Today on the Winning with Shopify podcast.
We decided we like coffee and tea and we want to start our own
business. Such a cool brand.
Coffee is actually amazing. I'm not just saying that.
I've even got a mug of it here. Again, I've had too much coffee
and here I am drinking more coffee to live the dream at.
That stage, our online sales doubled and they've continued to
grow. Like as the owner, when it goes
wrong, I'm the one who's got to step.
In rather than competing with the cafes in Perth, we supply
them. I love discussing stuff.
I love learning things. Because coffee is essential, of
course. Of course.
Hello and welcome to another episode, the Winning Wish Shop
of Fight podcast. If you've never tuned in before,
welcome to the show. My name's Nick.
Such a pleasure to have you listening to this.
I've drunk way too much coffee today.
I asked twice for decaf coffees in the office.
Both of them were accidentally sent to me caffeinated and I
drank them anyway. Which is all very relevant
because you've got a coffee company on the show, both an
avid listener and client. Lorna, welcome to the show.
How are you? I'm good.
Thanks. Hi, Nick, How are you?
No one ever asked me that. I'm buzzing.
I'm absolutely buzzing. And Lorna's from the bean shop
guys, and I love the bean shop. Lorna sends us coffee.
This is empty because we've drunk it and Lorna's going to
send us some more. And I, I've offered to pay for
it and she's not sent me an invoice.
So we'll sort that out after we finish talking.
But Lorna, you run the bean shop.
Well, you're obviously a client of ours.
You've listened to the show for quite a while.
Obviously you guys are on Shopify.
Such a cool brand. Coffee is actually amazing.
I'm not just saying that. I've even got a mug of it here
again, I've had too much coffee and here I am drinking more
coffee to live the dream. Tell us more about Bean Shop.
How did it start? How did you get involved?
Who else runs it with you? Like yeah, give us a full
overview to to the Bean Shop in a nutshell.
OK, well we opened the Bean Shop in 2003 in Perth.
But the reason I got into coffee was I was a poor art student in
Aberdeen and I had a part time job in a coffee roasters there.
And my husband, my now husband John had the pub next door.
So I suppose the official line was that he came into the coffee
shop for coffee. But quite often I was in the
pub, I'm not going to lie. So that's how we that's how we
met. And his business was a family
business. So they they sold and we decided
we like coffee and tea and we want to start our own business.
So John was born and brought up and are dealing and so he had
the tea background and yeah, that's how we got into it.
Amazing. And there's something, I mean,
there's so many ways for you guys to connect back then as
well, something to drink during the day, something to drink at
the end of the day, which means it's not the end of the day
because you can have another drink.
But I mean, fantastic that you guys got into that.
I mean, you said you were studying at the time.
Did you pretty much go like actually instead of applying all
the things I've learnt studying, I'm just going to start a
business straight off the back of it.
Was there a gap or? Yeah.
Well, I, I've worked in shops since I was 13.
So I started in the Highlands. I worked in a supermarket and I
worked in a sweetie shop and then my uncle had a corner shop
and I worked in there. And then I was in a gift shop
and then I was in the coffee roasters.
And I really loved the coffee roasters because it just felt so
wholesome and everybody was happy.
So it felt like the right direction to go in.
And of course, art students finish art school and they don't
have a job anyway, so it kind of makes.
Music. I know exactly what you mean.
Yeah. Yeah.
So it just kind of, it just kind of all fell into place really.
Nice, nice. And I mean what, what's
interesting as well as I think all those back the background
you've got in shops. I, I find so many people start a
business and they're like, I've got an idea and they think
almost like, and again, don't be rude to anyone listening because
sometimes it's that hard graft. They're making mistakes.
It gets people to, to, to what they deem success.
But actually that background must have really helped you
rather than some of the stores going.
I've got an idea and that qualifies me as ACEO and a, you
know, entrepreneur in an e-commerce store.
But actually having that background in shops must have
helped you with the shop itself. Because immediately you're like,
I just know how we're going to lay out the furniture, where the
coffee machine's actually going to be itself, how much we
charge, what it means to create a connection with the customer
so that they come back. There's nothing worse than I
can't remember what it was this morning that was, I went into
Nero's and it's a dirty word, but I went into Nero's after the
gym because I get free coffee. So when I got a coffee and they,
they had a trainee barista there and she was, she didn't make any
conversation with me or anything.
And I was like, I love coming in here and I've like almost not
enjoyed it. I'm probably more sensitive
because I work in marketing. But you must have had so much
experience to that. There was just, we don't even
need to discuss it. It's second nature.
You know your husband, your now husband and and you say like, we
know how we're going to run this thing.
