Measuring and benchmarking the performance of coffee stores for retail operations

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to measure and benchmark the retail operations of selected coffee stores owned by a specialty coffee company. Design/methodology/approach Data envelopment analysis is used for benchmarking the performance of eight coffee stores for two years using internal annual reports. Findings Major findings are that the inefficient stores need to improve occupancy related expenses and revenues from non‐coffee items. In addition, the coffee stores locate in an affluent residential area outperform the stores in the business district. Research limitations/implications The limitation of this paper is in the use of financial data. To overcome this issue, non‐financial data should be included. Originality/value The contributions of this paper are twofold: providing a framework for performance measures within a benchmarking perspective and evaluating the comparative efficiency of coffee stores using internal data, which is not accessible to the general public.