I am a coffee shop person. I do most of my working, studying, and meetings at coffee shops. Even though a coffee shop is more crowded and louder than my house I am a lot more productive there (and at libraries). When I sit beside  ther people who seem productive, I tend to work harder myself too.

In West Lafayette, IN (where I live) a new coffee shop called GreyHouse opened around last August (2008). The place used to be another coffee shop called “The Village Coffee House”. It is located right on Purdue’s campus which attracts many students, professors, and university visitors. From what I hear one of the churches in town bought the Village Coffee House. They did a lot of renovation and turned it into GreyHouse coffee shop.

The renovations are great. The new place looks a lot more attractive and has good furniture. There are tables for studying and couches to just get together in the afternoon. There is a wireless internet too (of course). There is a back room that can be reserved for meeting as large as 15 people or so. They put drawings and paintings from local artists on display and host live music routinely.

Bottom line GreyHouse is a great coffee shop and I am very glad they are now open as West Lafayette was lacking a decent coffee shop. Even though their prices are slightly higher than their competitors in town (one located right next door) I will stay a regular customer. However, their internet speed has slowed down considerably which I hope they address soon.

As an entrepreneur I also would like to look and analyze their business practices.

Offering More Than Just Coffee: Many coffee shops have great coffee and menu, however what draws most people to a particular coffee shop is the environment. GreyHouse has a more up-class and modern environment. This might not appeal to everyone. Some people do like coffee shops with old furniture and a homey feel. However most students, professors, businessmen/women prefer a more modern and trendier environment. That is the main reason that GreyHouse has stolen a large portion of customers from other coffee shops in this college area of town.

This is the same in online business (where me and most of the readers of this blog work at). Our sites might offer the same main features (core values) as other businesses, however it is the above expectation services and features that set us apart. If we place ourselves in a higher service bracket (for a given core product) we are basically offering more luxury to the visitors and can actually charge premiums for it.

Great Customer Service: In an older post I discussed the value of retaining a happy customer and high cost of losing one. It is much less expensive to keep a customer happy than to retain a new one. In my opinion t is hard to actually have “bad customer service” in coffee shop business, but offering above minimum is what sets a business apart.

A customer goes to a coffee shop to find a relaxed environment to do light work, read a book, or meet with friends all of which has a common denominator of relaxation. A coffee shop that enforces that will win over the competition an day. This is not accomplished by complex business formulas and techniques. It is actually very small but noticeable every day acts.

For example employees at GreyHouse seem to actually enjoy working here which is essential to offering a good customer service. Also at night right before closing, they don’t ask the customers to leave in 5 minutes. They ask “whether they can get them anything else before they close in 5 minutes”.

This applies to all local businesses as well as internet businesses alike. I have had so many customers order a service/product, ask for a special 2 or 3 day delivery, and not receive their item/service on time due to errors on our side. However, they have all (with no exception) stayed our loyal customers because (as they put it) we offer great customer service. So keep your customers happy at (almost) all costs.

GreyHouse’s Website: GreyHouse coffee shop has a website. This is a step forward by itself as most of local businesses don’t have an online presence. however I think GreyHouse could use some improvements on their site.

This is my field so I’m going to make a good number of complains and comments. How your site looks and what features it has highly depends on what you plan to accomplish with it. In my opinion a coffee shop’s website can serve two main goals.

1. First to give information about the business – most importantly hours of operation. Many online visitors (including me) are interested in how late the coffee shop is open which the site doesn’t address right now.
2. Second, the website can be used to help employees feel part of the business and therefore be much more productive at work. This can be accomplished by having a blog on the site and allowing (some of) the workers to be authors on it.

Along side of the above goals, and simple website usability issues following are some more comments:

• I like the simple white feel, but it would be much better if they also add a simple header and footer to the site with some color. Perhaps blue (loyalty) or red/orange (energy).
• Put some sort of scroller (perhaps JavaScript) on the event section to scroll up and down through the events.
• The menus page is in PDF (and a really badly scanned one). Make an HTML version. Search engines can read it easier and most importantly visitors can read it better. You can keep the PDF version for download via a separate link.
• Put small pictures of some of the employees and the coffee shop itself on homepage. It makes the site more personal and helps visitors connect to it.
• The Photos link is pointed to a full screen photo gallery from Flickr. Most people just want to check out a thumbnail page and choose a selective number of pictures to look at. Why not point to this page instead?
• Improve search engine friendliness of your site and do some basic off-site optimization. GreyHouse coffee shop is not ranking first even for its own keyword on Google. In fact Google lists a completely separate site as GreyHouse’s official site under Google Maps.
• An option to make reservation for the backroom through an online form would be neat too, but probably not very practical.

Some other points to mention about the coffee shop are that their coffee is great, the place is warm (unlike Starbucks that is always cold), their cakes and icecream are great, and the bathroom is always clean.

I’d also like to hear any comments you have about Grey House Coffee shop.