Brand Audit is a comprehensive examination to evaluate the market’s performance by understanding brand value, mission, culture, and source of brand equity from both brand and customer perspectives. Review the market position against the competitor. This is a systematic exercise for a brand to determine future improvement plans and business strategies. The coming study is going to audit a high-end coffee brand — Blue Bottle Coffee.
BRAND STORY OF BLUE BOTTLE COFFEE
In the early 2000s, a freelance clarinet musician, W. James Freeman, obsessed with the freshest coffee, weary of overly roasted beans from the commercial coffee enterprise. Freeman roasted his first raw coffee in his apartment in Oakland, California. It inspirited him to open a roaster for people who were clamouring for the actual taste of fresh coffee (INC, 2021).
James Freeman started his own roasted bean operation in a 183 square-foot potting shed located in Oakland’s Temescal District and named it “BLUE BOTTLE”, borrow the name of the first coffee house in Central Europe. He sells his own home-roasted coffee bean and a fresh cup of coffee by driving the coffee carts to farmer’s markets around San Francisco and Oakland. His quality coffee got a positive buzz from delicate customers. People start to line up at his coffee cart. In January of 2005, Blue Bottles Coffee opened its first brick & mortar, full-time location at Hayes Valley Kiosk, which is still the headquarters up today. The first four-walled café opened at Mint Plaza three years later, and this is the iconic Blue Bottle Coffee location and an essential visit for coffee lovers (INC, 2021).
Many investments contributed to Blue Bottle Coffee development. For instance, Venture Capital, Fidelity Investments, Evan William (Twitter CEO), Kevin Systrom (Instagram co-founder) and Morgan Stanley. IN 2012, Bryan Meehan became Blue Bottle’s CEO when he was investing in the company. This also procures the sale of a majority stake (68% for about US$425 million) to Nestle in 2017 (Abrams, 2017).
Blue Bottle Coffee was grown up steadily within 19 years. There are 99 stores under operation in U.S, Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong up to June 2021 (INC, 2021).
BRAND ESSENCE & BRAND PYRAMID
Brand Essence is the DNA of a brand leading the business direction which is combined with Brand Belief, Value and Promise.
Delicate a superlative coffee to the customer who keens for the authentic taste of fresh coffee is the Brand belief (INC, 2021). When Freeman starts up his business, he vows that that “I will only sell coffee less than 48 hours out of the roaster to my guests so that they may enjoy coffee at peak flavour. I will only use the finest, most delicious, and responsibly sourced beans” (Freeman, 2021). During the 19 years coffee journey, Blue Bottle Coffee drive the “coffee cart” base on their core value “DELICIOUSNESS, HOSPITALITY & SUSTAINABILITY” (INC, n.d.). These are the fundamental ingredients of Blue Bottle Coffee to develop the brand identity.
Facilitated by the brand essence (see Figure 1), A framework of the brand pyramid was built (see figure 2) to set the market position and formulate the strategic foundation to decide both short and long term objectives.
BRAND INVENTORY
Brand inventory is a comprehensive profile of products and services with attributes to support the current market.
Below figure shown the brand hierarchy of Blue Bottle Coffee. There are four sub-platform/media under the parent brand, which included “Blue Bottle Coffee online shop”, “Blue Bottle Coffee LAB’,” Blue Bottle Coffee Class” and “Blue Bottle Coffee Café” (INC, 2021).
Blue Bottle Coffee develop a series of products and services (see Fig 4) to connect the delicious coffee to customers and bring the brand’s vision of hospitality to life which is the brand statement of Blue Bottle Coffee (INC, 2021).
Product and Service attributes & feature
Align with the brand’s core value “DELICIOUSNESS; SUSTAINABILITY & HOSPITALITY”. Blue Bottle Coffee LAB was set up to control the coffee content. All coffee beans selection follow the guideline of several global coffee associations. An equally and directly relationship was created between farmers & the brand. Farmer can get sufficient capital to invest in their farming technique and equipment as well as concrete comments from the brand to improve their coffee quality (INC, 2021).
Meanwhile, to commit Freeman’s promise, all coffee beans are “Roasted to order” and deliver to customers doorway within 48 hrs (even shorter) in small packages. It can ensure customers can enjoy all freshness coffee at peak flavour after tear open the package within a certain period (14 days as per recommendation). Flexibility allows customers on the subscriptions of coffee bean delivery service. Customers can “tailor-made” their delivery schedule at any time.
