to have as a coffee shop owner is strong communication skills.

You need to be able to communicate well with your employees and your customers. Communicating your vision, policies, recipes, scheduling, prices, and menu items will help you improve your sales and make your job much easier.

Related Questions:

Are there other traits and abilities to starting, owning, and operating a coffee shop?

Absolutely! We know that there are potentially a hundred more traits, but if you have some of the traits we've just listed, you'll know that you're on the right track of being able to run and operate a coffee shop business.

Having the ability to study what you need to know before you plan your coffee shop business is an excellent trait to have. Luckily, we make it easy to develop your coffee shop business planning right here. Our Complete Coffee Shop Startup Kit is packed with everything you need to start your coffee shop business planning. 

Are You Ready To Get Started?

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Coffee Shop Startups

Based in Seattle, Washington, USA, Coffee Shop Startups is dedicated to providing you with the most relevant information on how to start a coffee shop business successfully. Over the last 11 years, we've helped thousands of aspiring coffee business owners worldwide. We harness the experience, wisdom, and knowledge of many successful coffee shop owners to help you increase your chances of success and profits. We support business owners who want to start a coffee business by providing them with valuable information on starting their coffee business successfully.