Vintage Coffee, a coffee shop that adds value to its community by donating its profit to a non-profit organisation every month, has recently opened its second store in Menlo Park. In order to gain access to three new target markets in the area, namely schools, students and businesses, they approached the UP BCom Honours in Marketing Management students for new ideas.

 

It was an exciting project, as coffee is a fun product to promote. It was also refreshing to promote a business that does more than just make good coffee: it makes a difference. Vintage Coffee wanted the students to portray its message through a fun and engaging experience – and get customers to the store. The most challenging part for the students was to work with a small budget while staying true to the values of Vintage.

 

On the evening of 5 September 2016, students visited Vintage and came up with creative ideas to appeal to their target market. To appeal to schools, stencils on school walls and tutor sessions in-store were suggested. For students, loyalty cards, giant mugs of coffee and incentives to get free coffee were suggested, as this is the easiest way to get the attention of this ‘always out of money’ target group. For businesses it was suggested that they use the coffee shop as a boardroom/meeting place and promote the barista courses offered by Vintage Coffee as a team building exercise.

 

The ‘Golden bean’ team won the challenge with various creative ideas, such as a golden bean championship, where schools are involved by nominating the NPOs to benefit from the profit made at Vintage Coffee and having the school children waiter as a way to get the parents into the store. They also added an exclusive R500 cup of coffee to the menu, to generate word-of-mouth about the store and make the store more profitable. The ‘Livin la vida mocha’ team was the runner up with their ‘make someone smile’ campaign, which suggested that the coffee that they purchase can make someone smile through the profit donated to them. The winning teams received coffee vouchers and a barista training course as a reward for all their creative ideas.

 

One student commented: “It was a humbling experience to work with a business and people who want to make a difference in their community by getting people together over a good cup of coffee.”