While this article was noncommittal in offering up the reasons for HB's success, the pleasant sales experience was reiterated throughout the article. THIS IS HUGE IN RETAIL.<p>As of this coming Saturday, I'll be a year into operating a coffee shop I opened with two friends. Like HB, my shop has exceeded my expectations in the first year. FWIW, here are my observations on success:
If you have the best sales experience in town coupled with a great, consistent product, people will talk about you. I monitor every mention of keywords related to our shop on twitter, Facebook, yelp, instagram, tumblr, etc and after a year in operation, it's pretty clear that people value the attitude [or lack thereof] of my employees, our approachability, the quality and consistency of our product, and the beauty of our shop. In combination, these things help create and maintain a lot of positive buzz about the shop. Buzz begets buzz too. We've never once paid for advertising and instead let word of mouth and good product do the talking. First there were just tweets, Facebook mentions, and word of mouth. Then bloggers started writing about us. Then we had local press do a few stories on us. With time, all this turned into positive reputation and people outside of the city began to mention us. Recently we've received national press. We also just climbed atop the #1 ranking in yelp for coffee in Charleston, SC. Over the past year, I've made a concerted effort to keep people talking and it seems to have worked.<p>TLDR: If people see integrity in the ownership, quality in the product, and a pleasant sales environment, they will tell someone and they will be loyal to the brand. If you've done your job so well that you can inspire your customers to talk about you, you will grow, even if you aren't in a prime location.