THE PHOTO
ISN’T THE
PRODUCT.

There is a whole drink after the photo.

I like a good-looking drink. We are building a brand with bright colours and big type. I am hardly in a position to complain about presentation.

But a drink on a café menu has to survive being an actual order. Someone wants oat milk. Someone is taking it away. There are other tickets waiting. The person who made the sample is not on shift.

A carefully made cup can show what is possible. It cannot, by itself, tell you what the café will serve on a busy morning.

That is why I want the trial to include a written recipe and a second person making it. If the drink only works when one particular person is standing there, there is still work to do.

Taste it before you pitch it.

Our plan starts with comparing the actual brands and recipes before approaching cafés. Hide the labels for the first tasting. Record what went into each cup. Make the favourite again on another day.

There is no finished tasting result being claimed here. This is the standard I want the work to meet.

Then get someone else to follow the recipe. Give them the weights, water temperature, milk, ice and mixing steps. Watch what needs explaining. A recipe that depends on “you just know” is not ready to hand over.

Change something if it needs changing, write it down and repeat the cup. That gives the café something useful to assess instead of a promise that the powder is amazing.

A free sample can get a polite yes.

A second paid order asks a better question.

For an agreed café trial, I would record the recipe served, the selling price, the number of paid cups and any remakes. Keep free tastings separate. They are useful feedback, but they are not sales.

If someone says they love it, ask what they liked. If they leave it, ask what was wrong. Too sweet, too weak and too expensive are different problems. Do not collect all three under “needs work” and change the packaging.

Where you can observe it without collecting unnecessary customer details, record whether people come back for the drink. Ask the café whether it wants to reorder the powder. Keep those two outcomes separate too.

A tiny trial will not prove a huge market. It can still tell you which question to answer before buying more stock.

The cup has to make sense for the café.

The powder price is only one line. Add the milk, takeaway packaging, waste, preparation time and other relevant costs before deciding what the drink earns.

That is consistent with business.gov.au’s pricing guidance, which includes materials, labour and overheads. A nice gap between powder cost and menu price is not the same as profit.

We have a worked cost-per-cup example if you want to see the arithmetic. Its prices are hypothetical. A real trial needs the actual quote and your café’s costs.

I would rather start with a few cafés, learn what they actually need and earn a reorder than rush to put names on a stockist map.

Take the photo. Then make the next cup just as good.