Trader & Co. has been operating in Yass for eight years. Photo: Supplied.
Daniel and Toni Neuhaus admit they weren’t prepared when they saw the first signs of the hospitality crisis affecting their Yass-based cafe Trader & Co.
“It was the end of 2023 and the start of 2024 when interest rates and the cost of living really started affecting people. We noticed that people stopped coming out as much. That was followed by the mandated wage rises in the hospitality industry and we weren’t prepared for that,” says Daniel.
The sudden downturn in business forced Daniel and Toni to look inwards and they realised they didn’t know enough about their business to combat the changing tides.
“We didn’t know what it cost us to make a bacon and egg roll; we didn’t know what it cost us to make a coffee, and when prices of goods went up, we thought, that’s hard, but we didn’t know what to do with it,” Daniel reflects.
Toni and Daniel Neuhaus are looking to the future despite a hospitality crisis. Photo: Supplied.
Instead of letting the crisis engulf them, Daniel and Toni, who’ve been operating Trader & Co. for more than eight years, decided it was time to take on some specialist coaching.
“We joined a coaching program that’s targeted to the hospitality industry and that’s really helped us bed down our service model and create an exceptional guest experience. There’s no magic formula, but the key takeaway has been consistency,” Daniel explains.
Knowing that there was no point in attracting new customers unless they were providing an exceptional guest experience, Daniel and Toni put in place measures to start raising the cafe experience.
Implementing consistent processes across a team of 20 staff, half of whom are high schoolers only working short hours, has been a challenge for the business and a monthly all-teams meeting plus fortnightly core team meetings has allowed them to roll out a range of new initiatives.
“A tagline that we’ve introduced in the last few months is ‘Hey, Friend’. So when anyone walks in they are greeted with, ‘Hey, Friend’. We’ve really noticed that it lifted our guest experience. When people first come in, they immediately feel a part of our family and they are treated like a regular.”
Trader & Co. is a part of the Yass community. Photo: Supplied.
Throughout 2024, Daniel and Toni were also able to get a handle on what it cost to run the business which allowed them to set realistic pricing that accounted for what Daniel estimated was a 20 per cent increase in their cost of goods.
“That’s been a challenge; an emotional challenge to go, if we put up our prices, what will people think, and how will it be received? So it’s also been an exercise in valuing who we are and what we do,” explains Daniel.
“When we put up our coffee prices, we do it with fear and trepidation; people know their coffee price, they hold onto that. But the feedback has been positive. Our regulars were telling us our prices are too cheap and when we’ve put them up, they often tell us they’re still too cheap.”
Trader & Co. Photo: Supplied.
Despite the pressure of the price increases, Daniel has managed to find other ways to decrease their expenditure and still retain the quality his business has always delivered.
“We are fairly similar in price to the other cafes in Yass. We should be more based on the quality and price of the milk and coffee we’re using. We haven’t sacrificed the quality of any of our ingredients. Instead we’ve worked smarter to bring our costs down. We negotiate with suppliers and we make more in-house. We used to buy our chutney; now we make it ourselves.”
Daniel talks of his industry still doing it tough, but being able to focus on progress instead of the negative has been crucial to the survival of his business.
Trader and Co. are located at 92 Meehan Street, Yass and are open Monday to Saturday. You can follow them on Facebook for more on the cafe experience.
Loading ...