Yeah, pretty much. And I think a lot of what we do
is a combination of all the different places that I've
worked actually. And I always think it's good to
make your mistakes while somebody else is paying you for
them. So if you want to go and have a
job somewhere to figure out what you're going to do, just just go
and work for someone else's business 1st and see what you
like and what you don't like. Yeah.
It's not to say we've not made mistakes or changed what we've
done, but I think both of us, we're very customer focused kind
of we're happier when we're serving people.
I think we're just that sort of, you know, we would definitely be
downstairs. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And and I know from from working with you as well.
And Elliot, Elliot told me to mention him on this because he
was like one of my clients coming on.
This is awesome. You didn't mention him anyway.
I know, but he he far too shy to come on the show.
I was like, Elliot, do you want to join us with that?
No, no, no. So I'm going to shout him out.
He makes the reels as well. So this might end up on
Instagram. What I'm saying?
Brilliant. But, but I think the, I mean,
one of the things that he's certainly picked up on and I
have from, from talking to you as well is, you know, you're
very sort of charismatic. You are definitely customer
facing and that's your skill set.
But I think one of the, again, one of the things that I think a
lot of brands struggle with is they come up with an idea, but
they want to sort of sit in a dark room and then they miss
that bit that whether it's the Shopify store online or it's the
physical store, it's like it's that connection, it's serving
customers. And the fact that you, it's the
same with me. Like I love, I love discussing
stuff. I love learning things.
You give me some code to do or I mean my accounts, I literally go
and sit on a train all day because I love trains and I'm
rewarding myself in advance for getting my accounts done.
And I sit on the train on my laptop and do my accounts.
So if you see me on a train like Nick, my laptop, the bank will
be logged in all sorts. But again, it's that I think
it's that passion you guys have got for for human interaction.
I guess if you kind of really drill it down, how do I know
it's going to be a really hard question?
It wasn't our list of questions. So I'm going to go straight in
with this. How do you bring that across on
a web page? How do you bring it across with
your packaging? How do you bring it across with
customers? When somebody says, I'm really
angry my coffee bag arrived and it was already opened and you
know, you get all these kind of things that are going to happen.
How do you bring that across digitally to customers?
Yeah. Well, that is the thing.
And I think actually that's one of the areas that I think AI is
going to be really helpful in and and that you can, you can
have it talk so much to your customers in terms of like the
little, we've got a little chat bot on our website.
And I know that sounds very kind of non personal, but the thing
with the chat bot is it's, it's not pretending to be a human.
So it, it does, it does have our company tone, the friendly kind
of way that we speak to customers.
I mean, what I've always wanted to do with our website is, is
make it look and feel like the experience that customers get in
the shop. We've got 2 incredible managers
in the shop, Shanice and Emily, and they know all of our
customers by name. They can even memorize their
e-mail addresses because the loyalty scheme online is the
same one that we have in the shop, which makes it's just the
11 database. So it works really well.
So I'm always trying to get that kind of personal contact thing
on the website. And I think we do it in a number
of ways with like the photographs of the shop showing
that we're actually a real place and and then just emailing, we
get customers who get in contact with us in so many different
ways. Now I was dealing with a
customer on Sunday who had sent a Facebook Messenger message and
they were having trouble dialling in their espresso.
They'd got a new machine. And so I was like Facebook
messaging her on a Sunday afternoon, talking her through
step by step how to adjust her grind.
And, and it was just, it was actually a really nice
interaction because she felt like we cared, which we do.
I solved her problem. And then I feel that's where you
get your kind of natural loyalty from because she's not going to
think, well, I'm going to buy my coffee from somewhere else now
because these people actually care about what results I get.
And I ended up sending her a little discount because she, she
properly wasted like quite a lot of coffee trying to get it
dialled in. So I was like, well, here, have
a discount voucher, have have a sort of a free bag of coffee on
us and then have another go. And it it's just, it makes me
feel good. It makes her feel good as well.
So, yeah, that's kind of our approach, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. The only thing I mean, as your
agency, I'm going to give you some advice on the podcast
quickly. Like I think what you did is
amazing. And and, and as you say, that's
how you build the loyalty and the VIP like experience or the
VI and they become AVIP customer.
It's like these guys help me out so much.
I can't not buy coffee from them anymore.
It's almost like I feel indebted to always buy my coffee from
these guys. The only thing that you could
have done, and I saw a brand do this recently, is they answer
all their customer service requests on Instagram stories
and Reels. And I thought that was amazing.
So rather than sending a video or a message, they they send a
link and say I've just recorded a response and they just use
their first names, not give any person.
So it's just like, hi Joanne, thanks so much for asking how to
use the coffee machine here. But I think, yeah, it's, it's,
it's so simple what you did. You just answered her question
and you're passionate about it. So you must have enjoyed the
interaction as much as it was. I need to answer this customer
and there's a responsibility to do that.
