A Cafe Customer and their Anxiety

My wife and I like to go to the local Vegan Cafe for cake, coffee and food from time to time.

We don't live far away, a 10 mile drive, then with parking etc it's usually 30 minute return for a takeaway which is fine, when they have something in you're afte. The problem is taking 30m out of your day if they don't have what you're after. Things are worse for me as I'm Vegan, but also gluten-free which makes a healthy treat a rarer bread.

So you end up having anxiety about weather you should go and see what cakes they have, but what if they don't have what I like, but what if they do? etc etc etc, loop loop loop - your wasting time and getting nowhere and in the end you usually give up and go without!! Which has stressed you out, you've missed out and the local business loses a sale!

I wonder how many times something like this happens to the average business?

One way around this would be to pickup the phone and ring the cafe, however there are a couple of caveta around that: From my experience people would rather go without than pickup the phone and speak to someone - my wife included and especially the younger generation who are no longer comfortable with a phone call when a message will do. People would also then rather drive and waste time than pickup and speak to someone.

Because of this I think shops need to get into the customers head a bit more than they are and in this case my thoughts are that if my wife could simply check the cakes they made that day, potentially view stock levels and reserve one (even pay for it) we'd frequent the cafe a lot more often, and I'm sure it's true for other people and for other businesses.

There are many ways to do this, a cheap way would be with a Facebook page for instance with daily photos of the cakes and messages for reservations, or WhatsApp group etc, the majority of the effort is commitment, consistency and accurate stock, all of which can usually be done with some business processes.

As less and less small businesses are on high-streets, the need to give people a reason to come (their favourite cake is reserved) is becoming more and more important!

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