Podcast Episode Description: Brewing Success: Coffee Shop Marketing Strategies with Ryan Caracciolo 

Calling all entrepreneurs and coffee lovers!  Dive into an energising episode of Coffee: The Ultimate Treat with host Brian and guest Ryan Caracciolo, the visionary Founder & President of Striventa and HyperdriveWP. This episode is a must-listen for anyone obsessed with crafting the perfect coffee experience or building a thriving business in today’s digital world. Ryan, a sales and marketing maverick with a love for craft coffee, whiskey, and barbecue, shares his secrets to helping local coffee shops and small businesses stand out against corporate giants. From perfecting your product to mastering local SEO, Ryan reveals why your website should be as inviting as your coffee shop’s aroma and how a killer Google My Business profile can drive customers through your doors. Learn why authenticity in reviews is non-negotiable, how to pick one social media channel and dominate it, and why a 12-month digital strategy is your recipe for long-term success. Plus, get inspired by Ryan’s stories of nitro-coffee taps sparking workplace community and his go-to drink order (hint: espresso over fresh orange juice!). Whether you’re a coffee shop owner, an entrepreneur, or simply a caffeine enthusiast, this episode is packed with actionable tips to brew up growth, boost your online presence, and create a brand that customers can’t resist.

What You’ll Discover: How to make your coffee shop (or small business) a local legend with superior product, visuals, and reviews.
Why your website is your digital storefront—and how HyperdriveWP can transform it in just 30 days.
The power of coffee in building workplace culture and productivity.
Smart outsourcing tips to save time and maximise impact.
Ryan’s pro hacks for local SEO, authentic customer engagement, and picking the right social media channel.

Tune in and get ready to sip on game-changing insights! Connect with Ryan at Striventa.com or HyperdriveWP.com for tools and strategies to supercharge your business. Perfect for entrepreneurs who run on coffee and ambition!  #CoffeeLovers #Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth

 Welcome back to another edition of Coffee the Ultimate Treat. Today we have Ryan
Carasseola, is that how you pronounce it? Yep, Carasseola. Yep, thank you. Carasseola.
And Ryan is the president, I think, and founder owner. Is that correct?
Yes, sir. Happy to be here, Brian. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, so it's great to have you today. So let's start. Where did you start your interest with
your business? How did you come about it and your love for coffee if you can roll that into
your vision and that type of thing with your company and coffee?
Oh, nice. Yeah, I always enjoyed things that craft, you know? So coffee is one of those
smoking, brisket, and ribs is another thing of craft and whiskey. So those things tend to go
together, but you know, marketing is great because you have to be good at your craft and you have to
allow for the craft to actually take shape and work, you know? You can't have a shiny object
syndrome. So I started strivings about 12 years ago. And it was predicated on the idea of striving to
invent, which is how striventy came about. We put an A on the end of it, so it didn't sound like a dentist.
I mean, it didn't sound like a toothpaste that that dentist wouldn't recommend. You know,
and it became the symbol of growth. It's a little bit of a goofing genius, right? But I got started
in sales actually. So coffee was always a big, a big fewer for me in the sales world, of course. I
enjoyed it. I enjoyed it because it brings community together and, you know, relationships and
whatnot. And then I worked for an agency for a little bit and saw that the marketing end wasn't
always upheld to the same sales metrics, right? And so the idea was how does it become sales
with marketing, not sales versus marketing? And that's how striventa was born is, you know,
through those two avenues, we could help actually build a business, move revenue needles,
and have a good time doing it. So this is before, you know, the big online wave really took off,
and so we were able to kind of hit it nicely. But, yeah, just a little intro there for you.
All right, great. So how would you say striventor as a marketing strategy helps the coffee businesses,
and to stand out in the crowd, and also for the customer, and, you know, the clients who may be
have a connection with their suppliers. How important do you believe it is in this modern,
fast, pace world, digital world for them to have all of that? Yeah, great question. I would say we
don't work with a whole lot of coffee shops in particular because really for coffee shops,
you have to have a great product, great photos, you know, great reviews, and that's really it.