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and grab your discount. But tell me, let's go back a
bit. I know I jumped into that, but
let's go back. Tell me how why you guys went
from a shop to online? What why did you start trying to
sell online? There's loads of people selling
coffee online and you're, you're really starting to make make hay
or, you know, I should use the coffee pun then, but you guys
are really starting to, you know, to make some ground on
that. Yeah.
How did that come about? How did you first launch the
store online? Why did you do it?
So back in 2003, it wasn't really a thing, but I've got,
I'm sort of the black sheep, I've got 2 two siblings who are
both very techie and work in IITAI, all that kind of kind of
stuff. And my brother was basically
like, well, I think you should get an online shop.
And we were kind of thinking, oh, well, that might be nice
sort of thing and didn't really realize how big it was going to
become. So we first started with a BT
shop. I don't even know if you knew
that these things existed, but it was like a, it was an off the
shelf BT shop and you just basically slotted a few products
in and and it. Kind of worked.
It was sort of successful. And then after that we had a
website made for us. This was in probably 2004 or
2005 and it was, it was kind of a bespoke website and it kind of
very quickly became out of date. And then we first did Shopify in
2014 and that was Shopify 1.0. And it was really different to
what we've got now. But yeah, when we first started,
we were we were wrapping parcels and taking them across to the
post office. What, what a different world,
Lorna, Like you're talking about like building bespoke websites.
Obviously Shopify has changed the game.
I, I keep saying on the show like it's, it's kind of good and
bad, isn't it? It means there's probably what,
10 new coffee companies popping up on, on Shopify every day,
every week against you guys, but also means you guys can move
really, really quickly. I mean, how much you guys
selling online now compared to the store?
Like when we look at what you're doing in sort of 2025 coming
into this year. I was thinking you're going to
ask me some stats and I'm not really sure.
Let's have a think so well, we, we sell coffee in three weeks.
So we do wholesale. So business to business we do
across the counter in the shop, we do the website and I think
like really roughly it's about a third each.
Cool. I mean, that must be quite nice,
having that balance. It's like if one of them does
badly because of a technical issue or something else, at
least the other two are running. So yeah, a lot of businesses
were hit like mad during COVID. Whereas if you guys have got B2B
and consumer online, it's like at least we've got that stream
still running for us. Yeah, that was a that was a big
turning point for us, especially with the online shop, because up
until that point we weren't really trying to be honest.
We were just basically, you know, there was some coffee on
there. We didn't really have any of our
equipment. There was tea on there, but we
weren't really promoting it. And of course, with lockdown,
basically our shop, although it was allowed to stay open because
coffee is essential, of course, of course, we, we, there just
weren't many people visiting. We were, we were sort of
selling, selling coffee over the baby gate at the door.
So we, which worked really well. And I think we, we became the
focus for People's Daily walks, which was nice.
But I started posting on Instagram just about every day
and I didn't really know what I was doing, but I just thought,
well, this is our only chance is our shop window.
Our shop window is now online. So it worked really well
actually. And I think at that stage our
online sales doubled and they've continued to grow because we we
thought maybe when the shop opened back up we would get
quieter. But actually people just really
like getting their coffee posted out.
It works really well. It's not, it's not delicate or
easily damaged. So it just posts out really
well. Yeah, yeah, and I mean your
branding is really striking, which I love about it.
Like certainly the website, it's very that you guys have a real I
I don't know if I don't know if you've heard or anybody else
that's listened to it. In fact, you won't have heard it
Lorna, because when we're recording this, it only came out
at the moment we hit record. But I did a whole session on
branding back on Tuesday. Guys, if you want to hear that
sharing to my experience of I don't do branding myself and the
logo and colour schemes and turn of voice, but sharing has some
brands have done it and some of the experience I've had sitting
in that room. But how did you guys actually
form your brand? Like, I mean, bean shop kind of
nice simple name, but in terms of the, I mean, you know, the
top you're wearing and I would have been wearing AT shirt guys.
Lorna has sent me a T-shirt with bean shirt.
I use it as a pyjama top. So I'll be wearing it on
Tuesday. So if you watch.
On Tuesday, it'll be there and drinking beans or coffee, of
course. But I think, I think the
question really is like how, how did you guys come up with that
brand? How much it evolved since like
2003 through to what's on site now?
The Bean Shop was my nickname for my job in the Coffee
Roasters in Aberdeen. So it was actually called, Yeah,
it it was, it was called Mcbeans.
And it was a great place, but I used to joke about it.
I'm working at the Bean Shop today.
And then when I wanted to open my own place, I was like, just
call it the Bean Shop. And I'm not sure.
