How to Design the Perfect Atmosphere for your Coffee Shop? A coffee shop must have an eye for design. There may even be other reasons people visit coffee shops apart from drinking coffee. The environment and how you present your products play a significant role in attracting customers through your doors. There is nothing more satisfying than achieving your dreams after investing thousands of dollars, putting in hard work, and remembering that little details matter as much as the products you sell.
Attractive characteristics of your establishment, like scent and mood, may increase foot traffic and sales. Furthermore, a robust design and layout of your coffee shop will help you stay in people’s minds, encouraging return visitors. From the furniture to the espresso bar, ambient lighting to the background music in your coffee shop has a noticeable effect on how your customers enjoy their beverages.
Here’s what you need to look out for when creating the best atmosphere in your coffee shop.
Step #1: Plan the layout with attention
What does this mean? A great ambiance is not just something that happens by chance. A good layout is at the heart of a great atmosphere. Look at your plans through the eyes of your customers long before you sign any contracts with interior builders. Which features are most important to customers? Are there features that make things easy for them?
For example, confusion over where to order is often a source of trouble. The presence of an order counter near the entrance helps customers feel less lost as soon as they enter. Ensure that people have easy access to the condiment counter and a trash can where they can quickly flavor their coffee without reaching over to other patrons or objects.
Ideally, your coffee shop should be bright and clean, with plenty of natural light and comfortable seating. Provide seating to single customers and groups of various sizes with a mix of seating and table types.
Consider hiring a professional interior decorator for layout, furniture, and flooring, if you have no prior design experience. When your coffee shop has a distinctive, personal touch that separates your establishment from nearby ones, it will draw more customers.
Step #2: The right colors to use
Experienced baristas and delicious cappuccinos or lattes will attract customers surely, but your decor should also be appealing to customers on a holistic level.
Once the store’s layout is finished, the next step should be figuring out the color scheme.
It can be time-consuming to decide on a suitable color palette for your coffee shop. But don’t worry, we gathered some well-researched information below that we believe can help you make a decision pretty quickly.
Based on market studies, an earthy color scheme is a classic choice for many coffee shop owners to provide a relaxed and welcoming coffee shop. You can find browns, beige, umber, and dark orange shades in this palette.
On the other hand, if you are creating a unique coffee shop atmosphere than a classic one, you can mix the earthy tones with brighter colors. You can use beige and brown shades with teal, turquoise, or reds. However, the bright colors should not empower the entire atmosphere and should be used minimally as accent colors.
Step #3: Choose the lighting wisely
Choosing the right lights for your cafe is a great way to create the mood you want. Instead of regular bulbs, you can install dimmers to create ambient lighting throughout the day. Adding attractive ceiling lamps instead of spot or industrial lights will add extra appeal and help to create a great coffee shop ambiance.
Whenever possible, you should utilize natural lighting to take advantage of organic light and save energy at the same time. If natural light is
not available in your store, you can use cool-toned lighting as they create a similar look and feel to daylight. Cool lighting is also a good choice for reading and studying.
Warm and soft-toned lighting is a good choice for the evening hours.
They create a more comforting atmosphere in a dark room due to their gentle contrast from the darkness. For example, Starbucks stores usually use dimmed lighting to create a cozy ambiance.
Step #4: The importance of scents
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the smell of a café is an integral part of the overall experience for coffee shop customers. The scent of freshly brewed coffee or pastries often attracts passersby. It is not just important to attract new customers, but it is also essential to keep them.
Adding pleasant scents to your coffee shop can also encourage people to linger around for longer. For example, almost every retail store, including coffee shops, uses holiday-themed fragrances to lure people into the stores during the holiday season. The scent of spice, vanilla, or pumpkin is a known marketing strategy to capture the holiday mood and eventually increase sales.
Step #5: Coffee shop background music
Science has repeatedly proven that you need to impress your customers through all their senses to be successful. To thrive in a competitive market, tasteful decor, scent marketing, or excellent customer service will not be enough. The create the perfect atmosphere in your coffee shop, you need to implement the fitting soundtrack for your business.
The background music at a retail shop is an integral part of the marketing strategy, and it’s no different for a coffee shop. However, choosing the right music for coffee shop is vital.
How to Design the Perfect Atmosphere for your Coffee Shop? What to consider when choosing the music for coffee shop?
There is no one playlist or genre fits all mentality anymore. You may hear a piece of excellent background music at one coffee shop and think it would fit yours perfectly, but it may not! While choosing the playlists for your coffee shop, consider these:
Who is your target market? The young generation, old generation, or a mix?
What makes your coffee shop different than the others? Gourmet coffee beans, attractive interiors, energetic baristas? The music should fit the brand.
How early and how late your coffee shop is open? The early crowd needs different types of music than the late crowd. Consider creating a different playlist schedule for the entire day and the week.
We highly recommend working with a professional background music service provider for all these reasons mentioned above. But, there’s more to consider when choosing the music service provider for your coffee shop.
Every business, including the coffee shops, must obtain background music licenses by ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GMR. When you subscribe to a commercially licensed background music service provider, they will pay for your licenses on your behalf, and you won’t have to worry about getting hefty fines.
On the other hand, if you choose to play Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube without obtaining these licenses, you can face harsh penalties. You can read more here.
These services are not commercially licensed. You can only use them for your own entertainment, as you can read on their terms and conditions page.
How to Design the Perfect Atmosphere for your Coffee Shop? We recommend Jukeboxy’s business music streaming service, which you can join in just a few minutes with a $29.99 monthly subscription. With over forty million tracks and curated playlists, you will find the fitting background music for coffee shop that your guests will love.
Some of the exciting features Jukeboxy has to offer:
- Jukeboxy library has music from ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR libraries, major and independent labels to provide you with the most variety.
- Jukeboxy Music is available on Apple iOS and Android devices, as well as PC and Mac computers, Sonos speaker systems, and Alexa enabled devices. Our dedicated hardware, Jukeboxy Player Box, is also available for purchase.
- From your computer and anywhere in the world, you have access to Jukeboxy’s online dashboard to manage the music at your businesses.
- You can create a continuous stream of non-repetitive and fresh music for your business by mixing an unlimited number of playlists in a time slot.
- When you use Jukeboxy Music, you can create custom playlists quickly and easily. The Jukeboxy Manager App comes with a “DJ SET” feature that lets you create unlimited playlists based on mood, tempo, genre, and decade. Adding these custom sets to your weekly auto-play schedule will allow you to mix them with other playlists or play them individually. It is also possible to transfer your playlists to Jukeboxy. With Jukeboxy Music, you can share any custom playlist you have on Spotify or Apple Music for no additional charge.
Summary
A coffee shop with these simple characteristics is usually all that customers need to make a space that is appealing and cozy where they can enjoy coffee with a sense of comfort. Don’t forget the proper layout, an inviting color palette, the lighting, the scents, and the background music to make your coffee shop atmosphere inviting and customer-retaining.