Whole Foods — Alli Steen

Longmont Coffee Bar

The coffee bar at the whole foods longmont location has struggled to bring in revenue since the store’s opening. At the time of this project it offered: standard and regional drip coffee options, espresso drinks, iced tea and ice cream. as well as baked goods from the bakery. Compared to other stores in the region, the longmont location’s coffee bar has very little traffic. The challenge for this project was to Increase sales and customer satisfaction at this location.

Challenges

The coffee bar is in the front right hand corner of the store with large garage doors that open up to the outside,
many customers walk right by without ever seeing the coffee bar or seeing any advertisements for drinks served there-
though those who do come up often ask whether or note smoothies and juice are offered. Another unique feature of the
Longmont coffee bar is the lack of those options- many other stores have combined their coffee and juice bars.
The store used to have a stand-alone juice bar but it was discontinued due to lack of revenue and customer interest.

Along with these challenges it is worthy to note that the ice cream freezer which can be a big draw in the summer often breaks due to faulty installation. the cost of fixing the freezer likely is more than how much the coffee bar makes in ice cream revenue-
during the colder months in Colorado there is little to no traffic and even during the summer demand isn’t particularly high.

Process

There was more than one way of addressing the sales issues at the coffee bar, ranging from replacing the ice cream freezer
with a juice bar to keeping the ice cream freezer but offering different sales incentives or combo deals.
Below is a brief outline of each proposed solution with the pros and cons and an analysis of how well it addressed the intended goal: sales and customer satisfaction- as well as the rough overall cost of implementation. As a note, the final proposed solution would also be accompanied by changing how Allegro coffee bar ads would be placed around the store as well as accompanying ads,
tri-folds, posters…etc reflecting the chosen solution.

Proposal

After reviewing all options, pursuing a more aggressive sampling strategy around the store
would be the best solution - keeping in mind items from other departments that would compliment
coffee bar products or encourage cross-department sales.

The pros of this solution are that it doesn’t cost any additional labor and it takes advantage of materials
already on hand. Demo tables around the floor will increase the visibility of coffee bar products and encourage sales.

Future Scope

Looking forward to other design improvements and possibilities into how to
enhance sales beyond just putting out more samples led to more digital solutions.
Proposed future implementations could include:

Location based push notifications for coffee bar and store-wide sales
View and receive digital copies of receipts
View and receive digital coupons in-app
Take satisfaction surveys

These proposals go beyond the scope of just local coffee sales and have the potential to
enhance user’s experience at the Longmont coffee bar, but at Whole Foods locations globally.

**Coffee bar sales would appear in Prime app**

**Receipts would be accessible via the app**

**WF and prime coupons push notifications**