It's kind of like a bit like Carphone Warehouse.
I'm not sure I would have called it that now.
But if it ain't broken, all that.
So we've just decided I think it's more important that we stay
as who we are. And then I always wanted a duck
egg blue shop. So we've pretty much kept our
bluey greeny colour consistent. It was, it was the kind of bluey
green and brown and then we dropped the brown.
So we've just basically got black and white and we've got
our, we've got our specific hex number now so that everything
has to match. We've got kind of, we've got our
brown colours. The only thing is we've, we've
picked a font which, yeah, it's, it's not available in every sort
of app, which is kind of irritating because obviously I
want my emails to have the same font as my website.
So that was that's. Kind of we're the same, yeah,
our fonts are not on our emails, which is we just end up using
aerial because it's the most like boring and plain to keep it
simple, but. But it is it is.
You just want to be consistent. And so that I mean, that's how
you come up the brand. I think that consistency is
really key. Like we had, I forget the name
of the company, I didn't know. I think it was something in
Quill who came on American brand.
They came on with Brian from Saguno and had both the guests
on and we, we spoke about how they did a complete rebrand and
we're mostly about e-mail deliverability.
But some of the points around actually rebranding and then
using e-mail to tell customers we'd change brand.
It's like it was a massive, I mean, eventually they made it
work, but they must have lost lots of customers.
It was very expensive. It took time, revenue would have
been down. It's like if you don't change
it, everything just keeps going. It's like it's a storm you don't
have to kind of drive into, but that, I mean, that's the
branding. How do you guys select?
You've so many different types of coffee.
I mean, the one I've got here is the, I'm not going to even try
and pronounce it. It's Brazil, you'll know the
word. Fazenda that just means farm.
Oh, nice, that's quite cool. So I mean, how do you guys come
up with like what coffees to to stock what coffees to I mean, I
don't know much about coffee. I mean, tell us like I see that
people have got like coffee blends and things you do you
physically get 234 different beans and bring them together.
Like how does that? Because you do all that
yourselves, don't you? We do, yeah.
So we buy coffee from all around the world.
There's different importers that we use that some of the partners
that we work with, we've worked with right from the beginning.
Some of them specialized in certified coffee like organics,
fair trade, Rainforest Alliance and then other ones specialized
in different geographical areas. We worked with a company that
just deals with Guatemalan coffee.
We buy from one guy who only sells Jamaican Blue Mountain.
And yeah, so there's there's loads of places we can buy from.
But to be fair, I can't take very much credit for the running
of the roastery and the buying and the coffee because that is
very much John's domain. And one of the challenges that
we have is that pretty much that part of the business is all run
in John's head because he's very good at like he can predict when
someone's about to order or he can.
He knows how much of a certain type of coffee that we need to
have in stock and he knows who to buy everything from.
So he's very much in charge of that.
What what I would say that we have is we've got a distinct
sort of roasting style. We don't well, we have some
really light coffees and we have a couple of really dark ones.
But most of our coffee is roasted around that area, which
I would call the sweet spot where you get a little bit of
acidity, a little bit of sweetness, not too darkly
roasted, not too light. And I think, I think that's
where a lot of people enjoy coffee.
There's definitely been a kind of movement to towards, towards
more lighter roast coffees. But yeah, I would say as a
company, we we sit sort of more in the medium area.
So yeah, that's, that's mainly John's thing.
But we always like a coffee that is ethically sourced, really
high quality and has a story, whether it's produced by women
or whether they're Building Schools on the coffee plantation
or whether it's the nature reserve or, you know, shade
grown coffee or bird friendly. All of these things are quite
important to us. Amazing, and I mean your coffee.
I'm not just saying this because you're a client mate, It is
delicious, but as soon as as soon as coffee arrives at our
office from Beanshaw Daisy, he works alongside Elliot and our
BBC team. Daisy, be like we got my coffee.
Like I think we sent you a picture as well of us holding
the coffee. It's like, and again, I was I I
trying to trying to like almost over justify to you every time.
Like no, we actually love the coffee.
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I mean, if if anyone's wondering about this as well in terms of
how Lorna and the guy and and John and the guys actually build
that connection with customers. And on the back here, I don't
know how much you guys can see here or how good the light is,
but it says John and Lorna on the address.
It doesn't just say the Bean shop, 67 George Street, which I
think you guys have just moved, haven't you?
Well, we haven't moved our shop, so we've split our room into two
because basically our customers were tripping over all the boxes
that we were sending out. And, you know, the shop's
lovely, but it's really, really small.
So originally when we started the business, we wanted to do
coffee roastery and a cafe and a shop all in one.
