About Us

What Is Coffee News?
Who Reads Coffee News?
History
Benefits to Restaurants
Daily Press & Argus Article

What Is Coffee News?

Coffee News originated in 1988 in Winnipeg, Manitoba (CAN) and is the brainchild of Jean Daum, an expert in, not only advertising itself, but super-learning and subliminal techniques as well -- many of which she designed and researched herself to make Coffee News one of the most potent, yet affordable advertising publications ever produced.

Coffee News is a weekly publication delivered to restaurants , coffee shops and motels that also serves the advertising needs of small businesses. It has been proven that people absorb more advertising messages before or during eating, as there is a need for mental input -- food for thought-- during this time period. Coffee News is designed to take full advantage of this fact.

Coffee News has the week's funniest and most unusual news stories, jokes, trivia, amazing facts, horoscopes, lucky numbers and more. Everything in it is fun and entertaining - no bad news here! It is a very big breath of FRESH AIR to millions of readers who are tired of hearing only the bad news. COFFEE NEWS IS POSITIVE. It provides the "other side of the news", - something that makes people SMILE!

Coffee News is not a multi-level marketing scheme. We firmly believe the person who does the work deserves the lion's share of the profits. With multi-level marketing, only the early participants make any real money and the rest struggle to lose the time and money they have already invested.

Anybody can be a successful Coffee News franchisee! It doesn't take years of training, megabucks in the bank, experience in business, age, race, or handicap, etc. The success is built-in. All you've got to do is make it available to those who need it most - your community's small-to-medium-sized businesses. These are the ones most in need of highly-effective, well in their price range advertising, to allow them, not only to keep their heads above water, but to practically catapult them into becoming first medium-sized, then the larger businesses of the future. After all, when McDonald's started as a new business it only had one location!

Who Reads Coffee News?

Surveys have shown that each Coffee News is read five to seven times in local restaurants and can be recycled to the literature rack, a rack that is uniquely designed just for Coffee News. Every week a new issue is delivered to the rack and old copies are recycled.

The reason why Coffee News is so successful is because it is good for everybody and everything it touches. Even other media services gain by getting better results for their advertisers if their advertisers also advertise in Coffee News. In Winnipeg, Canada where Coffee News originated, readers actually congregate in the restaurants it's delivered to, when they expect the new issue to arrive. In fact, a third of all copies delivered are read and enjoyed within an hour of delivery!

Coffee News provides a light and entertaining paper that patrons pick up on the way in to their favorite restaurant. It provides a few minutes of light reading while the order is taken and the meal is prepared. Since most patrons can read Coffee News in about eight minutes, they have plenty of time to read all the ads as well. Coffee News works!

History

The Coffee News predecessor was a community newspaper I designed in 1982. (Full documentation of results are available to anyone who needs proof). It was designed to kill a very specific recession happening in Charleswood - a bedroom community of Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada), that was on its way to becoming a ghost town.

One in every four stores in its business district were empty and abandoned, with the rest losing money hand over fist and hanging on for dear life. New businesses that could have revitalized the area were notoriously short-lived - some even come and gone within their first month!

To business, Charleswood was sheer poison. Why? It was a bedroom community - no one drove through Charleswood on his way to work, so all businesses depended on residents to shop at their stores. Residents had very little community spirit and were not about to "support" businesses they thought HAD TO BE over-priced, and with less selection than they had been lead to believe was available elsewhere by Charleswood's only community newspaper, Metro One, from St. James which is across the river.

No one from St. James would drive to Charleswood to shop, so Charleswood advertisers were forced to pay for four times the circulation they needed to be able to reach their Charleswood customers, at ten times the cost! In the end, the cost outweighed the return and they stopped advertising. With only flyer advertising able to reach their potential Charleswood customers - at ten times the cost of a newspaper ad, they couldn't afford to advertise and they stopped.

It doesn't take long for a business to lose enough customers and find that it can no longer pay its bills. Then, it's too late to advertise because advertising is a cumulative effect, not a "one ad wonder"!

In the end, businesses in trouble were filling their windows with 50 - 75% off sale signs - hoping for any kind of money coming through their door that would keep their suppliers, and worse, their banker at bay. Being a high-brow community, nothing turned residents off as much as a "sacrifice sale", so in a week or two, we'd notice the "Bailiff Seizure" sign on the door and say to ourselves, "Thank God he's gone". It was depressing to have such people in our community - even if they'd been there for years.

