With 2024 coming to a close — and 2025 only a few short weeks away! — we’ve been reflecting (and marveling) at just how big this year has been for coffee shop marketing.
A strong digital presence became a “must-have” instead of a “nice-to-have”...
Seasonal menu items dominated social media and broke all-time sales records…
And community partnerships emerged as a meaningful, low-to-no-cost marketing strategy.
But, despite the impressive marketing developments the coffee shop industry had in 2024, recent trends have us thinking that 2025 will be a bigger, better, and even more exciting year.
So, without further ado…
Here are five coffee shop marketing trends we predict will skyrocket in 2025.
Trend 1 — AI-driven Social Media Marketing
Throughout 2024, the coffee shop industry has become much more AI-savvy than before — especially with AI solutions for coffee shop marketing.
According to TasteWise, 74% of food and beverage marketers used at least one AI-powered tool in their marketing strategies this year. In particular, AI-driven social media marketing has become an increasingly popular tool for coffee shop marketers because of its ability to optimize your social media efforts, handling just about every part of the process for you.
Look at Red Bay Coffee, for example.
The Oakland-based coffee shop has leaned on AI tools to support their marketing efforts since 2023. Red Bay Coffee has found AI tools an incredible way to reduce marketing-focused labor on their small team of five, with solutions (like ChatGPT!) empowering the company to “tackle [marketing] work that hasn’t always been a top priority” in the past.
“We use [ChatGPT] to help us come up with… marketing materials and copy that we’ll edit accordingly,” said Red Bay founder, Keba Konte. “ChatGPT has helped [us] do more, especially in terms of tasks the team wasn’t able to get to before.”
And, with new AI social media tools emerging on what seems like a daily basis — like Rapidely and Flick, for example — Craver predicts AI-driven coffee shop marketing will only continue to grow in 2025.
Trend 2 — Hyper-personalized Loyalty Programs
In April 2024, a customer experience survey revealed that 8 in 10 customers “prefer companies that offer a personalized experience,” craving unique experiences tailored to them.
When coffee shop marketers started recognizing that penchant for personalization, they responded by developing hyper-personalized loyalty programs. This offering has skyrocketed in popularity among coffee shop owners and operators of all sizes this year — including industry giants like Starbucks.
Despite already having the world's most popular (and successful) coffee shop loyalty program, even Starbucks adjusted their hyper-personalized offerings, announcing improvements to their rewards program in Q1 2024.
Guided by consumer data from Deep Brew — Starbucks’ very own AI platform — these new-and-improved offerings would include “better personalized [communications], [expanded] ordering options,” and suggestions for dietary-based customizations.
And, according to Starbucks’ EVP and CMO Brady Brewer, this isn’t a “2024 only” endeavor.
“We talk a lot about our personalization capabilities at Starbucks, but truly that job is never done,” said Brady in Starbucks’ Q1 2024 earnings call. “[As] new technologies and capabilities come online, we are grabbing those and integrating them into our system.”
With Starbucks’ personalization success — and the growing number of tech options available to smaller businesses — Craver predicts even more coffee shop loyalty programs will emerge in 2025, offering consumers better, more personalized rewards than ever before.
Learn everything you need to know about coffee shop marketing with our “Beginner's Guide to Marketing for Restaurants & Coffee Shops.”
Trend 3 — Gamification
Gamification marketing — a tactic that turns regular marketing into an engaging game — has become a go-to strategy for coffee shops in 2024.
Typically part of a coffee shop’s hyper-personalized loyalty program, gamification marketing offers a way for your customers to have fun and get rewarded for it.
And, as it turns out, consumers actually look forward to participating in the gamified elements of the loyalty programs they’re a part of! According to a study by Bond, gamified loyalty elements “[drive] program enjoyment,” with gamified programs reporting ~2x more user enjoyment than non-gamified programs.
This year, Dunkin’ Donuts showed us all what that “gamified enjoyment” could look like in action (and what it “looked like” was a smashing success).
When Dunkin’ shared their 2024 Halloween menu this year, they also announced a complementary set of seasonal challenges and incentives for their members. Visiting on October 4th, for example, earned Dunkin’ Rewards members 5x the points, while two orders of MUNCHKINS donut holes earned members the “Donut Double Dare” Halloween badge.
