Context
What's the Buzz Coffee roasts and serves specialty coffee in the Bryan and College Station area, pairing a café and bakery with a roastery that sells beans by the bag to retail customers and to wholesale accounts. The business sources through direct trade relationships with growers, and much of its identity rests on that sourcing: studio tours, cuppings, and classes on brewing, bean history, and barista skills give customers a way into where the coffee comes from and how it is made. Its stated mission is to build community connections and to support the growers behind the coffee it sells.
The business operates in a college town, where the year turns on the academic calendar and a large student population sits alongside longtime local customers. Heading into Fall 2024 it was preparing a new location with its own outdoor plot, weighing how much coffee to sell from a trailer at events and markets rather than from a counter, and watching freight disruption and rising input costs press on the cost of green coffee and packaging.
Challenge
What's the Buzz Coffee is a specialty coffee shop, roastery, and bakery built around direct trade sourcing, cuppings, and brewing classes. Heading into Fall 2024, the business was planning a new location and wanted to reach more young adults, including students at Texas A&M, while working out how shipping costs should sit inside its retail and wholesale bean prices. The three questions pulled in different directions: a new space had to be furnished and given an identity on a set budget, a campus audience tended to compare coffee on price before quality, and bean pricing had to absorb procurement and freight costs at a moment of port disruption and rising input costs. TASK was asked to turn those questions into a launch plan, an engagement strategy, and a pricing approach the owner could keep running without outside help.
How the team worked
The scope set three questions: how to open and build awareness for a new location, how shipping costs should be handled inside retail and wholesale product pricing, and how to reach the young adult market around Texas A&M. A team of five split the work into four deliverables that ran in parallel through the semester: a café launch plan, a customer engagement strategy, pricing and profitability optimization, and an operational and supply chain review.
Each deliverable started from the client's own records. The pricing work was built on the bean price lists and shipping invoices the owner supplied. The beverage comparison was drawn item by item against nearby shops at matching sizes, and the bean benchmark held origin constant, comparing price per ounce for one origin across local roasters and national retailers so the comparison stayed like for like. The engagement work drew on a survey of campus communities and on what comparable shops were already posting.
Recommendations were written so the owner could act on them directly. The café layout came with sourcing links grouped into three budget tiers rather than a single specification. The outreach section named the kinds of organizations and markets worth approaching and paired each with a ready-to-send email. The pricing section arrived as an Excel workbook rather than a fixed number, with a price modifier slider, breakeven buttons, a market rate setting tied to the benchmark tab, and editable cost cells so shipping and other costs could be corrected as they move.
Where a recommendation changed a price or added an operation, the team paired it with a way to test before committing: an A/B split on a bean price adjustment across a sample of customers, a sample order of coffee bags before any bulk purchase, and a part-time trailer pilot at one location alongside pop-ups and vendor collaborations. Packaging and sourcing options were laid out as trade-offs, unit cost against lead time, control, and working capital, so the decision stayed with the owner.
Workstreams
- Drafted a layout and atmosphere concept for the new café, with perimeter booth seating, high tables, a bean-origin map wall, a chalkboard wall, and greenery, plus furniture and decor sourcing options at three budget levels.
- Redesigned the loyalty program so every purchase earns points, adding consecutive-visit bonuses, challenges, birthday rewards, website access to rewards, and promotion at checkout and through the email list.
- Mapped outreach to campus student organizations and local vendor markets, and wrote contact templates for coffee tabs, event pop-ups, and trailer appearances.
- Proposed in-store engagement ideas, including a customer drink-creation board with a monthly vote, a sample station, a founder's drink of the day, a farmer and sourcing wall, and a photo corner, alongside a social posting schedule, a seasonal drinks section, flyer mockups in brand colors, and a student ambassador program.
- Compared beverage prices against local competitors, outlined a tiered blend model that reserves premium beans for premium drinks, and built a customizable Excel tool that models retail and wholesale bean prices against procurement and shipping costs, breakeven points, and a competitor benchmark.