Blue Bottle Coffee is also concerned about the factors (like storage condition, coffee brew step) that might affect the coffee taste. A series of services was designed to min any potential problems. By educating customers to make a perfect cup at home through the virtual class and follow the brew guideline step by step, storage recommendation of coffee bean from coffee specialist’s blog. The recommended tool/equipment to be shown following the class and blog to provide a one-stop service.
To assist customers to find out their personal favourite “Coffee match” service provided on both website and well-trained baristas in Café.
BRAND EXPLORATORY
Customer Knowledge
By introducing the craft of coffee brewing and premium quality coffee, Blue Bottle Coffee pull the fascinated coffee lover in their “coffee community”. Associated with the brand image “Finest &, Deliciousness coffee”, “Craft coffee evangelists”, “Reliable & sustainable coffee source”. Blue Bottles Coffee success to be the icon of the high-end coffee market. Customers appreciated their delicious coffee with daily taste tests for quality assurance and express coffee delivery service. Vary choices of coffee around the world. People are happy to invest time and money to create a personal tastily cup by using the individual “Coffee Match” service and online coffee making guideline/class. These positive responses can reflect from the customers rating from different review platforms such as Amazon & Yelp (Lewis, 2020).
Sources of Brand Equity
Blue Bottle Coffee, known as one of the key brands leading the third wave of coffee movement, aimed to upgrade coffee from a commodity to a high-end product in the San Francisco area after the year 2000 (Jr, 2019). This was leading by the passion for pursuit on the coffee quality. They fulfil customer perception — Quality, Freshness & DELICIOUSNESS coffee. The creditability of the coffee industry contributed by in-depth barista training program, global, organic, and certified coffee bean source as well as simplify the trading and shipping concept. They simulated the hand-craft coffee culture by developing an online education platform (Hollis, 2021).
In addition, HOSPITALITY based service with human touch builds up a seamless relationship between baristas and customers. All of these factors enhanced customers loyalty and create a transcendent experience for customers.
Customer-based Brand Equity
According to the Customer-Based Brand Equity Pyramid Model (CBBE) in Figure 9, overall customer’s perception of Blue Bottle Coffee from “Salience” to “Resonance” is strong and satisfying. The brand awareness is high because customers can recognize and recall the high-end coffee brand image by clean, simple, and unique brand association. A positive comment from the majority of customers reflects the high deliverability of brand commitment. Satisfaction on the coffee quality built up the creditability to the cluster such as professional & coffee lover. Product package and café design translate a chic, model, lifestyle feeling to customers. Follower/like will boost if related photos post on social media. Blue Bottle coffee awakens people’s desirability on the sense of premium quality coffee through their digital platform (Coffee culture education) and beautiful coffee experience from the Café. Some bloggers judge Blue Bottle Coffee as “The Holy Grail for Coffee Connoisseurs” (Walden, 2014). Coffee lovers will pilgrimage Blue Bottle Cafe when they travel. All of these factors foster the accumulate of loyal members.
Blue Bottle Coffee created a high-end coffee brand that people want to discuss. It can reflect from the searching times and follower numbers in most searching platforms / social media. Customers (especially the coffee expert) are willing to spend a higher price to experience excellent products and services.
SUGGESTION FOR IMPROVEMENT OF NEGATIVE COMMENT AND COMING CHALLENGE
Nevertheless, many customers review also comments that the price of Blue Bottle Coffee is higher than the average price of the coffee market even the customer segment is professional and coffee lovers (Lewis, 2020). This leading the risk on business, especially the global economy in a worse situation.
The shorter transportation time of the coffee bean limited the café location & the online business market. To achieve the brand’s commitment, most of Blue Bottle Coffee café locations were near the roaster factory, where the location was inconvenient to customers. Also, no coffee delivery subscription service allows if the destination is too far away (like Hong Kong) and cannot complete the “roasted to order” delivery service within 48 hrs. Finally, Blue Bottle Coffee commence compromising with the market situation. For instance, they introduce ground coffee, ready to drink products and instant coffee. The situation may continue after Nestle become the chief stockholder of the brand.
