Visit Classic Rock Coffee’s website and you will quickly see that it’s not your typical coffee shop. When owner Kent Morrison decided to open up a coffee shop years ago, he knew he had to come up with a different concept to stand out from the crowd. A long-time Led Zeppelin fan, Kent decided to put a rock spin on his coffee shop and open the first Classic Rock Coffee location in Springfield, Missouri in 2011.
Last week I had a chance to chat with Brett Payne, Director of Operations at Classic Rock Coffee to learn about their plans to franchise.
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The Road to Classic Rock Coffee’s Success
Jordan: “How did Classic Rock Coffee start?”
Brett: “It really all started with Shake This, a turnkey nutrition bar company that sets up protein shake bars in health clubs. The company still exists today and there are about 300 locations across the US. These clients started asking for coffee to be added to the bar menu, and that lead to us sourcing coffees overseas, hiring roasters and coming up with our own signature blends. We quickly realized that the market for this new product wasn’t in health clubs and we decided to build a coffee shop around a concept we hadn’t seen before – classic Rock Coffee.”
Jordan: “How many franchises are you aiming to have open by the end of 2014?”
Brett: “Many territories have been secured but there’s often a good amount of time between that and the store actually opening since retail space is one of the biggest challenges. That said though, we plan to have about 10 locations open in the US and internationally by the end of this year.”
Jordan: “How were you scheduling staff before using 7shifts?”
Brett: “Before 7shifts, the manager at our concept store was using a piece of paper to schedule. It worked fine for one location and a handful of employees, but the problem is that this method is not scalable. One of the things that we have to address as a franchise is that every decision we make here has to be scalable. That’s what lead us to 7shifts. We looked at many other solutions that didn’t have the functionality that we needed in a scheduling partner. I come from a software background so I was particular about what we were looking for.”
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Jordan: “What are the basic hardware and software solutions you believe are necessary for your franchisees to be successful?”
Brett: “At a bare minimum, it would be our POS system and employee scheduling software. Also, being a coffee shop that roasts our own beans, we also mandate a software that helps us monitor the profiles of our roasted coffee. All our international franchisors will be using these three core technologies to help us monitor quality control, cost of goods sold, and revenue in real time. We’ll then be able to give timely feedback to help our franchisors as successful as possible.”
Keep an eye out for these guys as they shake things up in the coffee industry!
Jordan Boesch, CEO
Jordan Boesch
CEO
Jordan is the CEO @ 7shifts. Jordan grew up working in his dad’s restaurant and fell in love with the industry–the rest is history.
