About 2 years ago we decided to go to markets with our mobile espresso bar, just to see some « real » customers. That may sound strange, when running just a webshop as we do the only contact with customers is through e-mail and we just like to meet people who drink our coffee, comment on it (either good or bad) and have a chat. An espresso bar at for instance a lifestyle market is the ideal opportunity for that!
But now after 2 years and 10-15 markets we discovered there is really no such thing as « the average customer ». Maybe that shouldn’t surprise us, but somehow it did. We’ve had markets that we sold almost only cappuccino and we run out of the 24 liters of milk we brought at least an hour before closing the market. Other times we brought back more than half of that amount of milk because everybody wanted to drink espresso. Why is that? We honestly don’t know…. The weather, the mood, the time of the year? Any guess is as good as any other guess.
So what have we seen so far. Well, as said, we’ve had markets were we sold a lot of cappuccino, or a lot of espresso. Last market we did (Swan Market in Rotterdam, last weekend of September) we had a lot of people asking for lungo while in any other previous market we hardly made any lungos. And also, a lot of people asked for a double espresso instead of a single one. Maybe it’s just fashion…the last half year a large coffee company making coffee pads has heavily advertised on special coffee pads to make lungo (which is nonsense, by the way – a lungo is an espresso for which one let more water run through the machine, so the coffee is exactly the same) so maybe with the word « lungo » being frequently on TV somehow people subconsciously now start asking more often for a lungo? Or do I sound too much like an amateur Freud now?
Anyway, we always enjoy seeing our customers and have a little chat. Some just want to have a drink, some are genuinely interested in the coffee or want our advise on buying an espresso machine. Others start asking questions on coffee cultivation and so on.
Ah, that reminds me to something else quite different this market: we had several people asking whether we also have soy milk. This is also a new experience … Now I can imagine somebody having for instance lactose intolerance or just being vegan, but the interesting part was that after we told them we unfortunately don’t have soy milk most of them decided to have their coffee with cow milk instead. So they were clearly not allergic or vegan. Again, something that is (temporarily) in fashion?
I will take the opportunity to thank everybody that visited our espresso bar last weekend, or in any other market. Thank you for the nice (short) talks and your feedback on the coffee we serve….
Cheers,
Lupita