Coffee Club have managed a terrific branding exercise with their slogan “Where will I meet you?”

Nevertheless, despite John Lazarou’s  well recognised flair for self publicity (and he’s a damn nice guy) one has to wonder about the business model that is Coffee Club.

My personal experience with Coffee Club started when they were young, fresh and exciting. I was representing a well known soft drink product at the time and we had fridge placement across their fledgling Brisbane stores.

So I started to meet people at The Coffee Club and got to know a few of their franchisees. Most were decent people who had bought the dream of operating a franchise.  Most were unconcerned that a significant portion of their bottom line was being given back to the franchisor in the form of royalties and marketing levies. Many were new to hospitality and sadly, that showed. Some learned on the job and improved their skills; some didn’t.

I have no doubt that some of the Coffee Clubs are better than others. The Coffee Club at Springwood where you’re served with water and glasses within 90 seconds of sitting down is a prime example of the better venues in the Coffee Club chain.

My recent experiences suggest however that most of the Coffee Club venues are physically tired, the staff lazy and the menu out of date. Little things like not clearing empty tables and not taking your cups away when they’re empty leaves a bitter taste.

For some reason, many stores are reluctant to ask you if you want a refill, missing an obvious upsell and subsequent profits.

Stones Corner, Garden City, Sunnybank Plaza and the recently closed Station Road Indooroopilly venues are amongst the worst. Stones Corner is noisy and amongst the worst places for customer service I’ve ever experienced.  My thoughts about Station Road are well documented and appear in several posts on this site. Many other Coffee Clubs leave a great deal to be desired.

Sadly, there is an assumption that the apparent arrogance of many Italian / Greek style of coffee shops is appreciated by customers. I’m here to tell you all that it isn’t.

I appeal to everyone at The Coffee Club to realise that your business, like everyone else’s, is subject to market scrutiny.

In the USA there are many sites comparing Dunkin Donuts with Starbucks (who probably make the worst coffee of all the chains) and everyone of these sites vote Dunkin Donuts as the better choice. I wonder if a similar analogy could be made here, and with whom?

John, you have a fantastic brand BUT it’s slipping. Please do something about it before it’s too late.

I won’t meet you at The Coffee Club. I would rather meet you at a Mac Cafe.