Our conversations with coffee shop owners

The approach and pitch

When assessing the viability of our business it was necessary to test our initial market capture assumptions. We did this by informally approaching ten coffee shop owners in the local area to pitch the idea of us giving them coffee cups for free. Invariably the first thing they would ask was “what’s the catch?”. We would continue to explain that we were making a small profit on each cup by selling advertising space to companies to promote their brand, and that the owners in turn would totally cut out the expense of coffee cups and lids. At this point they were very interested, however still skeptical. We then explained to the owners that part of our proceeds will go to our social cause of ‘Free the Slaves’ and that by aligning themselves with us, they too are helping in the fight against slave labor.

The results?

We found that seventy percent of the owners would align themselves with us. We asked each of them what the main draw card to our business was and three reasons resonated. The first being not paying for coffee cups and lids, as they highlighted any cut in cost that doesn’t reduce quality of the product or service is a good cost cut. The second being that they genuinely cared about our cause and wanted to help. And the third being that by having our cause on their cups, it presented a good image for their business that could hopefully attract and retain new customers.

Conversely, the other thirty percent of the owners said that they would not partner with us. When we respectfully asked why they wouldn’t align themselves with they gave us only two reasons. The first reason they gave was that they already had a print on their cup advertising their own brand. The second reason was given by only one owner, he believed that the advertising on our cups would be tacky.

Our conclusion

At a seventy percent adoption rate, we were very confident in regards to ‘Freedom Cups’ potential. We found that each coffee shop currently using blank cups would use our cups, whereas each coffee shop currently using already branded cups would not. Therefore, we have decided to now target vendors with blank coffee cups.