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One of the most significant revenue sources within your quick service/bakery/small restaurant or any other business for that matter is driven with complementary products. Often times this is a no brainer -- i.e coffee shops need pastries, burger joints need fountain drinks.

For some other stores and shops this is not so easy to figure out. Pinkberry for instance carries smoothies and parfaits to complement their tart yogurt, but do people really buy this? Likewise Jamba Juice sells baked goods, oatmeal and now sandwiches wraps, but seem to be having a hard time finding that clear #2. Finding that #2 is super important. Like Scottie Pippen was to MJ, the #2 must be able to work well with the #1, but at the same time the #2 must carry the team when needed.

The pretzel places such as Auntie Annes and Wetzels seem to have the complementary product down -- their #2 is the lemonade. On hot days, the #2 can carry the store alone. The lemonade is probably responsible for 20-25% of the sales at least! Personally I go to pretzel joints only when I'm thristy.

With our first Beard Papa store in Arcadia, we didn't even think about drinks at all. Honestly, we were so excited about the cream puffs and were too busy fine tuning the making of it while simultaneously trying to hit our opening date that we didn't even have drinks when we opened. Aside from a few bottled beverages, we really didn't have anything until about 3 months in, when things started to stabilize. Unlike other more mature franchises, Beard Papas did not have a drink ready for us to sell, but instead it was our option to sell any drinks we would like to. Although this sort of freedom gives you flexibility it also makes things difficult as you find yourself in a trial and error position.

We first started off with coffee and tea, which didn't work so well due to our lack of foot traffic (these drinks thrive in high traffic Beard Papa's locations, however--should be good for Block 37). Our Arcadia customers often times come to our store via a pre-order just looking to get in and out as quick as possible with a cream puff box in hand to deliver to friends, family members or clients. We also tried various slushies and smoothies. Everything tasted good, but the drinks were not special enough to draw people in to buy it -- it was a little too generic. We also feel that since we didn't have our drinks from the get-go with our opening, people just didn't associate our store with carrying any even though we had plenty of options some 6 months later.

Obviously we knew this was an issue for us (our drink sales represented 0.50% of our sales!) so with our second store we vowed to right this drink ship.

So how do you create a signature drink and where do you start? We first started off with drinks we liked and identified what we liked about each of them. We then narrowed the type of drink by identifying milk as being the base(we felt something milky went well with the puffs). We also wanted fresh fruit, so we decided to dice up some fresh strawberries and mangos (these fruits were selected since we do a lot with them on the cream puff side, so the multiple use made things a lot more efficient). We also liked mini clear tapioca (aka boba) for its texture and shaved ice to give it that slushier consistency. We added a hint of coconut milk, some cane sugar and pineapple juice to give it a more refreshing taste and well the rest is history ... the birth of the mango milkberry (the drink consists of mangos, milk and strawberries =P)

Although I want to say the drink was a hit from the beginning, it definitely WAS NOT. Initially people would give us dirty looks, would complain or straight out throw it away. It took months (it was a true group effort, every Beard Papa team member had their hand in making it) before we finally fine tuned the secret recipe. The result was a signature drink that is currently bought in addition to cream puffs and often times by itself as well.

The Mango Milkberry (referred to as just the 'milkberry' now since it's hip like that) is the true complementary product that helps your business thrive by increasing sales incrementally.

I hope Chicagoans love it!

Sent from my iPhone

Filed under: franchise

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The Birth of the Mango Milkberry -- Our Signature Drink!