And so I have talked to many owners because a lot of them do want to, you know, crack that sauce,
and how do I drive, draws the people through the doors, and it always comes back to photos,
videos, reviews, and great coffee, because let's be honest, if you're getting people to divert from
the big chains to go to your coffee house, your local coffee house, you have to be the same convenience
in consistency, but you have to do it better. And so I do more like consulting around that, if you will,
just with some people that have reached out, just to kind of do a good service in that regard, I always
love being a resource, and something that can help, they don't burn a ton of money without, you know,
consulting us first, but the reality is is them like any restaurant, you know, is predicated on people,
and especially people walking in the doors, you have to have a solid product, a stellar product,
and you have to showcase it well, and if you can't accomplish those things then there's really no
business in spending money on ads anyway, you're just kind of wasting money if you're driving people
over, your product's not great, the experience isn't great, so not a lot of people like to hear that,
because it's not the sexy approach, right? But before you do any sort of advertising on wine or
SEO campaigns, you're just promoting your company, you really have to dial in the foundation of your
business, and so, yeah, I like chatting through that though, you know, and obviously owners have
been receptive, we don't work with a lot of them because when they dial that in, the, the droves come, you
know, so. Yeah, and talking about that and the coffee business owners or entrepreneurs or, you know,
even, you know, it's a small coffee type businesses, when they're building their online digital world,
how would you suggest to them is the ultimate type of start? Would it be a content creation?
Or would it be to outsource that and delegate that? Or would it be, you know, just go full on into,
you know, Google ads, Facebook ads, that type of thing? What would your be, or number one suggestion there?
Yeah, great question, I would say the number one suggestion is to understand your hourly,
so if you take any of your time and divert it from the coffee business, it has to be valued at
that rate. I think a lot of people don't want to outsource because they see it as hard capital leaving
the doors, and they say, "I'll just invest my time." Well, the reality is, is your time has value,
and you have to be intentional about that, and so understanding what your hourly is now,
what you want your hourly to be worth, will set you on a path for success there. In terms of where
they need to be at from an online presence, we believe wholeheartedly in our framework called
HyperDrive, it's a WordPress-based framework, and the reason why I have been so verbose that pushing
it lately is because a lot of companies open up a shop, they put all this care and attention into
the fixtures, the tables, the chairs, you know, observing all the rules of a successful shop,
things of that nature, but then they treat their website like a brochure, and they just kind of
put an online brochure up there that's static, you know, by way of other websites like a Squarespace or
Wix or Page Builder, because it's cheap, and I get that mindset, you know, we were once a startup,
so I totally get that, but the reality is, is you have to treat your website like your brick-and-mortar nowadays.
Google is so local, these services are so local that if you really can drive people to your business
that are locally based around you, you have to invest in online, which is your Google My Business
Profile at Minimum, and your website at Minimum, and so our framework helps companies index
keywords really well so that they can actually start that ranking process, and so then you mentioned
content. Content is, is king for sure, right? But the reality is, is that in order for that content to
work, it has to be on a good framework. You can, you know, pour in 50 blogs if you want, but Google
doesn't care about a spike, they care about consistency, and they care about how it's reporting to their
crawler. So a lot of people forget about that, right? They just kind of throw up an online
site saying, "Oh, website doesn't work." Well, the website doesn't work because you paid a small
amount for it, and you're hoping for it to bring customers. That's like me saying, you know, disregard all
your high-end coffee beans suppliers and just, you know, go down the road and pick the cheapest coffee bag
of beans out there and try to sell it to customers at a high rate. They would think I'm crazy for
recommending that, right? Well, that's what they do in the online world, unfortunately, and it's okay.
It's because most time they don't know, and that's fine, but technology has become so approachable,
which is a great thing. The downfall of that, though, is that in its approachability, you're missing
out a lot of benefits, you know, easy bread and butter stuff that you can be capitalizing on,
that most owners don't do. And so I think, again, treating it like a brick and mortar, like you would
your brick and mortar, but online is essential, and then everything kind of flows out nicely from there.
And going into that, how, I don't know if you've done dada testing or that type of thing, but how
long should a bootstrap or even a small coffee shop look to be looking with their vision with their
online digital? How long should they be looking at seeing it build into an asset like their offline
bricks and mortar type business? What, you know, timeline, that's what I mean, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. And so the answer to that question, I would say a lot of entrepreneurs,
and myself included, right, this happened to me year one, year two. There's this thing called shiny
objects syndrome. And we get on these kicks and we go whole hard at it because that's what we do as
entrepreneurs, but we don't do it long enough. And so I always tell people, you have to have a 12-month
timeline, not because I want you to pay me for 12 months, but because you have to have a 12-month
north star. And if you're not willing to commit to that, then you're just going to be shifting
all the time. And so for us, like launching a site is month one, so hyperdrive is our process for
actually taking an existing site that's not ranking well. Sure, it has your logo and your colors and
your content, but it's not ranking well. We flip it into our framework within 30 days. From there,
we actually start to work on the website. So for the next two months, we're adding content to the
website that are structural content that's needed. And then four months four through 13 should be
dedicated to that machine content. Yes, you can layer in ads if people have a budget to spike up
ads as a short term, but SEO and content is a long term game. It doesn't take 12 months, like people
will listen to this and think, I'm crazy for suggesting 12 months. I'm more suggesting it because we
help companies scale, growing is easy. Growing a business is easy. You can pass out flyers down the road,
you can go door to door, you can grow the business, but when you want to look to scale, you need to have
consistent process and content. And you have to do that consistently for at least 12 months. And so
I put roadmaps together that are 12 months for that reason. And they cover all the basics from
website, growth, creation, all the way to SEO content marketing, but then you layer in social and that's
a whole other avenue. And then you layer in how are we reporting to AI engines nowadays? That's a whole
other way, right? So there's all these layers that you have to build in. So you have to do it strategically
by saying, what are my evergreen things that will never change? How do I build around that and then move
on and start layering that way? So that's how we would approach it. Okay, fantastic. Hopefully this is
opening some ideas and getting those thought tanks thinking about everything now. So Ryan,
what role can coffee do you believe can play in boosting the workplaces now that you've got
some employees promoting for their wellness and also building the company, the client?
