As a beverage retailer or foodservice operator, you are always looking for ways to increase profit from the sale of drinks. Here’s a quick summary of five ways you can pump up your beverage profits and delight your customers in 2019.
1. Sell cold brew coffee.
Cold brew coffee is a natural, tasty burst of energy. Consumers are increasingly turning to natural beverages without the added sugar, chemicals, and sweeteners that energy drinks contain. Cold brew coffee is a major trend that is not going away any time soon. While every major coffee retailer is already ahead of the trend, most foodservice operators have not yet taken advantage of the potential. Get ahead of the trend and test cold brew.
2. Go frozen.
Consumers love frozen drinks. Not enough operators understand this or take advantage of it. And when you add the category of frozen drinks to your beverage program, this strategic decision gives you a ready-made reason to renegotiate your overall soft drink deal. Your supplier will want to add frozen beverage revenue, so they will be open to re-visting your entire deal. That will give you an opportunity to lower invoice prices and/or increase rebate funds across the board. This gives you the chance to save money on all of your drinks and pump up drink profits overall with higher revenue frozen offerings.
3. Appoint a beverage incidence specialist.
The soft drink companies can only do so much to drive incidence. If you don’t have someone responsible for driving beverage incidence on your staff, your beverage supplier alone will not be effective at this. Incidence improvement takes focus and effort. Someone on your team must be tasked with discovering and applying current industry best practices to your company. Assign someone to work with your supplier and with your staff at every level of the organization (especially the retail store level) to implement incidence-driving programs.
4. Add flavored teas.
Tea is liquid gold for restaurant operators. It is likely to be highest percentage gross margin item you sell. It costs a fraction of what your fountain soft drinks cost (an even smaller fraction of bottled drinks). Adding a selection of flavored teas will pump up drink profits, lower your food cost, and satisfy more health-conscious consumers. Go visit any major convenience store chain. You will see a wall of flavored teas. Consumers are turning to flavored teas instead of carbonated soft drinks for their refreshment and meal time accompaniment.
5. Invest in a truly effective crew incentive.
Crew incentives are effective if two things happen: 1) there is explicit and well-communicated competition between crew members and/or stores, and 2) the rewards are worthwhile. Creating competition takes serious effort on your part. Publicize results. Reward the winning crew or individual handsomely. Make it easy to participate. Engage your soft drink supplier to provide merchandising and prize support.
For more ideas like this, and to better understand how your next pouring rights agreement can better drive profits in these ways (and many others), let’s talk.
You might also be interested in our webinar: The Top 8 Mistakes to Avoid When Negotiating Beverage Contracts
Cold Brew Coffee Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash
Frozen Beverage Photo by Melissa Walker Horn on Unsplash
Incidence Specialist Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
Flavored Tea Photo by Eiliv Sonas Aceron on Unsplash
Crew Incentive Photo by Nicolas Hoizey on Unsplash