Source: Dunkin' Rewards and Instagram
“When we set out to improve DD Perks, we asked our members what they wanted to see in a new program,” said Scott Murphy, head of the beverage-snack category and Dunkin’ Donuts President. “They told us three things: flexibility, variety, and recognition. And we did just that.”
Brands like Dunkin’ Donuts have used this year to show the industry that gamification marketing can — and does — work, and Craver predicts 2025 will have a lot more “fun-and-engaging” coffee shop marketing because of it.
Trend 4 — Subscriptions & Memberships
In March of this year, we talked about the reinvented coffee shop subscription model; one that delivers its subscribers benefits instead of beans.
Fast forward to today, and coffee shops are still going strong on the subscription and membership train… and for good reason. The coffee subscription market was last valued at 685 million USD (with an impressive 10.9% growth rate).
Plus, there’s “real life” proof of concept, too — like Blank Street Coffee.
Blank Street launched their monthly subscription-slash-membership service, Blank Street Regulars, in September 2023. By January 2024 — only four short months after launching — the program had already reached ~5,000 Regulars (with over 4,000 people on a waitlist).
Source: Blank Street
And, if that weren’t impressive enough on its own, the program proved immediately that it could, and would, deliver the results it was designed to:
More visits to (and spending at) Blank Street Coffee.
“People on the program would normally come to us—without the program—maybe two or three times a week,” said Vinay Menda, one of Blank Street’s co-founders. “But with the program they’re coming six times a week. It’s really making this a daily ritual. We’re excited to scale it.”
With the coffee subscription market’s projected growth and the proven success of Blank Street’s subscription in 2024, Craver predicts 2025 will only bring more coffee shop subscription and/or membership models.
Learn how to market your coffee shop in a way that pays off with our “Beginner's Guide to Marketing for Restaurants & Coffee Shops.”
Trend 5 — Experiential & Event-based Marketing
In 2024, consumers made it very clear they want more experiential marketing from the coffee shops they frequent.
InMarket says experiential marketing — like limited-time, seasonal menu items — is one of the year’s top “strategies to drive excitement, visitation, and sales,” with 52% of consumers considering “appealing, limited-time offers” when deciding where to visit.
And, one of this year’s best examples of driving excitement with experiential marketing?
Tim Hortons’ Smile Cookies have been wildly successful since launching in 1996 because the brand has mastered the art of turning a simple chocolate chip cookie into an experience.
The Cookies’ twice-yearly launch has become nothing short of a cultural event, with social media posts poking fun at lop-sided smiles and merch celebrating the perfectly-imperfect personalities of each Cookie. Plus, the money-raising aspect of Smile Cookies means consumers can feel good about participating, too.
Earlier this year, Caroline Barham – President of Tim Hortons Foundation Camps – described Smile Cookies as “a powerful way to make a real difference in the lives of those in our communities”... and who doesn’t want to make a difference just by eating a Cookie?
In 2025, Craver predicts more coffee shops will test out experiential marketing, taking simple drinks and snacks and transforming them into memorable, meaningful experiences, events, and cultural phenomena.
Start Exploring Coffee Shop Marketing with Craver
Considering the growth of coffee shop marketing this year — and the fact a new year is just around the corner — now is a great time to start thinking about your own coffee shop’s marketing efforts.
But where can you start?
With Craver’s “Beginner's Guide to Marketing for Restaurants & Coffee Shops,” that’s where!
Developed in collaboration with Deena McKinley — the Managing Partner and Founder of Maverick Marketing Solutions, LLC — this Guide will take you through everything you need to start marketing your coffee shop, including:
- The basics of local coffee shop marketing
- What your coffee shop needs before getting started
- How to develop a marketing plan for your coffee shop
- Common pitfalls and mistakes your coffee shop should avoid
- Coffee shop marketing ideas that are easy/inexpensive to start with
- 3 things your coffee shop can easily start doing today
- How to look ahead/evaluate your coffee shop marketing’s success
After all, it’s a lot easier to hop on next year’s coffee shop marketing trends with an already strong marketing foundation in place.
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