“The Founder” is a 2016 movie based on Ray Kroc and McDonald’s origin story, which won critical acclaim for Michael Keaton. In one important scene, Kroc (played by Keaton) visits a franchise location only to find that the operator has introduced fried chicken on the menu to compete with KFC. This flies directly in the face of the menu standardization he hoped to enforce across the McDonald’s system. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend that you do.

This scene is pivotal as it demonstrates the issues and challenges in achieving brand consistency. As a true visionary, Kroc wanted more than to sell burgers and fries. He aimed to deliver the same quality burgers and fries no matter where McDonald’s was located. And isn’t this the true goal of all franchises? To have uniform consistency from location to location? This was the key to what ultimately led to McDonald’s franchise dominance.

The crux of this article is that this uniformity becomes the cornerstone of all successful franchise brands, along with learning how to achieve it.

Inspect What You Expect

This mantra and approach go beyond establishing expectations and having a mechanism in place for verifying that expectations are being met across your entire system. So, how do you ensure that this principle is embedded in your operations?

Establish Clear-Cut Expectations

Do your franchisees clearly understand what you expect of them through regularly ongoing communications? These can best be conveyed through town hall meetings, newsletters, and updates to your franchise operations manual. However, based on FranConnect, franchisee visitations aren’t frequent enough to create sustainable changes.

Enter the Playbook

The playbook is a comprehensive document that outlines an organization’s key strategies, processes, and practices. It’s a “living, breathing document that serves as a roadmap for operating a business. It helps to ensure consistency and efficiency and to align with a brand’s goals and values. Your playbook can be used to ensure adherence to your vision and vision statements, core values, roles, and responsibilities. However, the most utilized facet of franchising tends to be around the business’s operational processes. It is a step-by-step guide to daily operations and routine activities critical to the business.

Systematic Audits

We have found that the trend has shifted to where more and more Franchisors are augmenting their franchise visitations by having their franchisees conduct their self-appraisals on the present state of their businesses. This translates into a regular cadence and approach that combines unexpected and announced visitations with franchisees “keeping score” with their utilization of franchise playbooks such as those deployed within FranConnect. Your audits should inspect strict adherence to your standards, customer service protocols, and operational requirements. You can readily conduct these assessments on your own accord, through your franchisees, and with solutions like RizePoint, a quality management system for multi-location businesses.

Utilize Checklists

Playbooks are critical to guiding your Franchise Business Consultants to assess each component of the operator’s execution and compliance with your standards. Well-defined checklists or playbooks deliver on your “inspect what you expect” program and can take average performers. With the help of your most accomplished Franchise Business Consultant, top Franchisees can be used to share their insights through your published playbooks. You’ll quickly see how this can transform your rank-and-file franchisees into exceptional operators.

Your Digital Tools of the Trade

Using technology tools and platforms that can aid you in monitoring your operational metrics, including your sales performance leading indicators, customer feedback through NPS, or other customer experience tools, can make good performers great performers. Your compliance checklists will provide you with the ability to provide on-time interventions when your standards aren’t being met.

The Power of Data-Driven Insights

Franchisors often find themselves with limited access to the systemic insights that exist within their organization based on data being kept in operational silos. This can gravely impact your franchise team’s effectiveness and the utility of playbooks. While playbooks are a standard operations framework, your data-driven insights allow your franchise operators to craft strategies that impact local market conditions. Imagine the power of sales data and customer feedback and how they could help franchisees adjust everything from your quality standards marketing to customer service and execution.

Performance benchmarking is one of the greatest benefits of aggregating data into a format that allows franchisors and franchisees to benchmark performance across different locations. By allowing your technology to analyze data on sales, product quality, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency, you can make informed decisions that can greatly enhance system-wide performance.

Continuous Improvement

With the average span of control of one Franchise Business Consultant to every thirty Franchisees, our research and pulse surveys show that the frequency of visits to franchise locations is too infrequent to bring lasting change. In having a technology-enhanced solution such as FranConnect’s automated operational playbooks, some triggers go to the Franchisee, Franchise Business Consultant, and others within the organization to allow for follow-up and a drive for continuous improvement. This can also help you continually update the playbooks to convey the most effective strategies and processes for the location and system.

