You’ve decided that the coffee industry is where you want to be. Starting your business is an exciting time. It’s also a time that comes with all sorts of questions. How do you choose between opening an independent shop or partnering with a larger coffee franchise? Each option has its own benefits. It’s really a matter of deciding what works best for you and your goals as a business owner.
What do you need to know when starting a coffee franchise? What are the advantages of a franchise compared to starting an independent shop? There are plenty of reasons why entrepreneurs are opting for franchise partnerships rather than going it alone. Here is just some of what you need to know when it comes to making the decision for your business.
Building brand identity and earning a solid reputation isn’t something that happens overnight. Even the best businesses require years and years to become trusted, household names in their respective industries. That includes your beloved quirky local shop. If you readily know the name of a business, it’s likely because it went through years of hard work to carve out a foothold for itself.
Developing the right kind of reputation as a leader in your industry depends on a lot of variables going right. You also need everything to continue to go right for some time to come. If you’re starting an independent business, you may not have the luxury of taking years to build your brand identity. Just think of how many coffee shops, restaurants, and wannabe coffee franchises have come and gone in your neighborhood.
As a new business, it takes time and effort to cultivate a crop of reliable customers. You need marketing, promotions, deals, and more to establish a customer base that can sustain your business. Larger brands enjoy a level of recognition that comes with a ready-made customer base eager to give you their business.
Becoming associated with a major brand is a key advantage of partnering with an established and proven coffee franchise. In doing so, business owners can take comfort in knowing that they are buying more than a business. They are buying a name, and the name recognition, that comes with it.
A Scooter’s Coffee® franchise is a prime example of this principle in action. Scooter’s Coffee started in 1998. That’s more than 20 years of serving amazing drinks, amazingly fast. In that time, the coffee franchise has grown to over 230 locations across the United States with franchisee commitments for over 200 more. Amazing fans across the country flock to stores for signature beverages. They look for the brands they know when visiting or moving to new places. This is a level of cultural cachet that takes years to build.
For many entrepreneurs, the idea of starting their own independent business requires a serious leap of faith. Much of the success of a new business is directly relies on its business plan. Depending on what industry an entrepreneur is coming from, they may or may not be starting with a business model at all! An investment like starting your own business is hardly the time or place to “wing it.” That said, there can still be some perks to starting an independent business from scratch.
When you’re starting an independent business from the ground up, you’re starting with a blank canvas. This can be exhilarating for entrepreneurs with a vision of what they want to achieve and how they want to get there.
When it comes to an independent business, there’s no one to tell you what to do or how to do it. Many people find this thrilling and crave the freedom to find their own way. However, this freedom comes with a caveat. When hard times come, an independent business owner only has themselves to blame.
A consultant or industry knowledge can help a great deal. Regardless, developing the proper processes and best practices to make your business successful takes time. More often than not, it also requires a fair deal of trial and error until you get it right. In an industry where margins can already be tight, making these errors is something that most businesses can ill afford.
By partnering with an established franchise system, you’re signing onto a model that is both time-tested and proven to work. Your parent company is proof positive of a business model that can set your business up for success.
These business models have been rigorously tested and honed over time. Companies carefully consider each factor to ensure that the same sort of success can be replicated in other locations. It’s the entire basis of a franchise model. Of course, much of the success of any business comes down to the owners themselves and how they run their operations. Even so, by following the business model given to them, franchisees ensure that they are starting things off on the right foot.
One of the biggest advantages of partnering with an established franchise is having some extra power in your corner. Joining forces with a larger company in effect puts all the advantages of that company at your back. That means making the most of the larger marketing and advertising clout afforded by a larger operation.
There are still some benefits to going it alone when it comes to marketing. When you choose to do it yourself, you have the opportunity to create your own story. You’re the one establishing the messaging, the marketing campaigns, and what you do or don’t want to do.
As an independent business owner, you’re starting from scratch and building your story from the ground up. That means coming up with your own logo, your own messaging, and your own advertising. This can quickly become be very expensive, and you’re paying for all of it.
By partnering with a larger coffee franchise, you get to make the most of more than just the name. Your location will also reap the benefits of the larger marketing and advertising campaigns of the parent company. Part of your franchise costs go directly to the national marketing budget, so everything the company is doing on a larger scale also goes to help you better promote your business.
When your parent company tells everyone about an amazing new product, your customers will know, too. When a national campaign is being run or a charity initiative is taking place, your business will also benefit from positive press. Thanks to deeper pockets and the aforementioned proven business model, franchisors can provide their franchisees with the marketing firepower they need to get their message to the world.
Building your own business is one of the most rewarding processes you can undertake. It can also be one of the scariest. With everything riding on the line of the success of your business, there’s little that you want to leave to chance. When you choose to team up with the right coffee franchise, you can follow a path specifically designed to help your business succeed. Find out more about how you can start your coffee franchise with the team at Scooter’s Coffee, and learn more about how we invest in your success.
