Selling coffee online, while it is a relatively recent practice, it’s not brand new, meaning there is a well-established customer base for this market in every country. According to the National Coffee Association, coffee drinkers have increased by 14% since January, bringing the percentage of coffee drinkers in America to 66%. You have an open market waiting for you to sell coffee to them, so the question is, ‘How do I start an online coffee business?’
If this is your question, hang in there because we will give you steps on how to sell coffee online in a bit. But before we get to the steps, let us look at some of the benefits of selling coffee online.
Benefits of selling coffee online
There are many benefits of selling coffee online; here are three of them:
- Large customer base
If we are following the statistics from NCA, we have a wide range of customers waiting for coffee and coffee products. Your customer base is an ever-increasing one, too, as the coffee numbers keep hitting the roof and surprising regulators.
- You have a product variety.
When choosing a product(which we will talk about later), you do not need to be worried that you may be late to the market for that product because the catalog is not limited. Coffee has a variety of products and even niches for you to pick from and make a name with. So there is nothing to worry about.
- People love small brands.
People will often pick small brands over bigger ones when it comes to food and consumables. They assume that the producers of the coffee in a small business pay much attention to detail because they are not working with mass production.
Now that we have gone through the benefits of selling coffee online, here are steps to start an online coffee business.
Choose your niche and products
When people hear about the coffee business, they immediately imagine a Starbucks cup with the wrong name scribbled on the body. However, there is more to coffee than the rich brown liquid, which 66% of Americans love.
Different people love different kinds of coffee beans and would go the extra mile to get the coffee beans they want, even if it means ordering in from outside the country. Picking one or two of the different kinds of beans and basing your business on them puts you on these people’s radar.
For coffee products, you can decide whether you want to sell filters, machines, or even accessories. You can check the internet for how to sell coffee mugs online if you need more information on selling coffee accessories,
We grouped niches and products together because it is almost hard to differentiate one group from the other. Thinking of them as a unit will help you make a better choice.
Find your target audience
After figuring out the niche and products you want to sell as a small coffee business owner, now you must find your target audience. Every coffee product/niche has an audience it caters to.
Certain people want their coffee so strong and caffeinated it could keep them awake for four nights. If you want to sell strongly caffeinated coffee, you must find these people and direct your business to them.
There are also people who are more inclined to take organic coffee, and if this is the kind of beans you sell, then you must find them. Selling a specific niche or product without knowing who your target customers are is a waste of time and resources. It is like taking a specific arrow for a specific animal to a forest and then shooting at the entire forest and hoping it catches your animal.
Decide on a business model
With your niche, product, and target audience on lockdown, you must now decide on a business model. Running an online coffee business can either go for the home roast model or the dropshipping model.
Home roast is mostly for people who are very passionate about the art and science of coffee, even more than the marketing aspect. The home roast model gives you some control over your business because you are in charge of the quality of coffee you sell. However, it’s tasking, time-consuming, and requires a lot of training.
The dropshipping model, on the other hand, takes away quality control from your hand because it means you have to trust the quality of the coffee your vendors deliver. Thankfully, dropshipping is not limited to just coffee itself because you can also diversify into selling coffee products like machines, filters, and mugs.
Create your website/online store
The next step on how to sell coffee online is your marketplace. Your online store is just as important as an offline cafe if you were going to get one. How do you want people to feel if they come to your online store? Comfortable? At home? Happy? All of these feelings should be taken into consideration, along with what you want your brand to represent when creating an online store.
Your best option will be to get an e-commerce solution to take care of the website and branding for you while you give directives. The best eCommerce solution available for use is the Ecomitize solution. With them, you can get an online store that matches your values and vision, along with branding services that could take your business to the next level.
Launch your online store
Launching your online store is the last on the list of how to sell coffee online and make money doing it. The goal of this business is to make money and chase your coffee passion at the same time. However, money is essential because you cannot run at a loss.
The process of launching involves running ads and linking social media pages because you need to drive traffic to your page. Your launch has to be well-thought-out and organized because you do not have two chances at a launch. After the first launch, you should ride on that traffic while getting more customers. If you do not get your launch right, you will struggle with getting the right customers to buy your coffee/coffee products.
Conclusion
We understand that venturing into a business sometimes requires a lot of courage. However, courage without the right information will not do much for you. Starting an online coffee business is not the easiest thing to do, but that is why we have created these steps for you to follow.