Conclusion

Franchise Business Consultants equipped with data-driven insights can provide the most effective advice to franchisees, who can use those insights to address the individual challenges at each location and optimize their operations based on objective evidence. Additionally, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen an ever-increasing trend toward franchisees completing unscored self-appraisals using playbooks.

For those taking the best practices approach to leveraging the skill set of your top performers and expanding that knowledge through playbooks, you will have the advantage of taking average performers and turning them into your best performers.

And breaking down silos and taking a data-driven approach will help transform operations and strategic planning and allow you to evolve your system into a model of brand consistency.

Running a business is a kind of feedback loop—the happier the patrons, the better the business does. The better the business does, the more opportunities it has to wow customers. When designing a menu for your coffee shop or multi-location coffee shop, the trick is finding that sweet spot where both business and customer thrive equally.

Design a Coffee Shop Menu You and Your Customers Love

While brainstorming coffee shop menu ideas, you want to offer as much variety and intrigue as possible while honoring each shop’s realistic capabilities. There’s more value in doing a few things excellently than doing many things just OK. Let’s explore some of the ways your shops can achieve success through a well-conceived menu.

Learn How to Create a Coffee Shop Menu With Variety

The average American spends $20 or more on coffee weekly, and their orders vary significantly from person to person. Research has identified three distinct types of coffee drinkers in today’s market — the general coffee enthusiast who loves their morning pick-me-up, the flavor adventurer who seeks new and exciting taste experiences, and the quality-oriented coffee drinker, dedicated to drinking only the finest brew their area can provide. To please all three customer types, your coffee shop needs variety.

Hot Drinks to Sell

Hot drinks are the main event at cafés and coffee spots, and every outlet is expected to sell a set of beloved staples. These crowd-pleasing hot beverages are crucial to impressing your everyday coffee enthusiast. Items your customers expect to find on your menu include:

1. Drip coffee: This is standard black coffee made by slowly running hot water over coffee grounds and filtering it. Some people add cream and sugar to taste, while others prefer black coffee.
2. Espressos: Served in 1- to 2-ounce cups, espressos are stronger versions of drip coffee made with fine, dark-roasted coffee grounds and pressurized water. They have a rich, foamy crema on top and are used in several other hot drink orders.
3. Lattes: Combine a shot of espresso with some steamed milk, top it with a thin layer of milk foam, and you’ve made a latte. Many popular coffee shops offer hazelnut, vanilla, caramel, or other syrups to flavor the drink.
4. Teas: Green or matcha tea, English breakfast, Earl Grey, and herbal teas like chamomile and peppermint are all welcome additions to a standard café menu in America.
5. Mochas: Mocha combines the classic latte with chocolate syrup or cocoa powder and sugar to create a decadent grown-up hot cocoa. They are usually topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings.
6. Americanos: Americanos are similar to drip coffees, but they generally have a richer and more intense flavor because they are made with a shot of espresso and hot water combined.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Macchiatos, cappuccinos, chai teas, oolong teas, and flat whites are all popular hot drinks that would be excellent on a coffee shop menu. After you’ve created your budget and decided which market your brand aims to appeal to, you can decide whether to swap out one staple for another to customize the menu for your needs. Just be sure to pick quality coffee grounds to endear your brand to the quality-oriented clientele.

Cold Drinks to Sell

People don’t only visit coffee shops when it’s chilly outside, so it’s important to have a variety of cold drinks, too. These often require juicers, blenders, refrigerators, and ice, so consider how these extras will impact your budget, space, and the staff’s preparation time. Some cold drinks that will keep customers coming back include:

1. Cold brew coffee: This chilled, caffeinated drink is made by steeping coffee grounds in water for up to 12 hours. This creates a refreshing drink with a smooth taste and minimal bitterness. Cold brew works well as a standalone beverage or as a milkshake concentrate.
2. Iced tea and iced coffee: Iced tea and coffee are becoming increasingly popular in America, with millennial and Generation Z customers gravitating towards colder caffeinated beverages. These drinks need less preparation time than hot drinks, saving your staff time and giving your customers snappier service.
3. Freshly squeezed fruit juice: Nourishing, fresh fruit juice blends intrigue health-conscious customers and flavor adventurers alike. You’ll have to invest in a commercial juicer and buy and store fresh fruit, so carefully consider whether the market you’re targeting would buy freshly squeezed juice over a can of soda.

