Latest / The Local Marketing Podcast with Fexingo: Small Business, Google Maps, and Local SEO / How a Local Coffee Roaster Uses Google Maps for Wholesale Orders
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I was poking around Google Maps the other day for a local coffee roaster, and I noticed something interesting. Their profile had a button that said 'Place a wholesale order' — not just 'Order online' or 'Get directions'. Luna: Huh. That's a category-specific feature, or did they customize it somehow? Lucas: That's exactly what I wanted to figure out. Turns out, it's a combination of choosing the right primary category — they're listed as 'Coffee Roaster' not 'Coffee Shop' — and then using the Products tab and Q&A section to signal B2B intent. Luna: So this is a deliberate SEO play. Who's the roaster? Lucas: A Portland outfit called Third Wave Roasters — not the huge chain, a genuine small-batch operation with about twelve employees. They started doing this about six months ago, and their wholesale leads from Google Maps went up roughly forty percent quarter-over-quarter. Luna: That's a huge jump. So what's the actual setup? Walk me through it. Lucas: First, they made sure their primary category on Google Business Profile was 'Coffee Roaster', not 'Cafe' or 'Coffee Shop'. That changes which attributes and features Google surfaces. Then they added all their wholesale products under the Products tab — each with a photo, a short description, and a price per pound. Luna: Right, because the Products tab shows up right on the map listing, so anyone searching for 'coffee roaster near me' can immediately see what they offer. Lucas: Exactly. But the key move was the Q&A section. They seeded a question themselves: 'Do you offer wholesale accounts for local cafes?' And they answered it with a detailed response — minimum order, lead time, and a link to a dedicated wholesale order form on their site. Luna: That's clever because the Q&A is indexed by Google, and it shows up prominently right below the business info. So someone searching something like 'wholesale coffee Portland' might land on that Q&A without even clicking through. Lucas: Precisely. And they didn't stop there. They also turned on the 'Online ordering' button, but instead of linking to their retail storefront, they linked to a landing page that lets buyers toggle between retail and wholesale. So if a cafe owner clicks 'Order online' expecting a bag of beans, they see a wholesale option first. Luna: So the button label is generic, but the destination is smart. Did they see any pushback from retail customers who accidentally landed on wholesale pricing? Lucas: They did have a few confused customers at first. But they fixed it by adding a clear toggle at the top of the page: 'I'm a business / I'm a coffee lover'. That cut confusion by ninety percent, they said. Luna: I love that they tracked that. So the forty percent lead increase — how are they measuring that? Is it calls, form fills, what? Lucas: They use a unique phone number on their Google profile — a local number that forwards to their wholesale line — and a custom URL parameter on the order form link from Google Maps. So they can attribute every call and every form submission directly to maps traffic. Luna: That's the kind of tracking most small businesses skip. They just set it and hope. So what was the actual number of leads before and after? Lucas: Before the optimization, they were getting maybe two to three wholesale inquiries a month from maps. After — this is over a three-month period — they averaged twelve to fifteen per month. And about half of those converted into recurring accounts. Luna: So let's break down the action steps. For a local business owner listening, what's the top-line checklist? Lucas: Step one: pick the exact right primary category. If you're a roaster, don't pick 'Coffee Shop'. Step two: populate the Products tab with wholesale items and prices. Step three: seed a Q&A that answers the B2B question your ideal customer is searching for. Step four: use a tracking phone number and a custom URL on your order button. Luna: And step five, I'd add: monitor your Q&A regularly. Because if someone else asks a different wholesale question, you want to answer it fast — that fresh content helps your ranking. Lucas: Absolutely. Third Wave Roasters checks their Google Business Profile inbox and Q&A every weekday morning. They treat it like a second front door to their business. Luna: It's a great example of using a free tool in a non-obvious way. Speaking of free tools, a handful of listeners support this podcast through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's what keeps us ad-free and able to drill into these specific case studies. Lucas: Yeah, we don't run ads, we don't have sponsors — it's just listener funded. And the people who chip in make it possible for us to spend time researching stories like this one. So if you've gotten value from any of these episodes, that's the only way it keeps going. Luna: And we really do read every message that comes through there. It's a small community, but it's a meaningful one. Lucas: Alright, back to maps. One thing I haven't mentioned — Third Wave also uses Google Posts to announce new wholesale blends. They put a post up every time they release a new single-origin, with a photo and a 'Order wholesale' button. Luna: That's smart because posts show up in search results and on the profile for about a week. So it's like a rotating billboard for their wholesale inventory. Lucas: And they tie each post to the specific product page — so if a cafe owner sees a post about a new Ethiopian natural, they can click straight to a wholesale order form for that exact coffee. Luna: Have they noticed any seasonal patterns in their wholesale inquiries from maps? Lucas: Yeah, they spike in late summer and early fall — cafes are planning their fall menus, and they want to lock in roasters before the holiday rush. So Third Wave starts ramping up their posting frequency in August. Luna: That's a good reminder for any local business: your Google Maps presence isn't static. You can adjust it seasonally based on when your target customers are most likely to be searching. Lucas: Right. And in their case, they also update their Q&A to reflect seasonal questions — like 'Do you have a pumpkin spice blend for wholesale?' in September. They answer it and include the order link. Luna: So the Q&A becomes a living FAQ that changes with demand. That's next-level local SEO. I'm going to recommend this to a few business owners I know. Lucas: That's the goal — one concrete takeaway per episode that you can actually use. For Third Wave Roasters, it turned a map listing into a wholesale lead machine.