Best Practices
Building Your Business with Customer-Focused Solutions
From Chapter 2
In the summer of 2002, Martha Carr opened Coffee Xpress, a wholesale coffee and distribution center in Newark, New Jersey, with three coffeehouses in midtown Manhattan. Offering products such as coffeemakers, espresso machines, and glassware, Coffee Xpress specialized in an extensive line of firstrate coffees and teas from the Far East, Central and South America, and Africa. To serve her coffee shop patrons, Carr contracted with a local bakery to supply sweet rolls, doughnuts, and bagels on a daily basis (except Sundays). Two manufacturers -- one located in Michigan and the other in Milan, Italy -- supplied medium priced coffeemakers, which Carr sold at one of the three midtown coffeehouses.
When a good thing happens in New York, of course, people talk. Lots of customers came from uptown and downtown to drink coffee at the midtown Coffee Xpress stores. The wholesale business also did well, selling to restaurants and hotels in the city and in surrounding states as far away as Virginia. As robust as its Arabian espresso, sales at Coffee ... read full excerpt from Best Practices: Building Your Business with Customer Based Solutions ebook