How would you wrap that? I mean, quite frankly, when you have nitro running through your veins,
like productivity is through the roof. You know, it's funny, we talk about coffee and the productivity of
it. I mean, you know, coffee brings community, coffee brings energy, some ideas, right? And really
it's refreshing. Like, I know people that coffee may not be their thing, but they're certainly into
the teas or whatever. So I think what we're getting at is, you know, how are you helping people be
comfortable in the workplace in a way that makes them productive? And I think that's what it does.
Like, you know, when we first started, I had a buddy who opened up a bar in Arizona and so he was
really into the beer taps and all that. And I asked him, this was before nitro was a thing. I asked
him, I said, hey, can you do to coffee what you do to Guinness? He was like, actually, yeah, that'd be
really cool. We should do that. And so we did it in our office. We had a five gallon kegerator. And
and he did that. And so this was before the nitro craze, right? Before everybody came out in
little Glendale, Arizona, we had a five gallon nitro coffee tank. We actually looked into a business
model around it because it wasn't a thing. Like, this could be fun. But when you have, when you want
to talk about productivity, I think we went through five gallons of nitro in a month between our staff,
which signals a bunch of other things, right? It was too smooth, too strong. I don't think I slept the
first couple of days and it was a blast, but we really had a ton of back. But it definitely brought some
fun times, right? So I think coffee plays a huge role just in that community, you know, in that
productivity, of course, right? Get a little jolt there. So it's fun. But yeah, it's fun to talk about.
Yeah, I know we've kind of touched a bit on S.E.A., but how do you think for coffee shops,
you know, attracting more local clients in the searches and not just attracting, but
of course, you know, adding to their bottom line, how important would you say out of one to ten?
Is it for your online presence? Yeah. To their bottom line? Oh, it's a ten. It's not just because I'm in
this line of work, but it's a ten because that's where everything has been going for decades.
And really coffee shop owners, because you brought this up, you know, coffee shop owners have the
ability to do hyper-local targeting, which is huge, right? Google My Business is their listing,
they can build around. You can put that on all the major directories, you can get reviews, you can
actually do posts on Google My Business. Not a lot of people do that, but you can actually do, we do
two posts a month with highly optimized images and descriptions, and it's not that hard to rank for
a coffee house if you have all those things working for you. Then you factor in Yelp. If I'm not
mistaken, I think Apple Maps still pulls in data from Yelp as a syndicator. So a lot of people don't
like Yelp. I may not like the way Yelp ranks organically. I think it's a corrupt system that makes
you pay ad dollars to rank well organically, but it is what it is. It's a paid apply. But at the end of
the day, having an optimized location on Yelp, again, that local footprint. And so there's a ton of
those directories out there that that business owners can take out and be listed on consistently.
And then on your website, having a robust location page that has local schema markup connected
to your Google My Business location is absolutely essential. So on a scale of 110, it's got to be
at a 10. It will drive business. You just have to do it the right way and do it consistently.
And that's how you, I mean, you can still even do ads. Performance Macs ads are huge nowadays.
They're hyper-local ads that business owners can use to promote their map pin on Google.
Right? So as you can see, you don't have to do it all, but you just have to do the specific
and strategic things together well and daisy chain those together well to be honest. And I even
am touched on social, right? Facebook, Instagram, you name it. And you want the sources. You just
I would hyper-focus on one social source, make it your everything and then layer in the next one. But if
you just put a toe in the water on all of them, it's not going to do any good. So I think that's the
common misuse of online is that there's a toe in the water of everything. And oh, this doesn't work.