And then we ended up buying this tiny little shop on George St.
and there wasn't room for a cafe.
So it's worked out really well because it means that rather
than competing with the cafes in Perth, we supply them and which
is good, but the shop is kind of we and yeah, so just in November
we split our team into two. So we now fulfill the wholesale
and online orders from the roastery.
So we've set set up a new space there, which is, it's worked
really well. And we just kind of the staff go
around in a sort of rotation. So nobody's stuck really in the
roastery all the time with no customers.
So we yeah, we all swap round, which seems to work quite well.
Thanks for sharing that because this is something I don't think
we've ever spoken about the show, but I do so much of this
both with clients and in my own business.
And I guess it, I don't know if this is quite the right phrase,
but hear me out on this everybody.
It's like it's called sweating the asset.
So your asset is the coffee you make, the shop you're based in.
And I mean, we, we did a similar exercise with our, and not to
say we're not going to work with Lorna anymore because she's in
Scotland and we're in the South of England.
And I know it looks like a, you know, I could throw a stone to
Lorna on a map if you guys live in the US, but you know, it's a
huge journey up to you guys. But we, we've met quite a few of
our clients that are within driving distance, train
distance. I'm flying out to Dublin in a
couple of weeks to go and see a client there.
We're working with, It's only a 45 minute flight, but it's a
flight. We don't fly very often in the
UK. If I, you know, Scotland, I
would probably fly up if I when it's going one day.
But the point being is the fact that you're stocking the local
cafes, you're suddenly like, it's probably the same price, I
imagine, or you might offer a discount.
It's like you don't have to ship this stuff.
You don't have to have long drawn out conversations with
suppliers and deal with invoices and tenders and whatever other,
you know, some of this will apply to some of you guys and
not to other of you guys. But the fact that you can like
almost just carry a box of coffee at 5:00 AM to this shop,
just get a wheelbarrow and drop it all off.
Yeah. John does, and it's like he's a
trolley. There we go, absolutely perfect
and if you need a trolley, nick one from the supermarket.
They don't do that. But I just think it's, again,
it's like using what you've got at the moment more effectively.
Like we, we've spoken to brands before.
They're like, we're going international.
And it's like, you've only got like a 2% penetration in the UK
market for the things that the things that you sell, like
you're only hitting 2% of customers and you're not quite
getting the right ROI to scale. Why the heck have you sent stuff
across the Atlantic? What a waste of time.
And then they do and the conversion rate's lower and
they're like, guys, we've got a problem.
We need a better conversion rate in the US and the UK is still
not doing what it should. And it's like, OK, but you've
made the loss worse by doing the US like the UK, at least we're
at least we're, you know, we're still breathing here in the UK.
And I think it's the same for a lot of businesses.
And it's some of the ego gets in the way or people get sold.
I mean, you call it the American dream, like, you know, go and
sell stuff in America or expanding to Europe from the UK
or start selling in Asia in the Pacifics.
And I think actually what you guys are doing with that, it's
just, it's so smart. I know it's such a simple thing
and it's probably second nature to you guys.
It probably started because, you know, you started having
conversations with the other shop owners or there might have
been a business meet up one night at the pub or something.
But it's, it's so smart, I think doing that.
And the fact that you just said we don't run a cafe because we
don't want to compete with them here, but we'll run a cafe
somewhere else. It's just really smart.
It's just very, very simple business economics are going.
It's not cut off the hand that feeds us or the hand that drinks
our coffee. But also that was a terrible
pun. But also it's, it's still doing
the shop part of this, but in another location and looking
customers are tripping over, we'll let them buy our coffee
everywhere else. We don't have to worry about all
the VAT and other stuff and running the till and stuff here.
We'll do that another site where we can do it more effectively.
So I think, I mean, again, there's so much power in that,
but I mean, with with that, that's part of your marketing
strategy. What other things do you guys do
is obviously you do PPC and Elliot absolutely loves clicking
buttons on it as, as I'm sure you know, it's I've, I've had
feedback about Elliot to mention him again, some of the feedback
I've had from clients I've never met.
I've never met a guy that was so interested in women's skin care
as well. One of our clients said, another
one said, I've never met a guy who's so interested in dining
tables and so passionate about selling them on a website.
And it's like Elliot just loves helping businesses and helping
people, which is great. But what are the marketing
outside of PPC and the, the shop and, and the, you know, the kind
of wholesale bit, what are the marketing if you guys absorbed,
you mentioned Instagram earlier and said that was, you know,
kind of a bit of an undertaking during COVID and.
Yeah, I mean, I kind of blow a bit hot and cold with social
media because I I kind of go all in and then and then I just I
kind of end up not really enjoying it I think.
I think sometimes I just feel like I'm doing everything badly.
