In the opening coffee shop era, everyone wants to be successful as the same as Starbucks. With the same operating model but how this North-Eastern-Starbucks became successful. K.Marut Chumkhuntot, the owner of CLASS Cafe’ which is a Thai coffee shop from Korat. Nowadays it became famous and has over 30 shops across the North-Eastern area.   

Stand out and be different

Stand out, be different and understand consumers are the main point to be one of the leading cafe’ in the northeastern area. K.Marut told us that “Everyone wants to be successful but I am trying to tell the new story and introduce the new coffee. I choose the best coffee since coffee bean selection and create a new taste at the first sip with a cost of less than 100 Baht.” Because of knowing every detail, CLASS has succeeded in growing and expanding to other regions. 

From a normal coffee cafe’ to a co-working space

It had been 3 years since I started opening an ordinary cafe’. Paying attention to every detail, knowing customer behaviors, collecting data to analyze and understand them more. This is effective because using Big Data made K.Marut saw this business opportunity. “From the trend of co-working space, I saw customers bring 3 devices and most of them come to our cafe’ as online people. These made me think of the cafe’ as a Digital home for startups. So, we have transformed ourselves to be the home of Hi-technology people.” K.Marut said.     

Big data of small detail resulting in a big impact 

Apart from giving a great experience to customers, understanding their behaviors is also important. For example, co-working space for creative customers with Ecosystem of Startup to deliver a full service which is available 24/7. K.Marut told us about the importance of collecting data that “Coffee drinkers want the barista to remember what their favorite menu is. We intend to serve our customers with the best service and remember all their details. For example, there is a woman who buys coffee for 1 year. One day she changed the order to be hot milk. We have to think about what happened. The next day she still ordered hot milk. So, on the third day, we said congratulations on your pregnancy! This is an example of how serious we are at collecting customer data. Also, why customers do not sit at some point is another example that we have a collecting process whether temperature, or light to find out why they do not want to sit there, and we have to improve. Moreover, no matter which branch you visit, the CLASS cafe will give you the best and the same service for your best experience. With Big Data, CLASS cafe’ has moved to the next step with the past collecting information, we can forecast customer numbers for the next 7 days.”  
 

Technology is the money weapon.

We need money to expand new branches and fundraising is the strong point of CLASS to support this unlimited growth. “We can open 1 branch within 1 week these days. We can do this fast because we have fundraising, a new technology software which could set up the whole cafe system. We have machine learning storage to store customer information.” This is the success key of CLASS cafe’.    

Build and grow the start-up ecosystem by Coffee Platform 
 

Additional from the technology which is a CLASS secret weapon of the upper level than other normal cafe is the coordination with a variety of businesses from the startup, real estates, private banking, and universities to create a new business model within this shop. “We are greater than a general co-working space. We step up to be the Open Coffee Platform to cooperate with other businesses. For example, Siam Commercial Bank, we have the coffee shop with the bank inside, the project with Sansiri creation in the shop, the Double-A Cloud Printing in the cafe, Kerry branch in the shop for merchandise delivery and many more projects coming. The recent opening is having the washing machine in the coffee shop.”  From his braveness that is to brave enough to think, do and fail to build new experience and new business model to grow CLASS cafe’ in the future.   

Reference: The Beyond Experience seminar by Prachachart Newspaper & SCB