Is making pour overs in a coffee shop good for my business?

Hario V60 Pour Over (#2 size), olive wood handled decanter and an 800ml gooseneck kettle.

Making pour overs in a coffee shop environment is sometimes a good and sometimes a bad idea. To understand if pour over coffees are good for your menu, you need to consider several things that we will mention below. But a quick answer, from the perspective of our coffee shops, we do not feel they are a great fit for us at this time.

At Reverie Coffee Roasters, we served pour overs in our cafes for about 7 years before we finally decided to cancel program in 2019. Pour over coffee is an amazing product when done well. Customers who are really into specialty coffee are the prime audience here. But even with so many great reasons for pour over coffee, there’s several considerations you must really think through before you can really determine if it makes business and financial sense.

Here’s what you need to know:

Equipment

To prepare pour over coffee in a commercial setting, you need to invest in great quality equipment, such as a precision grinder, hot water dispenser and the smaller accessories to prepare the product. This includes the brewers (we used the Hario V60, but you may choose the Kalita Wave, Melitta or Chemex, to name a few), vessels to catch the brew, gooseneck kettles (heated or not), precision scales and timers (you can get scales with timers). You’ll need some stir sticks, too.

Training

Pour over coffee is a delicious way to enjoy your brew if you have a proper brew recipe and your barista is trained for consistency. Though it makes amazing coffee, it can also be pretty bad. You must assure your team is trained properly to follow protocol and execute the task exactly the same every time. It is one of the more difficult processes to repeat consistently because of how many steps are in the hands of the human.

Space

Making pour over coffee requires having ample space for the equipment and the supplies to make the coffee. Having trash cans nearby, drains (such as a countertop mounted sink) and water access is crucial, otherwise you may end up with more steps than you care to have.

Labor

If you operate a coffee shop that focuses on espresso based drinks first, then you probably make most of your money using the espresso machine. When you have a proper pour over program, you may need an extra hand to handle the extra work. You are less likely to be able to multitask as an espresso machine operator can. This increases your hourly spend on labor and is hard to justify if you don’t do a significant number of pour overs.

Ticket Times

If you do a large amount of pour overs, you will run into the issue we did at Reverie, which is increased ticket times. When you receive a pour over in a ticket along with espresso-based drinks, you will have an imbalance of expected ticket times due to the fact it can take anywhere from 3-5 minutes to prepare a pour over coffee. Our experience was often groups would receive their pour over coffees much slower than any other drink, which is a frustrating situation for customers. Additionally, if you run a lean staff, ticket times can really increase for all customers with one pour over order.

Pricing

While pour over coffee is ultimately just a black cup of coffee, it is very arguable that it is much more. So, what price should it be? If you choose to offer pour overs, you really need to price the cost a premium over the price of a drip cup of coffee. In our world, we charged about $4.00 to $5.00 for a pour over, and in the end, it wasn’t enough to justify the added cost of the labor and the ticket times.

If pour over coffee isn’t a great idea, then what is the next best thing?

Batch Brew Coffee

Offering premium drip coffee service is a great alternative. Using great quality brewing equipment, such as Fetco or Wilbur Curtis G4 commercial coffee brewers, can step up your drip coffee service game. The systems are programmable to a great degree and you can really dial in great flavors to the coffee if paired with a great quality grinder. You can brew anywhere from half a gallon to a gallon and a half in one batch depending on the size of the system you choose, which really cuts back on the labor demand. And, you can brew larger batches for catering orders, which is a fantastic way to boost your profitable sales figures. We currently offer three options on drip (lighter, medium and darker) to help provide options for all coffee lovers.

Automated Single Cup Brewers

You can consider coffee-by-the-cup options using single cup brewers, which are high-quality brewers designed to replicate pour over coffee with automated features. These brewers still require some handling by the barista even though some of the steps are automated. These systems are pricy, but they provide a modern way to quickly and precisely brew an individual cup for any customer wanting that premium, handmade experience that justifies the premium price. Machines like the Curtis Seraphim, ModBar Pour-Over and TONE Swiss are some good examples of these kinds of systems; and some espresso machines like the Victoria Arduino Black Eagle Maverick allow you to offer a by-the-cup right from your main machine.

If you are interested in any of these batch brewers or automated single cup systems, we are ready to provide you with a quote. We would be happy to help you!

Simply inquire HERE.