Aroma Joe's brews growth in locations, sales
Courtesy / Aroma Joe's
An Aroma Joe's location in Tewksbury, Mass.
Aroma Joe’s doesn’t get daunted by its bigger coffee chain rivals.
In fact, the South Portland-based company sees a bustling Dunkin' Donuts as a signal that the community needs more coffee options.
“It doesn’t concern us. Our model is different. Our client base is different. And if you have a super, super busy Dunkin', you know there’s a coffee-buying population there,” Aroma Joe’s CEO Loren Goodridge told Mainebiz.
Aroma Joe’s real estate committee meets once a week to review each potential property against its criteria, and doesn’t shy away from a market with rivals. It looks at the population in the surrounding 3 miles and wants to be near a big high school or college. It also looks at visibility and ease of access to the site.
Aroma Joe’s has 49 drive-thrus, 28 coffee houses that include a drive-thru and two locations that are just coffee houses with no drive-thru.
Aroma Joe’s customer base skews young, with the typical customer between 16 and 34 years old.
“When I’m out talking to people, people in their 50s and 60s have heard of Aroma Joe’s because their kids told them about it,” Goodridge said.
As its customer base ages and sticks with Aroma Joe’s, its typical customer is trending slightly older over time, Goodridge said.
“Younger people spend more on a beverage than older people,” Goodridge said. “Some of that goes back to people remembering when a coffee costs 50 cents. It’s different now and the coffee is different now.”
The average check at Aroma Joe’s is $6 to $8, including multiple drinks or food and drinks.
The company, which opened its first location in East Rochester, N.H., in 2000, has 78 franchise locations and one company-owned store in five states. It will be entering a new state, Rhode Island, this week. It has two sites under construction in Connecticut and is expanding beyond. It just got approved to operate in New York, and recently applied for approval in Maryland.
Aroma Joe’s has 42 other sites in the pipeline that will open in 2022 and beyond. Longer term, over the next 10 years, the company is planning about 300 additional locations, said David Tucci, Aroma Joe’s director of franchise development and operations.
“The brand started here in Maine and we are in Florida. We want to connect those dots between Maine and Florida throughout the east coast,” Tucci said. “We’re actively looking for partners to find the next market.”
Still, Aroma Joe’s is small next to rival Dunkin' Donuts, which has about 8,500 locations in 41 states and another 3,200 sites internationally. Global coffee leader Starbucks has 32,660 locations in 83 countries.
Aroma Joe’s said it guards against becoming too impersonal or chain-like by turning down people who just want to invest and multiply stores. It requires all of its franchisees to be owner-operators, as opposed to passive investors.
Goodridge added that it’s often “the who, rather than the where” in finding the next new markets.
“If we find the right person to open a new market who we can expand with, we will go anywhere that makes sense,” Goodridge said.
When the pandemic hit, Aroma Joe’s suffered a five- to six-week decline in sales. The company sent its corporate staff to work from home, closed the coffee houses, and added plexiglass between customers and staff.
In 2020, it saw a 33.5% increase in sales from the prior year. So far this year, its sales are increasing further, up 25% over last year, Goodridge said.
The company has a new corporate headquarters on John Roberts Road in South Portland.
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