As promised here is my first Coffee House Review 🙂 Let me know what you think of the format and rating criteria, and of course enjoy!
The Place:
Kathy’s Kafe
560 W Milling St. Suite A, Lancaster, Ca. 93534
This place is definitely cute. A comfy and quaint inside with a good community vibe (pin board for flyers, holder for business cards) and the wi-fi signal is great! It’s definitely a place for people that want to sit for a while, ideal for students, web developers, business people and bloggers. The location is less than prime. It’s about a block of the path behind the BLVD (Lancaster’s new downtown destination) in a sort of business office building. Since its unlikely that it will be discovered by foot traffic this place seems like it will develop regulars that enjoy its hidden gem status.
The People:
Kathy Branning (owner) is very sweet and friendly. You can tell she loves the Lord by the Christian soft-rock playing over the speakers and the worship night flyers on the counter. Don’t worry she’s not pushy with it, just welcoming. She also has a big heart for charity and is eco and globally conscientious with fair-trade coffee and bio-degradable cups. From the couple times I’ve been there I’d say there is her and 1 or 2 other employees that work, often one at a time. The girl that was working on my first visit was very friendly and was nice enough humor my chatty nature and very knowledgeable about the store and Kathy’s vision. DRINK COFFEE. DO GOOD.
The Drinks:
I’m a big sucker for holiday drinks. Enjoyed the Eggnog Latte on my first visit and the Dirty Pumpkin Latte on my second visit. They are both delicious! I recommend it in a mug, just cause they write you name with chalk on the mug! Yes, it is that cute.
Social:
Use of Tech – This really impressed me. If you pay with a card they actually run it on a iPhone, you can sign on the touch screen and opt to email yourself the receipt. The tech geek inside smiled. [Kathy used Square to accept credit cards]
The Device and My Reciept
Clean design, easy navigation. All the info you need is there. The uniqueness of the Kafe is highlighted well. Unfortunately video is pushed to the gallery page and facebook is the only social bookmark. Where are the Yelp and Twitter buttons? Nice site, but needs a couple refinements.
Facebook – facebook.com/kathyskafe and https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kathys-Kafe/189448877787031?sk=wall
Oddly enough I found 2 facebook pages for Kathy’s Kafe. Both of them are clearly for the same Kathy’s Kafe. My guess is its possible that one of them used to be the Perk Place page and they changed the name to try and keep the followers from the previous business. Posts consist of mobile photos of the cookies and cupcakes, little specials and giveaways, holiday greetings, charitable causes and bible quotes.
Twitter- twitter.com/#!/kathyskafe
I always get happy when a business has a twitter account! I have an older phone so I’m not able to do the yelp, facebook or foursqaure check-ins but what I can do is take a picture, use twitpic and @mention the business name. It’s probably one of my favorite things to do actually. Unfortunately the fun often stops there. Few business retweet or reply, and Kathys Kafe is the rule not the exception. [click here to read about the benefits of replying and retweeting] Still i decided to follow their twitter anyways. Unfortunately it looks like all the tweets are being pulled in from facebook and there aren’t any pictures, hashtags, retweets or @mentions. Kathy has Twitter but she’s really not using it.
ilivetodayav – Â ilivetoday.com/profile/KathyBranning
Kathy may have missed the ball a little on twitter, but she definitely still has an eye on community. She found the niche ning network for the Antelope Valley, made a profile, made friends, put up pictures and responded to messages and comments! Good Job Kathy!
Yelp – yelp.com/biz/kathys-kafe-lancaster
5 for 5, Five Reviews with Five stars. A good number of photos from fans and all the business information, website and menu are available! Off to a great start on Yelp!
Overall Rating:
I’m going to give Kathy’s Kafe 3.5 out of 5 stars. She has a lot of strengths, and I’ll probably make the effort to stop by when I’m in town. The location makes it hard to give it five stars, especially since there’s no outdoor seating (in the beautiful so-cal weather!) but, she’s definitely on her way to some more stars if she can take on a more engaging twitter strategy. I wish you the best of luck Kathy!
Thanks for reading 🙂
Cafe Ben 
Ben great job on the write up. This place is not centrally located, needs something to keep people coming back and feel like staying.This is what the other place lacked You didnt say much about price. I will check them out this coming week. Thanks for the reveiw.
Thanks for commenting Chuck! Didn’t talk about price cause I figure most coffee shops do lattes for $3 or more and regular coffee for $1.50 I paid $3.25 for my latte as you can see on the receipt 🙂 I’ll consider a price rating for future reviews.
Chuck; the Kafe has very aggressive price points compared to Starbucks and Bandstand. We are working on some loyalty programs including a buy-10-get-one-free loyalty card, Facebook-only specials and unique drinks you can’t get anywhere else. We also have incorporated texting orders, in other words you text your order in and we have it ready for you when you arrive (faster than a drive-thru!). What else would you recommend?
Forgot to mention the text-order! I’ll have to try that next time so I can write about it 🙂
Ben; thank you for the write-up and the recommendations! We have outdoor seating in the summer time but have pulled all of our seating indoors since it’s so cold out (not too many people wanted to sit outside on the 30* mornings). We have been working on a Twitter campaign, but we just haven’t executed it yet. Look for us to be all over Twitter in 2012!
Looking forward to The twitter campaign and the outdoor seating! I’ll be sure to come back for another review 🙂
Ben; we have brought back our outdoor seating and I added links to all of our social media accounts on our web site (http://www.kathyskafeonline.com/contact-kathys-kafe.php). Thanks for the feedback, we’re listening! 🙂
Cool! Next time I’m in town, I’ll be sure to check it out 🙂 Great to have your social media sites on there, I’d still recommend making them pop out graphically like the Facebook link does!