Following trends can cause a business to lose its brand identity and may create products or services that would be inconsistent with company values and culture, according to Bryan Meehan, executive chair at global brand Blue Bottle Coffee. “At Blue Bottle Coffee, we are less about trends and more about the core values of the company and what we believe in and sticking to that,” Meehan said at the recent Hong Kong Marketing Pulse event. Chasing trends may be the simplest and most direct way t
way to catch people’s attention and raise short-term revenue, but it is then difficult for brands to remain true to what they stand for and maintain the emotional connections they have with customers.
“It’s like asking an artist what trend is influencing his or her art. I think that the artist would say it takes a lifetime of intuition and knowledge to build one’s craft,” Meehan explained.
“So if one of the greatest artists in the world would start changing what he or she is doing based on a trend, I think his or her art would not be distinctive and would not be groundbreaking.”
Blue Bottle Coffee, founded by James Freeman, is a premium global coffee chain and has now become one of the biggest names on the coffee culture scene, with more than 100 locations. The brand emerged in 2002 and has since grown from a favourite local shop in the Bay Area in California into a global company. Apart from the US, the brand also has stores in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.
Food giant Nestlé bought a majority stake in Blue Bottle Coffee in 2017 for $425 million in a deal that valued the company at more than $700 million.
According to Meehan, as Blue Bottle Coffee continues to expand worldwide, maintaining its core values and educating customers on how to brew a good cup of coffee have turned it into a well-known business that people want to talk about.
Being true to the brand doesn’t mean simply bringing American culture into its markets around the world, Meehan stated. It means maintaining the essence of the brand but embracing what the local market has to offer at the same time.
“In Japan, we hired a leadership team based in that country and we offered different cup sizes because the Japanese don’t like big servings of coffee. Our café leader in Hong Kong is from Hong Kong. We built up a local team that understands the market,” Meehan explained.
“But it’s like a Nike trainer. You don’t want to mess around with the essence of a Nike trainer…Don’t play around with your brand too much, no matter where you are, but do listen to your customers and make sure you’re hiring local management in the countries where you’ve opened your stores, so your team will know what they’re doing.”
Roasting the same coffee in different markets, maintaining quality control, and training their baristas in the Blue Bottle style are some of the ways the company maintained its culture, no matter where their stores are located.
Boosting organic interest online
Blue Bottle Coffee is passionate about educating its customers about the coffee industry by providing them with in-depth brewing guides, educational videos and courses on buying, storing, and brewing great coffee.
These online tutorials not only funnel sales to the company through their physical stores, their site, and mobile app, they also help retain customers and turn coffee drinkers into true coffee fans.
At the height of the pandemic, Blue Bottle’s mobile app garnered a lot of interest and it is now the source of up to 35 per cent of sales. By the end of the year, Meehan predicts this figure will increase to 50 per cent.
Going carbon neutral
Like all modern retailers, Blue Bottle Coffee is focused on sustainability.
“We’re moving to have all our cafés in the US be zero waste in 2021, and in 2022, all our cafés in Asia will be zero waste,” Meehan said. “[That means] 90 per cent of the waste in a Blue Bottle café will not be diverted to landfill.”
According to Meehan, the company is also looking into investing in regenerative agriculture, working on renewable energy, and substituting regular milk for plant-based milk.
He added that Blue Bottle’s evolution from being a farmers market coffee cart to an international chain has given them the responsibility to ensure their business is leaning more toward being environmentally conscious, and educating their customers at the same time.