Today I met Simon, my coach in the warm glow that exists after you finish a big event and you start the process of ‘what might come next’.
We met in 200 Degrees . This is an independent coffee supplier and coffee house owner in Nottingham and in fact is the place that on one of our recent team days at the clinic we all learned the basic skills to become a barista.
200 Degrees independently import and roast their own coffee and supply it to 100’s of coffee shops in the East Midlands. Until recently that was a major part of their business. They had one coffee shop in the middle of Nottingham on the Market Square, it has a little bit of a cult following and is hugely popular, but they started to open others. Simon and I were sat in the one near the train station. It’s interesting though that it appears that 200 Degrees strategy is to find a Starbucks and open a coffee shop as close as they can to it. This is because at this stage 200 Degrees are the antithesis of Starbucks, both in the service they provide, the coffee they serve and the atmosphere of the place. But how long could it possibly contain and maintain before it becomes another Starbucks?
Success drives growth and the people at the top of the company will undoubtedly want it to become as big as possible (I’m speaking for 200 Degrees here and I don’t know that for a fact but it’s usually the way isn’t it?). They let the opportunity and the money to open more coffee shops that they can supply themselves run ahead, but then what? How long will that stay cool, how long can it maintain it’s atmosphere, how long before you have to standardise everything within the organisation?
How long before it’s so big that the people who like independent coffee shops don’t go there anymore because it’s too big and then they have to reach out to people who never came before. Then their clientele changes and so does their organisation. The secret behind success in these situations is probably not to pander to the market, and not to try and get as big as you can regardless of all else; but it’s hard to resist.
I don’t think there is any doubt that over a certain size all an organisation does is serve its ultimate masters, where as below that it is possible to serve everybody within and within the business. For me a business that gets about 70-100 people must be unmanageable but then in the end that’s not really a very big business unless you work in a financial sector. You can have big and you can have small and bespoke but there is no way you can have both, you have to choose.
Blog Post Number - 1355
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