Espresso Lane rebrands and shifts focus
Martin Stepien, Managing Director of Espresso Lane Coffee talks about the chain's new title and new priorities.
QSR Media: What instigated the rebranding? How different is the new branding from the old one?
Martin Stepien: The decision to look at making changes to the branding came with the decision to look at a different business model for our future locations. Up until now we have concentrated only on the Drive Thru market and hence the previous name ESPRESSO LANE DRIVE THRU COFFEE was appropriate. With the change of our focus from Drive Thru only to Cafe w/ Drive Thru we felt that it would be more appropriate to simplify the name to ESPRESSO LANE COFFEE. Keeping it broad and simple will allow us to look at various opportunities that come our way in the future.
The changes haven't been big but they are significant. We have kept the yellow road sign with curvy cup icon and simply added ESPRESSO LANE COFFEE underneath it. The response has been very positive and immediate and we believe sends a stronger message to the public.
Everyone loved the branding but without the ESPRESSO LANE COFFEE underneath there was always a bit of confusion of what it meant.
QSR Media: What made you decide to add in the cafe aspect to your drive thru concept?
Stepien: This was something that came from our customers. With each location that we opened we were receiving requests from our customers for a seating area.
We have found that at different times of the day or week our customers have different needs. Some times it will be a quick coffee in the car on their way to work but on other occasions they would like to be able to sit down and watch the world go past.
We have identified that lunchtimes, weekends and evenings are big opportunities for us with the introduction of the Cafe we can target these opportunities by listening to our customers and giving them what they need.
They love the coffee and the brand and visit our stores each morning but would have to look at alternative solutions for a sit down experience.
QSR Media: What has the brand accomplished in 2014? To what do you attribute last year's success to?
Stepien: 2014 has been a big year for us with a lot of back of house work done to create strong foundations for solid growth in the coming years:
1. We have successfully opened our first Cafe w/ Drive Thru concept store in Shepparton Vic. In order for this to happen we had a lot behind the scenes work that to be done from creating the interior decor for our Cafe to modifying our policies / procedures / operations to facilitate the new concept. It is like running 2 separate businesses from the one location and effectively combining them together.
2. We also opened our first store on the West Coast in Esperance, WA. It has been our most successful store opening to date and had a fantastic response from the community. This now means that we have locations in VIC, QLD and WA.
3. The introduction of Speaker box ordering system to new stores. This has allowed us to place larger backlit menu pylons at the order point that will increase franchisees avg check. It has also allowed us to look at expanding our menu and effectively communicating it to our customers.
QSR Media: What is new with the brand? Are there any new initiatives that you are implementing or brand updates you would like to share?
Stepien: Yes, we have introduced our own branded coffee - ESPRESSO LANE COFFEE - GOLD ROAST, we have moved away from clean skin bags and introduced the 1kg bags that are available for customers to purchase and take home or work and will be looking at smaller 250g bags in 2015. We have made changes to our cups that will be rolled out in April, 2015 with the introduction of 16oz and 20oz branded clear cups for our Iced drinks. The introduction of Toaster ovens has allowed us to expand our food menu and provide customers with a complete package of Coffee, food and snacks.
QSR Media: Can you share with us specific plans and goals for Australia in 2015 and beyond?
Stepien: 2015 has started strong and is proving to be even bigger and better than the previous year as we are already working on further development in WA with another location scheduled to open mid year. The opening of our new concept store in Shepparton has proven to be a winner with our potential franchisees waiting for sites and with landlords. We already have a number of sites in development that will be opening throughout the year. We will continue to focus on store development, stronger marketing , updating our website and increasing our presence in Social Media. We also plan to roll out the speaker box with light box menu system to our existing stores who can see the benefits and are eager to make these upgrades.
QSR Media: Any challenges and issues in the industry you are facing now?
Stepien: I think in this industry there are always going to be challenges but the biggest one we are facing at the moment is franchisees finding it difficult to receive funding from the banks.