I got shocked out of this general attitude when I was forced by my husband (who was renting the hall for dance lessons) to volunteer as Publicity Chairperson for Varsity View Community Centre. Part of my job was to sell advertising for the newsletter, which forced me to talk to business people in my community. I had to go into stores I had never even entered as a resident.

It never occurred to me the sacrifice these business owners go through just to do business, let alone the horrors of losing everything they own when they fail. I didn't do very well selling ads to support the community centre, but it did convince me that if I didn't do something - no one else was even concerned enough to try.

My newspaper lasted two and a half years and in that time, I was able not only to re-establish 100% thriving occupancy in the Charleswood business community, but I completely reversed the established 80% failure rate of new business to a success rate of 80% with the majority of business expansions in this previously named "poison area" due to the success of new business in the area.

I had also created such a fervor of community spirit that all three community centers that were previously dying from a lack of support had to greatly expand their existing facilities.

My newspaper died a very undeserving death, at the hands of the post office which decided my profits from inserts, which were subsidizing my ad rates, was now going to be 60% of my costs. I lost everything I owned and loved trying to keep the newspaper going until the final decision from the post office - 3 months later and $25,000 in debt.

It took me years to recover personally, but if you notice, Coffee News is not delivered to homes. I had to find a new delivery source and restaurants were perfect since the only people who go there are people with money. Add in affordable ad rates - perfect for new businesses with little money to spend - and all the rest is history.

Coffee News is the ULTIMATE RECESSION BUSTER, but this time everybody - even me - is in the black. It's great to be a volunteer working towards something that will change the lives of hundreds of people. And it's even better when all your hopes and dreams are multiplied by the number of people who are doing the same in their OWN neighborhoods - making their own mark in history.

After all, is not the price of being born, to leave the world a better place for having been?

Benefits to Restaurants

Restaurants no longer need to buy several local papers for their patrons. They can now provide Coffee News as a no cost substitute for patrons who demand something to read while eating. Since patrons enjoy Coffee News and it can only be found in restaurants, restauranteurs enjoy the repeat business.

Daily Press & Argus Article

Starting Thursday, you may notice a tan newspaper popping up in restaurants around Livingston County.

The weekly paper is called Coffee News, and it’s chock full of light stories, trivia and quotes designed to be read while restaurant patrons are waiting or eating. And around here, it’s brought to you by Pinckney residents Matthew and Kerri LaViola.

Matthew LaViola, a commercial pilot, first heard about Coffee News franchises from a co-worker more than a year ago. He and his wife, Kerri, had been looking at business ideas for several years. He decided to check it out, and talked to franchise owners.

"Everybody loved doing what they’re doing with it," he said.

"(Matthew) liked the idea right off the bat," Kerri LaViola said.

Coffee News began in Canada in 1988. Franchises have since spread throughout North and Central America.

For Kerri LaViola, the most important consideration in starting a business was that she be able to continue her role as a stay-at-home mom to Katerina, 8, and Tetyana, 9.

"I need to be available to my kids after 4 o’clock," she explained.

Both the LaViolas’ daughters were adopted from Ukrainian orphanages; Katerina became part of the family five years ago, while Tetyana has been in the United States only a year.

Because children in Ukraine don’t start school until age 7, Kerri LaViola spends a great deal of time helping Tetyana catch up with her classmates.

While her children are in school, Kerri LaViola works on the distribution side of the business. So far, she has gotten the go-ahead to distribute Coffee News at more than 50 locations throughout Livingston County.

Matthew LaViola handles the advertising. Coffee News was designed to be an affordable source of advertising to local businesses, instead of national chain stores.

Most of the content found in Coffee News is supplied by the franchise, but the publication does feature a section highlighting local activities. Groups are welcome to submit events they wish to have featured in this section of the paper. The news is kept light and entertaining.

"It’s just nice to read light news for a change," Matthew LaViola said.

The LaViolas are confident the community will agree. Once their product gets going in Livingston County—mainly around Hamburg Township, Brighton and Howell—they hope to expand it to neighboring communities, like Milford, South Lyon and Pinckney.

And if people come to associate them with Coffee News, that’s OK—in fact, they’d encourage it.

"We hope to be known as the ‘Coffee News couple,’ " Matthew LaViola said.

Contact Daily Press & Argus reporter Amelia Skimin at (517) 552-2847 or at askimin@gannett.com.