How to Disrupt the £10 Billion Coffee Shop Market: A Founder’s Playbook

If you’re a founder or innovator aiming to disrupt an industry, you’ve probably heard (or thought), "I have a game-changing idea." But here’s the reality: ideas don’t disrupt markets—opportunities do.

The difference between a startup that scales and one that stalls isn’t just execution; it’s whether or not you’re solving the right problem. Too many startups iterate their way forward without a structured approach to understanding their customers' real struggles. That’s a high-risk strategy. To build a disruptive product, you need to map out the market’s unmet needs before you e

How to disrupt coffee shops!

ven start building. The market—not your idea—determines the potential for true disruption.

Customers Don’t Actually Want a Coffee Shop

Let’s say you want to disrupt the coffee shop industry. The biggest mistake would be to assume customers want coffee shops. They don’t. What they actually want is to get a specific ‘job’ done.

Customers might buy coffee and pastries, but those are just the products they consume. The real question is: what problem are they solving by visiting a coffee shop?

Understanding this distinction is critical. If you frame your product around what customers truly value—the job they are trying to get done—your odds of creating a disruptive solution multiply.

What the Coffee Shop Market Really Looks Like

The UK coffee shop market is valued at £10.1 billion, with 25,483 outlets and a projected 5% year-on-year growth rate. But this industry definition is misleading. The real market is much larger because coffee shops are just one of many ways customers solve their underlying needs. By analyzing the actual ‘jobs’ customers hire coffee shops to do, the market expands to well over £45 billion. Why? Because customers don’t just compete between coffee shop chains; they consider alternatives that accomplish the same job—from remote workspaces to convenience stores to home-brewing solutions.

How Founders Can Identify Opportunities for Disruption

If you want to build a disruptive business in this space, you need to identify and target an underserved or overserved segment.

Start by defining your market using the Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) framework:

Customer Group + Job to Be Done + Context

Through research, we identified over 40 distinct job-based markets within coffee consumption. Here are six key ones:

1. Commuters + getting breakfast + on the morning commute

2. Business professionals + conducting informal meetings + face-to-face

3. Friends + meeting up + in town

4. Commuters + waking up + on the way to work

5. Shoppers + taking a break + during a day out

6. Freelancers & students + getting work done + on the go

Rather than focusing on coffee sales, focus on the actual jobs people hire coffee shops for. That’s where you’ll find your disruptive wedge.

Evaluating a Market for Disruption

For founders evaluating a market, these are the key factors to consider:

1. Unsatisfied Jobs: Are customers struggling to get this job done with existing solutions?

2. Market Size & Willingness to Pay: Are enough people experiencing this problem, and are they willing to pay to solve it?

3. Competitive Blind Spots: Are incumbents underserving or overserving this market?

4. Founder-Market Fit: Does this opportunity align with your skills, interests, and long-term vision?

Understanding these factors allows you to identify where to attack first. The best disruptive startups don’t start broad; they start by solving one painful job exceptionally well.

Choosing the Right Disruptive Strategy

Not all disruptive strategies look the same. You need to match your approach to how the market is currently served. Using the Jobs-to-Be-Done Growth Strategy Matrix by Anthony Ulwick, you can categorize markets as:

• Overserved: Customers are paying for features they don’t need. A disruptive strategy here is to deliver a simpler, lower-cost solution.

• Underserved: Customers are frustrated with existing options. A growth strategy here is to offer a significantly better solution.

Disruptive startups often enter through overserved markets, offering a lower-cost, simpler, or more accessible solution—think Airbnb competing with hotels or Zoom replacing enterprise video conferencing tools.

How to Validate Your Disruptive Idea

Once you’ve identified a job-based market with strong potential, validate it with real data:

1. Quantitative Research: Measure how frequently people experience this problem and how much they care about solving it.

2. Customer Interviews: Talk to target customers to uncover hidden pain points.

3. Prototype Testing: Build a simple version of your solution and test it in a live environment.

The mistake many founders make is skipping this process and jumping straight into building. The most successful disruptive startups invest time in deeply understanding their market before they write a single line of code or open their first store.

Your Next Steps

If you’re a founder serious about disrupting the coffee shop industry—or any industry—your first step isn’t to build. It’s to learn. The Jobs-to-Be-Done framework provides a systematic way to identify unmet needs, define new market opportunities, and develop products with a much higher chance of success.

At Market Fit Mastery, we specialize in helping startups unlock disruptive growth by aligning their vision and solutions with real customer demand.

Want to apply the Jobs-to-Be-Done approach to your startup?

Visit Market Fit Mastery to learn how we can help you pinpoint the right market segment and customer 'jobs' so you build a product that truly resonates with market needs.