Marketing Heaven
We have a local chain of coffee shops here called “Coffee Heaven”, aside from rather indifferent service, rather too often, they do as good a job as most better recognized names do. I was struck today though by the amount of marketing they throw behind every new cup design they come up with. Each season they produce a new cup. So the summer one had bits of a palm tree, this new one has snowflakes and so on. Each time a new cup comes out they market the cup, not the coffee, very heavily. I noticed in there today a “table topper” that said something like “Last in our line of limited edition cups – collect all four of these special cups….blah blah”. Now. I could understand if these were china cups, or even plastic and the cup was actually an item you might, were you desperate enough, want to collect. But all I can see is that these are the regular paper cups that you get in any coffee shop, so I can help wondering if I’m missing the point or if this is marketing gone mad?
I mean, who wants to clean and keep an old paper coffee cup? Are people taking them home and displaying them inside the glass fronted cabinet in the front room? Do they ensure guests are moved past said cabinet so the hostess can say “..and here is our collection of limited edition Coffee Heaven paper cups…”?
They must be spending a fair amount of money on producing, distributing and marketing these ’special’ cups, but I’d be very surprised if they have made any impact on the bottom line.
Okay. While I’m on the subject. To anyone from Coffee Heaven Inc – if you have two tills, please use them. We (yes, I am not alone) are tired of waiting in line 10 minutes or more for a fast take-away coffee and sandwich. We know what we want, we don’t need to wait behind six people who don’t (and all have to fish around for small change). It is doubly annoying to be waiting when you actually seem to have enough people behind the counter, they just all prefer to gather away from the tills and have a natter. This is an issue all the time but the summer months were a joke. It’s no suprise that regular staff want a holiday in summer so please get more staff or more training before next summer arrives. Thanks!
Thanks also to Colin for this (click):
Hmmm, seems everybody is writing about coffee shops. If I were a cynical person I might suspect you and Dat Blog had been bribed to name-check specific chains as part of some devious marketing ploy. If so:
1. Why haven’t I had any of this action?
2. Stop! I’ve come a long way to get away from this kind of nonsense and people writing smart blog posts and posting sexy cartoons is only going to encourage the baskets.
island1
Sunday, 16 December, 2007 at 10:26 pm
I feel for you. Dat struck the deal after writing his post and got “Free coffee for life” but there had to be two blog posts involved. It just so happened that I wrote my post without having seen his and so I picked up the second ‘golden ticket’.
They have also promised that every shop will make a pattern in the top of my coffees in the shape of a West Ham logo instead of the usual palm tree, heart or whatever. Dat has asked for a foam portrait of his wife.
We’ll remember you next time….promise!
scatts
Monday, 17 December, 2007 at 8:35 am