Other frosty options include frappes, smoothies, canned and bottled drinks, homemade lemonade, and more. Your final menu choices depend on your space, the time the staff has to prepare drinks, and what you want your brand to become known for.

Decaf and Regular Drink Options

When possible, provide regular and decaffeinated versions of your hot and cold coffee drinks. You can sell your beverages as relaxing evening treats and morning energy boosters, and customers who drink no caffeine at all still feel included and well-served. You’ll likely earn more profits while endearing your brand to a wider audience.

Milk Varieties

The meaning of the word “milk” has evolved, and it’ll do you good to cover every definition in your coffee shop refrigerator. Popular creamers and milk alternatives besides full-fat cow milk that work well with coffee include:

1. Oat milk
2. Almond milk
3. Soy milk
4. Macadamia milk
5. Skim milk
6. Lactose-free milk

Some milk-alternative brands offer a standard product version and a special formulation made specifically for baristas. These varieties create better foam texture and are easier to steam, so investing in the barista versions is a fantastic idea if you’re servicing a location with non-dairy coffee drinkers. Just note whether they’re sweetened or not and let your customers know.

Offer Specialty Coffee That Wows Customers

Specialty coffee is coffee of the highest standard. Your brew can be considered specialty coffee if the beans that went into it scored 80 points or higher on the Specialty Coffee Association’s grading system. If your brand seeks a premium, high-end reputation that caters to quality-oriented coffee connoisseurs, consider stocking specialty coffee for your staple drinks.

Create a Seasonal Coffee Shop Menu Cycle

While variety is the spice of life, novelty brings intrigue and exclusivity that makes a lasting impression on your customers. As seasons change, so do customer preferences, and therein lies an opportunity to offer them something new, memorable, and exciting. Examples of coffee shop menu items you can offer for each season include:

• Spring: Offer a fragrant lavender-matcha latte that echoes the blossoms and freshness of new growth while still warming customers up as sweater weather ends.
• Summer: Watermelon iced tea is a flavorful drink packed with sweetness, primed to cool customers off under the summer sun.
• Fall: The golden milk latte is a trendy, healthy Indian twist on the ever-popular pumpkin-spiced latte. It sings with flavor and aromatic comfort while brightening customers’ day with a lovely bright gold color.
• Winter: With the holidays in the air, what better way to warm up than with a luxurious peppermint mocha? Serve it complete with a candy cane to drive the cheery holiday spirit home.

Present Your Coffee Shop Menu in Style

Display your delicious drink ideas on a coffee shop menu board that invites customers in and gets them curious to try something new. You could decorate your chalkboard menu to match the season, theme it according to your brand’s unique aesthetic, or simply make it as legible and beautiful as possible. A menu’s look gives customers a visual taste of what to expect from your coffee shop’s products, so take the opportunity to really sell yourself.

Coffee Shops Trust FranConnect’s Software

FranConnect is the gateway to scaling your coffee shop business and growing your brand with multi-location management technology and innovative ideas. We foster growth and efficiency within each unit, paving the way for the whole business to flourish in turn. We’re eager to help your brand expand its success, so fill out a demo request form, and we’ll get your multi-location coffee shop business on the path to peak performance.

Store layout design has a huge impact on your customers’ happiness and your business’s success across multiple locations. It’s crucial to tailor retail spaces to the number and sort of products you offer, the space available, and the type of shopping experience you want your stores to give shoppers. Four of the most popular retail store designs are the grid layout, the herringbone layout, the loop or racetrack layout, and the free-flow layout, all of which can provide different benefits for your business.

The Grid Layout

The grid layout, also known as the supermarket layout or the straight floor plan, is the most common way retailers lay out their products. The design features a series of parallel aisles. One or more perpendicular aisles intersect the parallel aisles in larger stores, allowing shoppers to switch aisles easily without walking too far. You can organize your products into clear categories and predictable patterns by setting up your stores according to the grid layout.

Who Uses the Grid Retail Store Design?

Stores that stock many different products tend to opt for the grid layout because its design makes inventory management easier and more efficient. Grid layouts are also a smart choice if you want to use your ample space best. You’ll see grid layouts in drug stores, supermarkets, convenience stores, hardware stores, office supply stores, and electronics stores.

