Before the COVID pandemic, high street coffee chains sucked £5bn a year from the wallets of the British public. But their sales have taken a 40% hit over the course of two lockdowns as a result of home-working and closed high streets.
Meanwhile, coffee vans have been springing up all over the country, serving cappuccinos to NHS workers outside hospitals, homeworkers in the streets and joggers in parks.
The success of the coffee van is a great example of Uncrowd’s Friction vs Reward metric in action. Entrepreneurs have spotted a low friction gap in the market (for mobile coffee), caused by high friction elsewhere (going to a coffee shop in a pandemic). And they’re offering high rewards (you still get your nice coffee even though you’re working from home.) The result is a boom in sales as customers follow the path of low friction and move from one format to another.
The coffee retail landscape has changed because the typical customer mission has changed. Pre-pandemic, a typical coffee shop customer might have been grabbing a takeaway coffee on their way to the office. But now, a typical customer mission might be someone working from home who still wants to enjoy a proper coffee at their desk.
And while those customer journeys are set to shift again with the roll-out of the vaccine and the return to the office and the high street, those lessons in understanding the interplay between friction and reward are here to stay.
The coffee van entrepreneurs have a business model that can react quickly to changing habits. When the customer missions change, the coffee vans can move with them.
In (not quite) the words of Dr Ian Malcom, “Retail, uh … finds a way.”
