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Compliments and survey enthusiasm are weak evidence. A purchase, deposit, preorder, or repeat visit is stronger.
Compliments, survey answers, social reactions, and informal inquiries can help you decide what to test. Useful demand evidence connects a defined customer and buying occasion to a real offer, realistic price and terms, an accessible channel, and completed behavior.
Interest tells you what to test. It cannot prove, by itself, that enough customers will pay often enough to support the business.
Counting likes, compliments, or broad survey enthusiasm as equivalent to purchases at a realistic price.
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Open the full LessonStep 12 · Customer Demand
There is no dependable universal number. Owners' reports vary with location, hours, food, season, and how long the business has operated. Keep customers, transactions, and drinks separate: one person can buy several drinks, and a group can pay together. Compare like periods and similar businesses, then use your own observations or results. For a new shop, test where practical and plan for slower demand; another shop's count is not your forecast.
Build the estimate from plausible transactions and the average order you expect to sell, separated by day and service period. Check those assumptions against local observation, comparable businesses, and a permitted test. Include quieter periods and a slower opening. The sales needed to cover your costs are a target to test, not evidence that customers will spend that much. Keep enough flexibility to change the plan when the evidence is weak.
Have consequential forecasts and borrowing assumptions reviewed by an appropriate financial professional.
Start with your current sales and specific customer requests, then run a limited, consistent offer. Count coffee orders, repeat purchases, and what customers buy with them. Requests alone do not tell you how many cups will sell. Before buying more equipment, check whether the existing setup, staff practice, menu, or visibility is limiting the offer. Test the added work and money left from coffee alongside its effect on the rest of the business.
Do not apply a fixed percentage to a traffic count. Pedestrians, vehicles, market visitors, and people already heading to another café are different opportunities. Check whether people see the offer, can stop, and encounter it when they want coffee. A permitted test can measure purchases under those conditions. Record the exposure count only if you can measure it sensibly; sales without a reliable denominator still teach you something.
Educational guidance. Check your own circumstances with the appropriate local professional.
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