Improving a Café the BSC way

Looking superficially, a place like that of a Cafe might appear limited in their ‘number of offerings’

However, stepping into the details of this subject opens up a new world of opportunities. Names like ‘Starbucks’ vindicate the way one can make out ‘everything’ out of ‘nothing’. Having said this, the need to distinguish oneself from the other budding ‘coffee places’ asks for being ‘innovative’ and ‘off-the-usual-track’ to leverage the potential of such area. For instance, mastering the ‘coffee latte art’ can be the sole difference between the dipping revenues of one coffee bar and the soaring earnings in another industry player.

>From this flows the fact that the ‘interest’ and ‘potential’ of the front-end staff plays a significant role in ‘restricting’ or ‘pushing’ the success of the organization makes for a compelling reason to ‘train the employees’ well enough. Appropriate amount of time and money should be put aside in helping the personnel develop the required skills, experience and knowledge about the operations.

Cafes often opt for going with the ‘franchising’. In such decisions, the brand plays an indispensable portion of the strength to lure coffee drinkers. So, maintaining the ‘hard-built’ positive effect of the ‘halo’ called ‘reputation’ can give tough times to the company.

A financial hurdle that shapes up due to the franchising option relates to the ‘consolidation’ of the operations from various locations that are spread out far and near. This results in an increase in dependence on ‘numbers and figures’. Consequently, a way to collect the statistics that enables the viewing of progress in one-go should be opted for.

Moving on, next is the ‘location’ of the place. It should be very much in reach of sufficient number of coffee drinkers. Besides this factor, the kind of service to be provided should also be considered. For instance, an optimum location for a sit-up bar has to be different from that of a drive-thru place. In case, it’s a start-up, a detailed study before deciding is the only prudent choice. However, for the ones who are already based somewhere should opt for ‘maximum customization’ of their solutions.

One can dig out a well-enough answer to all these problems in the form of ‘BSC’ i.e. Balanced Scorecard. It makes possible the tracking and monitoring procedure of the operations.

The perspectives that can aid in this regard are- Financial Perspective, Internal Operations, raw Materials and Utilities and Employee Training and Development. The KPIs for Financial analysis can be- % jump in operating costs, percentage increase in per employee revenue, daily revenue generated and % climb in annual earnings. An idea about the Internal Operations can be obtained with KPIs- quality uniformity, unavailability index, number of items on the content list and proximity rating. Raw materials and Utilities Perspective can be had with parameters that pertain to the usage of ‘electricity, water and paper’. Lastly, the Employees Training and Development can be attained using KPIs- staff skill and expertise development, staff capability scaling and training expenses: revenues. In a nut shell, such or similar squeezing of ‘factors that matter’ is useful in establishing a pro-active and forward looking approach of operating a Café.