Twenty options and none of them consistent. Every addition slows the line and dilutes the thing you'd be known for.
Prices copied from the café down the street. Nobody has costed the oat milk or the extra shot, so the popular drinks lose money.
Quality swings with who's on bar. When they leave, the recipe leaves. Regulars notice before you do.
A pumpkin drink invented the week of, with no costing and no training. It sells, and nobody knows if it made money.
Most of your sales are ten drinks. In almost every café, a small handful of drinks carry the vast majority of sales. Pull your sales mix before you touch the menu; the drinks to cut are usually obvious.
Cost the whole cup. Coffee, milk, syrup, and also the cup, lid and sleeve. Non-dairy milks cost more than dairy; if you're not charging for them, your most popular drinks may be your least profitable.
One recipe card format. Dose, yield, time, milk volume per size, syrup pumps. The same fields for every drink, in the same order, at the bar. Consistency comes from the card, not the barista.
Two specials at a time. Seasonal drinks work when they're planned a quarter ahead, costed, and trained a week before launch. Cap it at two on the menu at once so the core doesn't suffer.
What's on it and why. Core drinks, formats and sizes chosen for your concept and your team's skill, with the fat trimmed.
Every drink costed to the ingredient. Prices set for margin and for what your customers will pay, not for what the neighbor charges.
Every drink written the same way: dose, ratio, steps, build. The same drink comes out no matter who's on bar.
Opening, closing, dialing in, milk, cleaning. The routines behind the menu, short enough that people actually follow them.
How to teach the menu to the next hire, so the manager doesn't have to reinvent it.
A calendar for specials, with costing and training built in ahead of time, so seasonal drinks are planned instead of improvised.
Day 1Taste and Audit. We drink the menu, look at your sales mix and your costs, and tell you what to cut, what to keep and what's mispriced.
Week 1 to 2Build. Framework, pricing, recipe book and SOPs written and sent for your notes. One round of changes.
Week 2 to 3Hand Off. Final menu and manual delivered. Optional training session for the team on the new build.
Quick. A refresh of an existing menu is usually a couple of weeks from tasting to final recipe book. A menu built from scratch for a new café takes longer because it's tied to the build.
For a refresh, tasting your current drinks in person helps but isn't required. Send your menu, your sales mix and your costs and we can work remotely. If you want in-person training after, we travel for it.
Yes. Every drink costed to the ingredient and priced for margin. This is the part most people skip and the part that pays for the engagement.
Yes, that's a separate service. Specialty drink development builds one drink nobody else has. Menu support is the whole menu. They stack well, but you don't need both.