No, you have to focus on one thing, do it great, and then layer on the next.
Just sort of the interesting question. I've never really asked people in your field this before, but
for small business owners and bootstrappers, coffee shops or anyone in general who might be listening
at loves coffee, of course, should they be requesting or incentivising the customers and their clients
to be doing like a Google reviews or even Facebook reviews and out of the Google reviews versus
the Facebook review, which would you be recommending? Great question. I would absolutely say to
incentiveize for that. Funny story, if I may, real quick, so my daughters tried a new ice cream shop
down the road from us. And I won't mention it, but my daughters are nine, right? And I just want
this to sink in for the viewers. So they had one of those signs up that says, you know, scan for
leaving us a five star review and you get, you know, a dollar off or whatever.
And my nine year old says, well, we have to try it first to make sure it's a five star ice cream.
And so I said, yeah, absolutely. And so my wife was there at the time and she said, yeah, absolutely.
And so they try the ice cream. And my wife says, how's the ice cream? And they go, that's a three.
And so they didn't leave a review because they didn't want to tap into even being incentiveize
because it wasn't authentic. And so I think it taps into a major point that I'm driving out, though,
which is incentivize for the five stars, but you have to make sure your product is five stars before
you do it. But you absolutely must. So you can hang up QR codes that do links directly to your
Google My Business page. It allows people to scan it, leave it right there. And then there's fun
other things that I've seen owners do where they have like an Instagram follower counters, specifically
there that, you know, upticks every time somebody scans the QR code and follows them. That's cool
because it's alive. So think about connecting boots on the ground online. And if you can make those
connections, it makes people feel more valued. It makes them feel like they're a part of something bigger
than themselves. But five star reviews for Google first are absolutely essential and then move outward
to Yelp and then to Facebook. Okay. Okay. In that order, right? Yeah. In this particular context, yes.
I wouldn't typically lean on Yelp, but in the restaurant world, Yelp is huge. Yeah, I don't know if
Yelp is that huge in Australia. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm I'd be ignorant to that type of thing. Yeah, in the
States it is. Yeah, I don't know if it is out there. Yeah. I'm not, I've heard of it, but of course, it's
not something that I've seen much around. So it may not be. I'm not quite sure on that. Yeah.
Yeah. So you've got any closing thoughts about coffee? What's your favorite type of coffee yourself,
Ryan? Is it a black coffee or a latte or? Yeah, great question. I have a few different drinks
I bounce between. One is just a good ol espresso shot, double shot. I love just sipping on that.
I enjoy nitro as you've known, yeah, as you know, no. But I also have enjoyed this new, not new drink. Maybe
it's new to others, but people think I'm crazy for it. I was at a coffeehouse one time and they had
a drink called the Sunrise and it was fresh squeezed orange juice with two shots of espresso dropped
into it over ice. And I thought it was amazing. It's a love hate thing. You either love it or you hate
it. So it has to be with fresh squeezed orange juice and it has to be clean shots dropped in, but
that was a great drink as well. So yeah, I'm a I tend to lean more on the the purest side of it,
you know, with just the the straight black coffees or or whatnot, but every now and then again,
we'll get a little crazy with some OJ. Yeah. And just now, Ryan, can we just kind of wrap it up and
tell our listeners how they can find you and why they should consider coming to you and and basically
how that you can help them. Yeah, great great question. StrayVenta.com STRIV is in Victor ENTA.com is our
main website. Yeah, even if they don't think they're a good fit for doing business with us, we do have
a lot of helpful resources on there by way of service pages and blogs rolling out, you know, we also
run videos on there as well with helpful tips and hyper drive WP is our website process I mentioned
earlier where, you know, this is huge for the small business world where they can take their
existing site that does not rank well and within 30 days, we can give it a design refreshed,
get it on our structure and launch it for them, optimize it for them all within 30 days. And it's
the results have been astounding. We just went to market with this two months ago and we're helping
probably two or three customers a month right now without even trying. And it's the case studies are
on there. So it shows before and after things that hyper drive WP.com is that website and that's been
a phenomenal resource not just for small businesses but medium sized and larger businesses that are
looking to have their website work for them. Okay, awesome. So this is certainly tight interest and
hopefully they got some wonderful nuggets today and thanks for coming right and we'll definitely have
to have you back and discuss a little bit more about coffee and and dive a little bit more into some
nuggets some day down the track there right. Yeah, I'd love to anytime you want to have me, I'm honored
so I appreciate that. Thanks, Brian. Yeah, no worries and thanks for being on Coffee the Ultimate
Treat Podcast. Great day, Dave. Thank you. Great day, mate. That was great. Thanks, Brian.