Pros of the Grid Layout:

• It’s easy to navigate: Customers can easily find what they are looking for because of the intuitive and segmented way products are displayed.
• Signs can guide customers: Businesses can hang signs above each parallel aisle explaining which products customers can find in the aisle.
• Merchandising opportunities are plenty: Retailers can set up multiple endcap displays and power walls to grab attention and showcase new, featured, or discounted products.

Pro tip: Add a power wall to your customers’ right at your stores’ entrance. Research suggests most Americans immediately look to their right when they walk into a space.

Cons of the Grid Layout:

• Flexibility is limited: A grid layout is rigid and fixed, so new ideas for shopper experiences or promotional displays have to fit within its set of parallel lines.
• It’s the same old, same old: Because of how common it’s become, shoppers may feel less excited, intrigued, or engaged in stores with a grid layout.
• Grids limit line of sight: Shoppers can only see products to their immediate left and right, so it’s harder for retailers to divert their attention to specific sections.

The Herringbone Layout

The herringbone layout is similar to the grid layout, but it’s optimized for long, narrow spaces. One central aisle runs down the length of the store, with smaller, shorter aisles branching off on either side, like a cartoon drawing of a fish bone. Shoppers typically pay at the end of this long, central aisle — where the head of the fish would be.

Who Uses the Herringbone Retail Store Design?

Clothing retailers and boutiques often use the herringbone layout with mannequins dotted along the central aisle to showcase featured products. Smaller hardware stores, home decor depots, specialty food markets, and antique shops also frequently choose the herringbone layout.

Pros of the Herringbone Layout:

• It’s stylish: The herringbone setup’s association with high-end boutiques and clothing shops gives the space a feeling of modernity and sophistication.
• It facilitates discovery: As shoppers walk down the center lane, they can see into each aisle and notice each endcap display, encouraging a diversity of purchases.
• Organization and variety work together: Like the grid layout, the herringbone style lets retailers display a wide range of products in an ordered, easy-to-maintain way in smaller spaces.

Cons of the Herringbone Layout:

• Traffic jams can happen: Customers can become clustered around popular sections, leading to a cramped feeling and less opportunity to make sales.
• Security may need a boost: Stores would benefit from security cameras in the herringbone layout as employees have a limited view of the offshoot aisles from the front.
• It may cost more to set up: Owners who want their stores laid out in the herringbone style may need to invest more in customizing the space, especially if side aisles are set at an angle.

The Loop or Racetrack Layout

The loop or racetrack layout is an excellent option for store owners who want to control customers’ inventory experience. One oval-shaped aisle loops around a central hub of products, with shoppers “making a lap” of the entire store while they browse. Products line the outer walls of the loop, while you can customize the middle of the circuit according to the journey you want to take your customers on.

Who Uses the Loop or Racetrack Retail Store Design?

Stores that offer a wide range of product types, like department stores and big-box retailers, often use the racetrack layout. The design exposes shoppers to the full spectrum of goods on offer, which is why pop-up shops also use loops to display their goods. This all-in-one shopping experience encourages shoppers to see all your products and buy things they may not have considered in a grid or herringbone layout.

Pros of the Loop or Racetrack Layout:

• Impulse purchases are more likely: Shoppers traverse your entire inventory as they browse, giving them more opportunities to pop unplanned purchases in their carts.
• Customers stay in the store longer: Completing a lap takes time, increasing shoppers’ time in your stores and thus the potential for sales.
• Stores feel spacious: A broad, meandering aisle encircling a cluster of product displays gives the store a spacious and comfortable feel.

Cons of the Loop or Racetrack Layout:

• Featured products are a challenge: The racetrack layout does not include endcaps or structural focal points, so highlighting specific promotions requires innovation and creativity.
• Customers have to travel further: Shoppers who’ve visited your stores for one or two specific items will have to walk the length of the track to find them, which some may appreciate less than others.
• Shoppers may miss central products: Customers could neglect to browse the central product hub if it isn’t cleverly and engagingly laid out.

The Free-Flow Layout

Free-flow store layouts are true to their name — they let you decide exactly how you want your shoppers to navigate the space and experience your products. These highly customizable designs can range from large open spaces peppered with plinths and racks to a combination of more rigid layouts like a herringbone-racetrack hybrid.

Who Uses the Free-Flow Retail Store Design?