So I have AI have a break from Instagram, but my plan this year
is to sort out our e-mail. So with the whole changing of
the website we've had, we've had kind of quite a few issues with
our apps that we've used. So originally we were using
Perkville for loyalty and we were using Bold for recurring
orders and then we were using MailChimp and then we were using
Yacht Pole for reviews. Now Yacht Pole actually did most
of those things. So then we moved over to Yacht
Pole and we were doing yacht and then so we signed up with Yacht
Pole, which is fine. So they were doing all of those
four and then they dropped e-mail and then they dropped
recurring orders. So it we.
Had a little moan about that on the phone.
Didn't we? We had.
I've just kind of gone through the ringer with all the apps.
So I've only just, I've had a really good guy help me with
Omni Send. We decided to go with Omni Send
because it integrates with everything else really well and
we're using recharge for recurring orders.
So my plan this year to get back to your question is to do more
emails because I feel like it's that whole thing about looking
after the customers you've already got.
And we've got loads of really nice customers and I kind of
want to be a bit more a bit more real.
And it's that whole thing about like not making everything too
polished. So I kind of want to do this is
what we're doing at Rural St. This is who's working.
This is what we've been up to. Here's a new coffee of the
month. I'm just trying to get a bit
more dialogue. We do all the kind of what's it
called, the emails that are set up.
So I can't even. Remember, like the abandoned
basket and. All that kind.
Of stuff automatic running, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. But I kind of want to do a bit
more just newsy stuff and just being in contact with our
customers that we already have because we we've got quite a big
database of customers now, which is good.
And obviously from a cost point of view, Google Adwords is so
expensive and you're you're kind of fighting with everybody else
for new customers. And I'm just really glad it's
Elliot's problem now because I did it myself for so long very
badly. So it's quite nice to have
passed the buck on that one. It wasn't that bad, but.
When it was quite. Bad.
It's like, it's like Lorna. It's not bad, like it's not
making a loss, but like I didn't, I didn't come on here
with stats, but I think we like doubled the revenue without
changing the budget or something in a few weeks.
And you, you almost kind of turn around and say, are we done now?
I was like, no, no, no, there's so much more we can do.
But like, and I completely understand that, you know the
point on it. And I think I think the behind
the scenes is really important for your business specifically
because it's coffee. It's like, I mean, this bag is
it's I'm going to keep rubbing this in.
It's empty. So I need an invoice and some
more coffee, please. But but I think the point being
is you drink it and it's gone. And the fact that you guys have
such a range, it's almost like, do you know what if someone
hates us and leaves A1 star review, we could sell them
another bag or send them a free bag of coffee and go, right, You
tried that one. This is the polar opposite.
You like, you know, and you said this is too bitter or it's too
weak or it's not strong enough or actually it was too nutty or
whatever. This one's the polar opposite
because we've got a nice big range and then you then you
input some of that and here's the story behind the coffee.
And and that's where the world is now.
And, and I think with so many things, when somebody says
that's a nice phone case. So I love that.
I mean, someone literally said to me the day I love the phone
holder in your car and it's like, did you just buy it on
Amazon? I was like, no, I actually saw
on Instagram ads and someone was having all the issues I have of
like it being in the wrong place on the dashboard.
It doesn't charge or it charged. But if you, if the phone screen
was on doing NAB for any reason, it like it started overheating
on wireless charge, then it wouldn't charge.
So I'd drive 4 hours to a client meeting and then my phone's dead
and it's like, well, hang on, I've been in the car for four
hours. So this one's got a fan in it.
So it calls down the phone and you see, you see, there's a
whole story behind it. And it fixed the very real
problem. A friend of mine who's, he's a
sales director in the company and I was talking to him at the
gym and he goes, yeah, I drive to Manchester once a week.
Like I drive up, stay there for the night, work there, work
there and come back the next evening.
And that's where he had just been got.
Can you send me a link to the phone channel?
Yeah, Yeah, it's this one. And it's, it's that kind of,
it's a good product and it solved the problem.
And I think because you guys are on subscription e-mail clearly
is so important that whether someone's actually subscribed or
they just keep purchasing or asking for an invoice and more
coffee. It's the last time I mentioned
I'm joking. I'm joking, but but I think
that, yeah, the fact that people do use the product and the
product is consumable and then it runs out, there's so much of
a story you guys can say like it's all right.
So all of you that like this coffee, here's a similar one.
We've just started roasting and we've it's only limited edition
or something. There's so much people to get
involved with and the coffee. You guys also sell equipment as
well, don't you? It's not just the coffee bag.
We do. We sell lots of different
equipment and one of the things that we do is that if somebody
buys a piece of equipment and hasn't bought coffee from us
before, we just send them some coffee and and say, look, just
try this coffee in your new aero press or Hario filter or
whatever. And, and they love it.
