How do you brew new life into a stale coffee business? First, evaluate what’s working: Ultra-premium, small batch coffee beans were the core of the Rowster brand, everything else needed work.
In a market as cutthroat as coffee, brand differentiation is absolutely essential. It's not enough to have the best product around; customers have to believe it long before they’re staring down a cup of Kenyan Milky Way.
New brandmark, new website, new menus, packaging, and a brazen new attitude challenge the customer to come in and decide what the Rowster experience means to them. The complete packaging direction with a large branded label and “deployment date” takes no prisoners.
Every touchpoint was designed to remind the consumer to take their coffee as seriously as we took its presentation. When a company sources impossibly rare product, the customer needs to know they’re drinking something special. That means careful control of not just the retail location, but premium packaging for gift packages and wholesale products. Rowster always looks as good as it tastes.
All this pushed a 40,000-pound a year roasting business into a booming success, and a ten-fold increase in sales volume, awareness and recognition.
