Blank Street Coffee, you will always be famous

This article was originally published on the SBM mailing list. Get it direct to your mailbox and right on time here.

Happy Easter, Happy Sunday, Happy End of Q1!

It's the season of new beginnings and personally, I'm excited about the prospect of what this quarter holds. January to March was just the warm-up.

If you've been to London, Manchester, Boston, New York or Washington lately, you may have noticed that the city is peppered with a new(ish) coffee shop that appears to be taking the streets by storm: Blank Street.

I recently posted this video about 1 of 3 Marketing Keys behind Blank Street's viral growth. Now, nearly 100k views later, let's get into them in-depth... and address a couple of rebuttals I've been seeing.

3 Core Marketing Strategies Behind Blank Street Coffee's Viral Growth

Note: this list isn't in order of importance

1. Leveraging the Power of Free (and In-App Marketing)

The first time I ever heard of Blank Street was via WhatsApp in 2022, because they were giving out free coffee with referral codes.

Pretty simple, something we've probably all seen before and still, very effective. Offering free coffee in expensive cities is probably the closest we'll get to liquid gold, and for the person sharing the referral code — they also got a discount on the other end too.

It's the perfect, textbook scenario of incentivising both parties.

It is classic growth marketing, and it worked.

"Free" is a very, very powerful word.

Trying something out before you have to fully commit is a great way to get people in the door, and a great product is an excellent way to keep them coming back.

2. Eye-Catching Design

Let's talk colour theory for a moment — Blank Street's design leans on this beautiful pistachio green colour. The interiors, the cups and most importantly, the exterior of the stores. In the concrete jungle of the city, not only does it

a) stand out, it also

b) creates a sense of calm, nature, freshness and new beginnings (plus it's the colour of their matcha).

In a world of more 'rustic' looking coffee shops and against the backdrop of the gritty inner city, Blank Street stands out as a calming oasis of health and peace that is difficult to forget. So even if you're not consciously going into their stores for this reason — you're definitely able to recall who they are pretty easily.

As I've said before in previous issues, brand recall — how likely people are to remember your brand, products, and services — is half the battle when it comes to building a brand.

3. Product Innovation

If you follow me on Instagram, you may know that I am a matcha and kombucha evangelist. But unlike my beloved kombucha, it took me a while to warm up with matcha.

Until that fateful day when I decided to give matcha another go, and my Blank Street barista recommended that maybe I'd like their blueberry-flavoured matcha.

It was sweeter, less 'grassy' and more familiar to the Westernised, caramel-latte-fuelled palette. (Matcha originates from Japan).

My barista was right.

And it wasn't just me. There are dozens of comments on my video of people testifying the same experience. I have friends, colleagues and acquaintances who have also said the same thing: their matcha conversion started at Blank Street.

The funny thing is, I no longer drink oversweetened matcha. I've grown to love the more authentic taste — much to the relief of matcha purists I imagine. Purists aside, when it comes to food and beverage as a category, there are many cuisines, from British 'Indian curries' to 'Chinese takeaway' that have been remixed, revised and reinvented in order to resonate with the Western palette. This is not a new phenomenon, it's part of translating and transposing cuisine across cultures, for better and maybe for worse.

But one thing is for sure: it sells.

And that's what this newsletter is (partially) about.

Bonus: friendly customer service (gasp!)

A notable mention: in famously unfriendly cities like London and New York, the genuine friendliness of baristas in the stores means something. A breath of fresh air amidst a stressful life, if you will.

Footnotes: "But they're funded by VC, of course, they'll be successful!"

They absolutely are. And any marketing person will tell you... money helps fuel fast growth in marketing.

I have spent over $200,000 in a single year on ads for one brand, and that was a "small" business. It was also only one of their many marketing activities and we were still playing small.

Marketing, like most functions, feels easier with a bigger budget, however, it doesn't always guarantee success. If it did, every VC-backed business would succeed. If you've been reading this mailing list for a while you may remember that the venture capital industry is structured to make X number of investments assuming Y% of them will fail by default. Success isn't just about access to resources, it's about a combination of many things — timing, luck, market readiness, strong marketing, core team skills, operational advantages, good strategy and so much more.

Final thoughts

A business may have a different product, revenue model or funding structure from yours, but that doesn't mean that you can't learn underlying principles and apply them to your business in a way that makes sense for you.

That's how you innovate, that's how you become market-leading, rather than following the crowd. It's a founding principle of my marketing firm, SBM. We call it the 'polymath' approach, but I'll get into that on another day, in another email.

In the meantime, I hope this helped develop your thinking. If you'd like to talk 1:1 about your business, get in touch.