High-end fashion retailers, art galleries, specialty or niche retailers, and other concept stores often appreciate the freedom the free-flow design affords them. Tech showrooms also use this highly customizable design to tailor visitors’ experience around featured products. In general, stores with less merchandise tend to lean toward free-flow designs.

Pros of the Free-Flow Layout:

• It’s personalized for your customer base: You can lay out your stores to suit your specific clientele, whether they enjoy exploring nooks and crannies or wide open spaces.
• Featuring products is easy: Free-form layouts are a great backdrop for directing customer attention because you can set up displays however and wherever possible.

Cons of the Free-Flow Layout:

• Shoppers may need more guidance: If the space is not laid out logically, shoppers may not know where to find what they want.
• Space could be better optimized: Free-form store layouts need to cleverly position their products so they don’t waste space for the sake of bespoke design.

Brick-and-Mortar Stores Trust FranConnect’s Software

Businesses with stores in multiple locations need software they can rely on to manage their sales, performance, brand consistency, and other crucial data. FranConnect helps grow your brand with innovative technology that optimizes and streamlines multi-location retailers’ most pivotal processes. Contact us to request a demo from our experts or start a conversation about elevating your brand today.

Visit any sales website, and you likely won’t have to look long to find a stock photo showing satisfied customers or an appealing display. But does that mean you should be using them on your website?

As a franchisee, your goal is simple — draw in new visitors and show them why your business is the best choice. While stock photos can help you build your online aesthetic, there are likely much better options for you to achieve the same. Learn what stock images are and what you can do differently with FranConnect today.

What Are Stock Images?

Stock photos are images created for a variety of uses. You see them every day — they can be anything from a group of people laughing together to a picturesque sunset on the beach. They are generally mass-produced images that marketing companies sell for people who cannot create or take images of their own, and they’re a favorite among businesses and franchises looking to save time in their advertising campaigns. You may see them on:

• Billboards
• Textbooks
• Pamphlets
• Websites
• Product listings

Cons of Using Stock Photos for Marketing

Despite their popularity, using stock photos comes with a laundry list of things to look out for. While you can use stock photos for your business website, the images tend to appear:

• Unoriginal: Even if you pay for your stock photos, they may be subject to many copywriting laws and similar legalities later on. The best way to protect yourself and your brand from potential legal issues is to create original images on your own so that there is no question they belong to you.
• Off-brand: Even the highest quality stock photo will not align precisely with your brand’s style. You may need to spend extra time editing and adjusting them to fit your franchise’s aesthetic. In some cases, it may be easier to take your own images so that you can make them how you want them.
• Disingenuous: Stock photos are created with the intention of versatility, so they’re unlikely to perform exactly how you are envisioning them. When people recognize an image as a stock photo, they might see it as a brand taking the easy way out, like they do not care about their marketing materials — and maybe even their products.
• Repetitive: Since stock images are free and available to anyone, there’s a good chance that any stock photo you use is already on another website. To viewers, it will be obvious that you’ve used the same resources, leading them to wonder how your business is better than any other. If it’s important to you to have a website that is completely unique from competitors, it’s best to develop images on your own instead of browsing stock photos.

Pros of Using Stock Photos for Marketing

While these cons are usually the reason brands avoid using stock photos, there are a few benefits to make note of. After all, franchise stock images are popular for a reason. When someone decides to use a stock photo, it’s usually because it’s:

• Easily accessible: A simple online search of “stock images” will give you hundreds of stock photo websites at your disposal. Even the most novice internet users can easily find and download stock photos to suit their needs, making it a popular choice among startup businesses and those still learning how to work their websites.
• Cheaper: Creating original photos can potentially cost a lot of money. Depending on the photos you want, you might have to hire a photographer or videographer and models for the shoot, schedule a time to take the pictures and find someone to edit them to your liking. Stock photos can be free or come at a flat-rate price — making them cheaper than trying to hire someone to take your photos. In short, stock photos can save time and money you can use to invest in other parts of your franchise.

Discover FranConnect’s Suite of Franchise Management Software

Unless your budget is very tight or you’re running out of time, original images are the way to go. They can help your business in the long run, just like having a platform like FranConnect to help you scale your franchise.

As one of the country’s leading franchise support providers, we know there is often a better option than using stock photos to boost sales and marketing efforts. Learn new ways to meet brand guidelines and set new performance standards with our platform today. Request a demo online or call us at 833-438-7523 for more information.