Brewno

Timișoara started with craft beers some time ago, and the younger generation felt very excited about it. Everything started with the so-called „hipster” bars, which were not many, but most of them were located in the same area that can be considered the city’s hot spot for the young generation. Raul was one of the pioneers who started a speciality cafe in Timișoara and was one of the first who opened in the hot spot of the city. Now Timișoara, a medium-sized city, has more than ten speciality cafes.

Management structure and governance

Brewno is a for-profit organisation, and the structure is simple and small. It consists of an administrator, an accountant, and an employee. It is a business created from the young person’s passion. Raul is the administrator and also the specialty coffee craftsman.

Principles of work, objectives and activities

Raul’s primary goal is to transform a simple service into an experience, subsequently increase the specialty coffee market and maintain quality.

There are many benefits to the business because at Brewno there are close relationships with customers, many of them being the loyalty level. Customers are more likely to visit a cafe where they have an emotional bonding and more likely to spend more than they have to at a cafe where the staff understands their preferences. This experience translates into the cafe itself since the relationship opens access to the client’s mood, taste and curiosity. Raul can, then, prepare something special, even if it is an experiment, such as cold brew coffee with tonic water and oranges.

In a nutshell, for Raul communication and bonding with the client are the key to innovation (new products, new coffee brands) and loyalty.

Target groups

At Brewno, everyone from children to the elderly is welcome. But the most loyal clients are young people that are frequently in the hot spot of the town. In the summer, they prefer to mingle at the terrace and, in the winter, to stay cosy inside. Brewno cafe has quite a considerable space inside, and it often happens that people prefer to come to work from their laptops. Therefore, people who are doing home office are regular clients.

Innovation

It is a difficult field to innovate, being very old. The innovations last and are very expensive. Brewno focuses on bringing the best raw materials and diversifying them when needed. A client’s opinion is always the determinating factor.

Key partners

Brewno is a small speciality cafe that is working fully independent. Brewno’s partners are its roasters and a few local distributors. They work closely together because Raul wants to have coffee that is according to his vision. There is no large network involved.

Impact and Evaluation

Brewno is one of the few speciality cafes that succeeded during the pandemic. Most speciality cafes went out of business because of the Covid-19 crisis. Speciality coffees are a bit more expensive than ordinary or generic ones. Therefore, during the lockdown, the best solution was to keep the prices a bit low and offer the window serving solution (since the regulation did not allow people to stay inside). This option was successful because, in the same area, all the places where people could buy a coffee were closed because their business model is a bar selling a variety of drinks, and it did not allow the “to go” option. In conclusion, this business model allowed Brewno to adapt to the difficult pandemic context providing coffee lovers with premium quality.

Recommendations

Knowing the target group is essential. One must know if there are clients for your product and how you can deliver a different experience. If there are a few or none, then good marketing is primal. Brewno’s marketing is education since he sees what he does as a craft. Therefore, knowing about coffee and how to drink it and appreciate its taste is part of education. For comparison, Raul compares tasting coffees with smelling perfumes or drinking wine; the principle is the same, you just have to identify the flavour notes. Drinking coffee is something universal that has no cultural boundaries, even though more cultures are more into coffee than others. What Brewno is doing is turning drinking coffee into a cultural act.

Lessons Learned

Raul stated that the main lesson he learned is to not compromise regardless of the context. For him, as for many others, the pandemic was an unfortunate context. Raul did not want to compromise his idea of his speciality cafe. Compromising his business idea is equivalent to compromising himself.

References

Brewno Facebook profile.

Harmon, Colin.What I know about running a coffee shop.