To operate a successful coffee shop, you have to balance five key performance indicators: marketing, customer service, product quality, consistency and speed of service.

That's a lot of saucers in the air.

But the two factors that are the biggest keys profitability are consistency and speed of service:

As those of you who roast your own coffee already know, freshness is everything. Coffee tastes best one or two days after roasting if stored airtight, and remains near that peak for only a few days afterward, so be sure to rotate your fresh coffee supply so that all beans are used within 10-14 days of roasting.

Coffees like Lavazza remain fresh for a year because they are packaged using a gas washing and vacuum packaging process.

After years of auditing coffee quality in coffee shops and restaurants, one brewing error consistently stands out: The grind is too coarse, resulting in an under-extracted, less-than-great pour.

Coffee shops and restaurants are as much (or more) about customer service than they are about goods and transactions—though the goods need to be good, no doubt. A purely transactional business can earn revenue without an owner’s presence, but a coffee shop or restaurant needs the owner’s regular involvement. Customers expect it, and staff are more engaged when the owner at least occasionally takes orders, makes coffee and is actively watching over the business.

I’ve heard people who are considering opening a coffee shop say things like, “I think it would be fun to own a local hangout,” or “Everyone wants a coffee shop near them, so how can I go wrong?” Or even simply, “I love coffee, so why wouldn’t I love the business?”

As a follow up to our coffee cupping guide, here's a handy guide for taking cupping notes — which, for the novice cupper, can sometimes seem like five ways to say the same thing.

It’s a weird word, cupping. Yet it's just ground coffee and hot water, with no fancy brewing process to affect its flavor. It’s what you’ve got to do to evaluate the characteristics of coffees, to understand their nuances — their basic tastes and defects — and how they compare to other coffees. And it’s something you can share with your customers with weekly or monthly cupping events — perhaps during a slower weekend hour.