Case study: BYO reusables happy hour

All three businesses were already promoting sustainable practices:

• One Four Coffee Company owner Juan Paulo Magpayo offers customers the use of ceramic borrow-cups as an alternative to single-use plastics, even though he runs a take-away only coffee trailer.
• Jodhi Pretlove of Astin Min also provides borrow-cups for customers. The business sells keep cups with lids too, then gives customers who BYO their reusable a discount.
• Owner of Morning Glory Café, Susie Parker places a surcharge on orders when customers ask for a single-use cup then sit down and drink their coffee. There is also a discount for BYO reusable customers.

They signed up to the Reusable Café Project to take their initiatives to the next level and trial new ways of reducing the volume of single-use plastics going to landfill.

One Four Coffee Co launched a BYO Friday campaign, which saw Juan Paulo use various promotions to remind customers to bring their own reusable cup once a week. Those who did got $1 off their Friday coffee. The campaign ran for a month.

The promotion was a strategic idea, designed to take some of the pressure off the coffee trailer’s popular borrow cup system. With no dishwasher on site, staff have to take the borrow cups home to wash. Customers sometimes take them home too, and don’t bring them back, even though they are stamped with the words 'Borrow cup'.

From the outset, One Four Coffee Co provided beautiful ceramic cups, which are expensive to replace. He continues to use them because it shows the business is committed to sustainability. "It adds value to your reputation as a business," Juan Paulo explained. "The customers are very appreciative, here in this area. They want to take care of the environment."

Astin Min trialled a BYO Happy Hour from 9–11am, with customers scoring 10% off their take-away coffee if they remembered their reusable cup. Promoting the campaign on social media, as well as by word of mouth, led to new business. "We definitely gained customers—even those just wanting to support us for the environmental focus," said Jodhi.

Happy hour ran for seven weeks, and the team at Astin Min collected POS data and did observational research to check how well it was going. And it went very well! "Even customers outside happy hour started bringing their cups. It became a real talking point."

Morning Glory Café launched a three-week challenge culminating in BYO Cup Day, upon which they aimed to serve every coffee order in a reusable cup. Leading up to the day, they ran competitions, built awareness on social media, and handed out leaflets to explain their goal.

They hit their target, serving over 400 drinks in reusable cups. Customers responded positively, and the café was featured in local media and online, in community forums on social media. "There was a real buzz," Susie said. "BYO Cup Day put us on the map as a sustainable café."

All cafés report ongoing customer interest in reusables and reduced reliance on single-use plastic cups.

After the trial, Astin Min replaced the happy hour with a flat 10% discount for BYO. Their aim is to keep encouraging people to do the right thing and change their habits. "Even if we’re just helping to raise awareness and we don’t get every customer using the initiative, at least everyone is learning about it and thinking about it more," Jodhi said, adding that she has noticed a lot of people have stopped taking plastic lids, which helps too.

The One Four Coffee Co team continues to promote their borrow cups and encourage BYO reusables with a simple truth – coffee tastes better in a proper cup. “We don’t offer discounts, reward points or free coffees,” said Juan Paulo. "But what we tell them is, 'Your coffee will taste better', which is enough to actually motivate people to use a reusable cup."

The Morning Glory team is still attracting repeat business on the back of the trial, partly because they started conversations with customers and continue to do so. "People know we’re a sustainable business and want to come back," Susie said. "It [the campaign] helped educate them and it helped let them know we were on the side of the planet."

• BYO cup use at Astin Min Fine Foods rose from 25% to over 56% during the trial. Outside happy hour reusables more than tripled, from 14% to 50%.
• Mug library use and BYO reusables at Morning Glory Café rose from 15.7% to 64.9% during the 3-week campaign, which saved $420 on cup and lid costs. Post-campaign reuse stayed high at 45.9%, which was nearly double the baseline.
• One Four Coffee Co saw reusable use more than double during the trial period, from 13.6% to 29.2%. Based on uptake, the café estimated it could save $1,000+ on packaging costs annually.

Juan Paulo called on all café owners to introduce some sort of reusables concept. "Don’t be scared about offering it to people. It’s not going to shy them away or make them go somewhere else. If anything, it’s another conversation starter."

Susie encouraged other businesses to think about the savings on packaging costs. "You could be saving at least 20c per coffee!" Looking ahead, she hopes reusables will become the norm, and Morning Glory can flip the model entirely, by no longer offering discounts for reusables and instead charging for single-use plastics, like the supermarkets did with carry bags.