So a lot of our reviews are like, Oh my goodness, they sent
me some chocolates and they also sent me some free coffee and,
and now I'm just going to buy it from you kind of thing.
So that works really well. I did, I did learn something
this week though, about roast levels.
And that's one of the things I think I'm going to add to our
website is that for the kind of new coffee buyer, I think
sometimes the descriptions can be too complicated.
And maybe what they need is just a basic, this coffee is medium
roast, this coffee is dark roast.
And so there's not, there's no surprises.
And, and so that if you're in a hurry, you don't want to read
all the blurb, you just want to make a quick decision and, and
get something that you like. So I think that's probably
something I need to go back and work on.
But there's literally there's always like 1000 jobs to do on
the website and it's just, it's just never ending.
I think the, the thing we're always trying to do and
sometimes we're good at this and sometimes we totally fail at
this. You can tell us how well we're
doing on this front is, I mean, Elliot's focused on the PPC and
he literally just goes, I've got the ROI money in, money out.
And like you've told us before, your margins are better on
coffee. So it's like we need to sell
coffee. Forget all the equipment stuff,
like if we sell one and it's profitable or break even, fine,
we might get a coffee customer off the back of it, as you say.
But we've got to sell coffee and say with all the jobs, it's some
of those clients are like, right, we're going to do this
and this and this and this. And we sort of say like, well,
that's all great. You know, we kind of play play
supplier, you know, nice and friendly and smiley and not poo
poo the ideas too quickly. But then say, which one do you
think is going to grow the revenue as much?
And they're kind of oh, oh, it's a no.
And then I think it's a really interesting, it's a really
interesting topic actually. If not everything you do needs
to have a, this will double revenue or we'll get a 10%
uplift. Actually, we're going to do this
and we don't know what's going to happen.
So the question is, we're going to, we think we should do it
anyway. Like we talked to customers,
we've been in the business a long time.
We know what people like. Therefore we're going to do like
John just knows, like you said, he just knows what stock coffee
to stock at different times. And you must know as well to
some degree of like these channels just work for us.
These ones I'm kind of playing with.
So Instagram, I did it for a bit and I stopped, like you said,
because it's not delivering bottom line growth.
And I just want to make sure we're doing it right, have a
think about it and go again. And that's the strategy.
But I think it's, it's really important as a business, isn't
it, to kind of go, there's so many shiny objects, like when
yacht PO kind of got rid of some of yours says, which one do I
replace 1st? And it's like having that
balance of I need to do enough stuff I enjoy.
There are things I might not enjoy, but I have to, we have to
make sure that the abandoned basket emails work in or we're
going to lose revenue. So how do you balance those
things between yourself and John and and and the guys in the
shop? I don't think John and I have
actually any overlapping skills. So that's quite good.
It really is. I think we make a great team
that way. And also it's kind of it's kind
of just firefighting in a, in a really kind of basic way.
So we just, whatever needs done most urgently is what we sort of
focus on. I mean, we, we've also got two
kids, we've got a dog, we've got, we've got to try and have a
bit of a life as well. And I think that's one of the
things that's quite tricky, especially with an online shop
is that it's going 24/7. So it's trying to, I'm just
probably trying not to overstretch myself as much as I
used to. So it's just trying to focus on
what's most important and dealing with that.
And also with the, with the online orders being quite busy,
that takes up a big part of our day as well.
So it's just, it's just prioritizing really.
Yeah, Yeah, you are, you are one of the, we kind of have like
corporate clients that are like just keep getting the sales in
and we have more lifestyle clients like you guys and do you
have sent us an e-mail for another go, Can you turn it down
a bit Like we're stacked for orders and we're trying to get
them all out the door and not disappoint anyone.
It's like if. We can.
I know what we don't. We don't like to run too long
after people have ordered before we send them out.
So it's it's kind of that that balance, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah. And, and I appreciate your
honesty because a lot of businesses come on saying like,
yeah, yeah, we're always looking at the latest strategies and
testing everything. And but the reality is like, I
mean, if we if we all. I sometimes do a timesheet just
to go wherever I spent my time this week and the amount of
fires I'm putting out. And I had to have a bit of a, I
don't say mid life, but I had a kind of mid business crisis a
couple of years ago where I was like, I'm just constantly
dealing with rubbish. Like is everything falling
apart? And it's like, no, that's just
my job. Like as the owner, when it goes
wrong, I'm the one who's got to step in.
So like when the kitchen floods, I got to go and deal with that.
Like when a window smashes, I got to go and deal with that.