Facing the problems above, increase the roaster factory location to max the market network. Arrange a scheduled mobile coffee event similar to the initial business model — “coffee cart”. Provide “just to roast/brew” coffee by driving the coffee cart to a convenient location. Against the price issue, introduce the “reward scheme” to the customer who refers a new customer successful to subscript the coffee delivery service. “Welcome discount” provides to the new client. It may extend the client network by allowing people to try high-quality coffee but hesitated by the price at the beginning.
Blue Bottle Coffee can develop another line with a slightly lower price, but the coffee quality is higher than the generic coffee market to increase market segmentation as a long-term strategery. The new line, which can interpret as an “expected product”, may cover the gap between expensive premium quality coffee (Augmented product)and “crab & go” coffee.
RESEARCH PROCESS
To find out the agreement, objective and value of a brand is the first step of the audit. However, no concrete & determine description can be found on the brand official website. It can only define after go thru all content and blog on the official website, blogger, journal, interview of the founder. This process is time-consuming because the author viewpoint might distort some information. It can only fact check by comparing information from different channels. Hence, the selection of a trustworthy platform/channel is critical. Audit results will be affected if inaccurate data was used.
Bibliography
Abrams, A., 2017. Nestle’ just announced a huge Blue Bottle Coffee deal. What’s that?. [Online]
Available at: https://time.com/4942170/blue-bottle-coffee-nestle-stock/
[Accessed 13 July 2021].
Amazon, 2021. Blue Bottle Coffee Beans — Hayes Valley Espresso. [Online]
Available at: https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Bottle-Coffee-Beans-Espresso/product-reviews/B00SF6NEPY?reviewerType=all_reviews
[Accessed 15 July 2021].
Freeman, J., 2021. inspiringquotes.us. [Online]
Available at: https://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/c59fccbc670431597607192fcf1fb1a9884
[Accessed 14 July 2021].
Hollis, S., 2021. How Blue Bottle Coffee uses content marketing to educate customers. [Online]
Available at: https://jilt.com/blog/blue-bottle-coffee-content-education/
[Accessed 15 July 2021].
Inc, B. B. C., 2021. bluebottlecoffee.com. [Online]
Available at: https://bluebottlecoffee.com/
[Accessed 12 July 2021].
Inc, B. B. C., n.d. Youtube.com. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG59x3BLa0s
[Accessed July 2021].
Inc, Y., 2021. Blue Bottle Coffee. [Online]
Available at: https://www.yelp.com/biz/blue-bottle-coffee-los-angeles-12
[Accessed 15 July 2021].
Jr, T. H., 2019. Blue Bottle Coffee: How a struggling clarinet player used $15,000 in credit card debt to launch a $700 million brand. [Online]
Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/12/blue-bottle-coffee-went-from-single-coffee-cart-to-700-million-brand.html?&qsearchterm=blue%20bottle
[Accessed 13 July 2021].
Keller, K. L., 2018. Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity. 4th Edition ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, T., 2020. Blue Bottle Coffee Review. [Online]
Available at: https://www.honestbrandreviews.com/reviews/blue-bottle-coffee-review/
[Accessed 15 July 2021].
MacDonnell, K., 2021. Blue Bottle Coffee Subscription Review 2021. [Online]
Available at: https://coffeeaffection.com/blue-bottle-coffee-subscription-review/
[Accessed 15 July 2021].
Walden, S., 2014. Blue Bottle: The Holy Grail for Coffee Connoisseurs. [Online]
Available at: https://mashable.com/archive/james-freeman-blue-bottle
[Accessed 15 July 2021].
Images & Illustration
Figure 1 Blue Bottles coffee Brand Essence. Information from Blue Bottle Coffee Inc (Inc, 2021)
Figure 2 Brand Pyramid of Blue Bottle Coffee
Figure 3. Blue Bottle Coffee Brand Hierarchy
Figure 4 Blue Bottle Coffee Product Portfolio
Figure 5: Customize Coffee delivery subscription service
Figure 6: Virtual class & on-line brew guides
Figure 7: on-line “Coffee Match” Service
Figure 8a & b: Customer rating on Blue Bottles Coffee products and services (MacDonnell, 2021) (Amazon, 2021) (Inc, 2021).
Figure 9 Blue Bottle Coffee Customer- Based Brand Equity Pyramid (CBBE), template by “Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measurement, and Managing Brand Equity by Kevin Lane Keller
Figure 10. Follower, subscription, searching time of social media