- Reviewed coffee bag suppliers at home and abroad, assessed the bean portfolio against replacement options, and compared pop-up stands, vendor collaborations, and event-based operations as alternatives to running a trailer full time.
What the team found
- Compared item for item at matching sizes, the café's drink prices sat at the higher end of the nearby local field, a gap that traced back to premium bean sourcing rather than to how the shop is run.
- The bean side told the opposite story: measured per ounce for a single origin against other roasters and national retailers, the retail and wholesale bag prices sat below the going market rate.
- Younger customers reached through the campus survey weighed price and sweetness ahead of origin and craft, so the quality difference the business sells on was doing less work with that group.
- Margins varied widely across the bean portfolio, by blend and by whether a bag sold retail or wholesale, which meant one pricing rule applied across every blend suited some far better than others.
- Packaging bought in small, frequent restocks cost far more per bag than the bulk quantities open to the business, and lead time, not price, was the real trade between international and domestic suppliers.
- Campus organizations and the weekly vendor markets already ran recurring events with food and drink budgets, offering standing occasions to appear at rather than one-off promotions to buy.
What the client received
- Written final report covering the café launch plan, customer engagement strategy, pricing and profitability analysis, and supply chain review
- Final client presentation deck walking through all four deliverables
- Customizable Excel bean pricing and profit tool with product, cost, breakeven, and competitor benchmark tabs
- Café layout and atmosphere concept with furniture and decor sourcing options at three budget levels
- Redesigned loyalty program framework covering earning, bonuses, challenges, and website access
- Outreach contact templates for campus organizations and local vendor markets
- Social media flyer mockups in brand colors, plus a posting schedule and seasonal drinks section plan
- Coffee bag supplier comparison, bean portfolio review with replacement options, and trailer operating model assessment
Outcome
What's the Buzz Coffee left the engagement with a concrete picture of the new café, from layout and atmosphere down to where to buy the furniture at three budget levels, and a loyalty program and campus outreach plan aimed squarely at students. It has a pricing model it can rerun as bean and shipping costs move, and a clearer sense of where its beans sit against the wider market. On packaging, bean selection, and the trailer, it has a phased set of options with the trade-offs laid out, so each can be tested at small scale before capital is committed.
Recommendations
- Build the new café around the layout concept: perimeter booth seating, high tables at the center, a bean-origin map wall and a chalkboard wall, furnished from whichever of the three budget tiers fits the build-out.
- Rebuild the loyalty program so every purchase earns, adding consecutive-visit bonuses, challenges, birthday rewards, and rewards visible on the website, and promote it at checkout and through the email list.
- Open standing relationships with campus organizations and the weekly vendor markets using the prepared outreach emails, offering coffee tabs, private classes and cuppings, pop-up booths, and trailer appearances.
- Move everyday specialty drinks onto a lower-cost blend and reserve premium beans for premium drinks and for customers who ask for them, keeping menu prices within reach of the campus audience.
- Bring bean prices up toward the market rate the competitor benchmark implies, using the workbook to check profit and breakeven for each blend, quantity, and delivery location before any new price is set.
- Buy coffee bags in bulk rather than in small restocks, starting with the low-minimum international option and treating a move to domestic suppliers as a later step if lead time or support becomes the binding constraint.
Next steps
- The client was handed a customizable Excel workbook with product, price, cost, profit, and competitor benchmark tabs, plus reset, market rate, and breakeven buttons to run new pricing itself.
- The client was handed an A/B testing sequence for a bean price change: split a sample of customers, start with the smaller popular bag sizes, then extend by quantity and by customer type as responses come in.
- The client was handed a phased packaging plan that begins with a sample order before any bulk commitment and leaves the move to domestic suppliers as an optional later step.
- The client was handed a hybrid trailer plan: pilot part-time operation at a single location alongside pop-up stands and vendor collaborations, tracking sales, labor, and inventory before scaling.
- The client was handed ready-to-send outreach emails, a list of the campus organizations and markets worth approaching, flyer mockups in the brand colors, and a posting schedule for the coming school year.