Many restaurants and coffeehouses rise to the level of “good,” but not many are truly great. Great ones don’t tend to fail—and open communication with and among your staff can make you one of the great ones.

You'd think that with the national economy humming along, adaptable leadership wouldn't be all that necessary for business success. It’s easier than it was 10 years ago to make a profit in the coffee or restaurant business. Yet many cities are reaching a point of market saturation, where it doesn’t take much for a restaurant to go unnoticed for a while, or get abandoned by former regulars if service or food quality slips.

This saturation also means people are being hired and promoted into management roles that they’re not trained for, or don’t have the personality to be successful in. And when the economy slows again (as it inevitably will), more restaurants will struggle to stay open.

The latest research by VSAG (Vucurevich Simons Advisory Group) shows that adding outdoor seating to your restaurant or coffeehouse can increase gross profits by up to 65%.

With summer approaching, your iced-drink sales may be about to take off. Iced coffee and tea, nitro coffees, blended-iced drinks (frappes) and smoothies are popular year round, and even more so as the weather heats up. You can expect your ice machine to start working overtime.

Incorporating a robust recycling program in your establishment is a great start to achieving "green goals" for your coffeeshop. 

But while you can recycle some plastics, the best option is to not generate plastic waste in the first place. Recycling takes energy of its own, and plastics are not endlessly recyclable—unlike glass and metal which can be recycled over and over. After a few recycles, plastic becomes toxic landfill that leaches into soil and takes thousands of years to decompose—or ends up in waterways, killing marine life.

The first step to achieving your "green goals" as a coffee shop is conducting an energy audit -- but what comes after that? If an energy audit uncovers expensive fixes—perhaps a need for Energy Star appliances or a new H-VAC system (not easy tasks), don’t worry. You can do those things in phases, and in the meantime add implement green restaurant methods that won’t break the bank:

Restaurants are some of the most energy-intensive businesses around, using five to seven times more energy per square foot than most other commercial buildings—and producing huge piles of garbage. Yet when looking for ways to cut costs, even owners who see the value in “green restaurant” status often focus on staffing or food-related costs—and ignore energy consumption.