Our landlords just announced they're turning half our office
into flats. So I'm now looking at new
offices. That's time I didn't factor in
three weeks ago until I got the letter.
So that's taking time out. And it's like, but it's
something I've got to do. But it's like, you got to make
this things fun. Be like, right, We're going on
office tours, like let's take a few of the team and like and
then ask random questions like can we fit a table tennis table
here? Because again, Elliot bloody
awesome a table tennis. Don't tell anyone I said that,
but. He's we've got one.
Yeah, yeah. So we've got just the other side
of this war. We've got 1 and I beat Elliot
probably one in about 100 games. I'm not joking like it's and he
gets as soon as I'm like about to win by one point.
He just thrashes me. It's so frustrating and but
let's finish on another note. So we're talking about, you said
a lot of the times where does my attention be taken fighting
fires? But there is always you wouldn't
be you were if you didn't plan some stuff and have a desire to
change things. So what's on the agenda for you
guys going forward? Like what, what are you, what
are your aspirations? What do you want to change?
What are some of the expansions? You've obviously just opened the
new shop separate to where you, we're sorry, the new cafe
separate to where you got the. Shop well, it's not Cafe, it's,
it's just just, it's just basically no, it's just a space
for us to do our online orders. I mean, we could open it as a
shop, but we we haven't done it yet.
There's new there's new furniture arriving tomorrow,
which is quite exciting. So yeah, I've I've just, I've
just enjoyed the. Business.
Yeah. Get some new chairs, new lights,
Yeah. So yeah, our plan this year I
think is to buy a new coffee roaster.
So we've got a luring 15K and we've got a bigger probat, but I
think we want to get a bigger luring roaster.
And they're they're amazing because they're really eco
friendly. They're low emission.
They're they're really consistent clean coffee
roasters. And yeah, so I think that's our
plan. We've got planning, planning
permission in at the moment to see if we're allowed to have it.
But yeah, so that's exciting and it and it will just change the
structure of our day. We've we've also got one of our
members of staff at the roastery, David is doing a
business management degree as a kind of working apprenticeship
thing. So that's, that's really cool.
So he goes to uni on a Monday and then works the rest of the
week. So in a few years time he should
be able just to run the roastery, which will, which will
be great. Yeah.
And if you're in the UK, I've never promoted any scheme or
anything the government's ever done.
All our governments here are pretty useless.
But the apprenticeship scheme is very, very good.
We've, we've not used it ourselves.
We've taken a slightly different approaches.
We still do that, but we pay a full time salary and the
training we do ourselves rather than having a university
involved. But but yeah, there's so many
businesses like you guys rave about it.
And it means you get a bit of a cost saving.
They get to earn money while they're studying.
It is actually a very, very good scheme.
And, and I'm saying it is actually because most, most of
the time when the government open in their mouths just causes
problems for everybody. It's almost, I was saying, I was
saying recently I would vote for a Prime Minister that said, I'm
going to do nothing. I'd be like, great, start
tomorrow. We don't start.
We'll put you in power tomorrow and do nothing.
It's fantastic. But but Lorna, it's been so good
to have you on the show. There must be some very, very
thirsty people listening to this now.
How can people find you guys? What's the website URL?
What are your social handles? How can people go and try some
of the coffee? Yeah, or you can visit us in
Perth, in Scotland if you're, if you're up in this direction.
So it's a George Street in Perth.
North Australia, I'm afraid. Yes, Scotland.
Yeah, exactly. And our Bean shop is the Bean
shop.co.uk and our socials are at the Bean Shop UK, so it'd be
lovely to hear from anyone who wants to get in touch and.
If you're going to buy coffee, obviously click on one of the
PBC. No, don't do that.
It will cost Lorna. Just go straight into the SEO
listing. Go go straight in there.
But Lorna, thank you so much. Appreciate your time, appreciate
all the coffee you've sent us. Thank you so much for answering
so many amazing questions as well.
And yeah, we'll definitely get you back on in a year or so's
time and see see how things are going on.
But yeah, thank you so much all. Right.
Thanks, Nick. Cool, and thanks for tuning
everybody. We'll be back again on Tuesday.
We're on T break talks and I'll be wearing the bean shop
T-shirt, which are now I'm gonna bring it in like tomorrow.
So it's ready a few days in advance.
But yeah, thanks so much tuning in everybody go and check out
our newsletter. The summit is now called Growth
Vault and I explained on Tuesday as to why we've changed the name
of it. So go and sign up to the waiting
list for that. If you want 1st of September,
everything goes live. Very, very exciting.
If you want to sponsor the show, sponsor Growth Vault, or get
involved in anything else we're doing, then do drop us a line.
Hello at Winning Win Shop fight.com.
Thanks for tuning in back again on Tuesday.
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