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LATEST NEWS
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"I speak
to many senior people about trade issues, and when I ask them 'where did
you hear that?', they reply - 'Boughton's'. -
An extremely well-known manager, 20 April 2007. |
We have been asked for
a 2008 features schedule - it'll be onsite soon
Newsflash Sunday
22nd June.
The new
world barista champion is Irish – Stephen Morrissey, already an
extremely well-regarded and internationally known barista before the
contest, took the world prize in Copenhagen this afternoon against
contestants from fifty other countries.The
English hope, Hugo Hercod from Wadebridge, took what seems to have
been a very respectable 10th place – his score of 672 in
the first round was actually one more than the sixth-placed
contestant got in the final round. Stephen Morrissey,
who has worked a great deal in London with last year’s world champ,
Jim Hoffman, and Square Mile roasters, also won a
La Marzocco GS/3 espresso machine
and a Compak K-10 WBC grinder. (We were intrigued to
hear from Espresso Warehouse that they had actually signed Morrissey
up to work on their new catalogue before he became world champ; they
managed the same trick with Hoffmann last year! And we also recall
the new champ once telling us that many people at parties were
disappointed to see him because when they heard ‘Morrissey’s
coming’, they assumed it was the pop star… nobody in the coffee
trade will make that mistake now.)
*
The entire
contents of a café are up on Ebay, with a closing date of Monday
23rd – Simon Bower of Pollards is to move out of his
Meadowhall site in Sheffield (doubtless to be replaced by yet
another clothes shop, he told us) and all the stock is at
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item= The
current highest bid, we see, is £4,000, below the reserve.
Another of the
grand old men of coffee has gone – the funeral of
Dr. Alberto Hesse will be held this
Wednesday in Trieste. Dr Hesse,
who was 90, was a former coffee trade
advisor to the Italian government and was one of the earliest
members of the International Coffee Council in 1963.
The founder
of the Beanscene chain, recently bought by Tinderbox, has confirmed
his plans to open up again on a very similar business strategy -
Gordon Richardson, is proposing a new coffee chain, Pico, which will
repeat his coffee-and-live-music concept.
Esquires,
the first high-street chain to move entirely to Fairtrade coffee, is
now introducing a reusable, recyclable takeaway coffee cup sleeve.
The item was devised by an Esquires customer, and will double as a
loyalty card – when reused nine times, the next drink is free.
Drury Tea
and Coffee Company, is to develop the idea of delivering roasted
beans in 12kg biodegradable hessian sacks rather than one-kilo foil
bags (reported in Coffee House magazine last year). The company
says that environmentally-friendly packaging will also reduce the
cost of the coffee by about twenty per cent – the savings made on
packaging costs mean that 10 kilos of its Reale espresso coffee now
cost £92, a saving of £18.40, or equivalent to the cost of two kilos
packed in conventional foil bags.
Andrea Illy,
head of the Italian coffee giant, was in London on Friday for the
opening of his latest school of coffee, and confirmed that the UK
was part of his thinking for Espressamente, the Illy chain of
coffee bars which has grown rapidly to perhaps 200 around the world.
However, he told Coffee House, he had ‘ideas’ for the UK, rather
than ‘plans’ as yet
13th June
Espresso
Warehouse, the ‘everything but the coffee’ wholesaler, has
called for the café trade to take an interest in the big event
of next week – it is the World Barista Championship from
Copenhagen, in which the UK is going for its second successive
world title. And for café owners who want to see what the
profitable state-of-the-art in coffee can be, there will be a
live video feed at
http://www.worldbaristachampionship.com
on which we can all watch the progress of the UK hope, Hugo
Hercod of Wadebridge.
The World Barista
Championship is not a widely-publicised event in the UK - as
such, it is unlikely that the streets of Britain will be hung
with St George flags in support of Hugo, as they would be for a
football final. However, Espresso Warehouse has stressed that
it makes very good sense for every café owner to take an
interest in what is going on, and ideally, to involve their
staff – because what they will pick up from watching this will
lead to better and more profitable sales. (Ideally, every
trade supplier in Britain should think to start their sales
calls next week with a reminder of the event... is that a good
enough hint?!)
“This event really
does shape the industry,” says McGann. “Watching this tells you
what will evolve through the coffee trade. The development of
temperature stability, which is now a standard requirement in
choosing an espresso machine, is a direct result of things seen
and done at a world barista final; the move towards better
grinder blades has evolved from the barista championships.
Manufacturers catch up with what is being done and said here,
and the results evolve into what is being used and done on the
high street.”
The British
representative this year is Hugo Hercod, of the Relish coffee
shop and deli in Wadebridge, Cornwall. Earlier this year Hugo
won the UK title at the Hotelympia exhibition, where he
impressed the judges with his ‘signature drink’, a kind of
Turkish Delight with an espresso base. His signature drink this
week in Copenhagen will be an adapted version of that.
“Hugo will be a
strong competitor,” confirms Gary McGann, general manager of
world-final sponsor Espresso Warehouse. “The great challenge he
faces is that the other international baristas are employees of
companies which have put resources behind them, and have paid
for them to train all the time, night and noon. Hugo runs his
own business, and so is at a disadvantage in terms of the time
he has had to practice – but he will compete well.”
The World Barista
Championship is held at the Wonderful Coffee expo in Copenhagen;
the early rounds begin on Thursday this coming week (19th),
and the top six world contestants will compete the final on
Sunday. The reigning world champion barista is Jim Hoffman, of
Square Mile Coffee in London, the first Briton to take the
title.
*
Mulmar, representing La
Marzocco in the UK, has today announced a limited edition
espresso machine to tie in with the WBC finals.
La Marzocco machines are used
in the world finals, so the company asked Royal Copenhagen, the
top-class Royal Danish Porcelain Manufacturer, to hand-paint a
number of FB80 machines in their own unique design. Some of
these are now on sale as collectors’ items – details at
http://www.lamarzocco.it/collectors_sale/index.html
*
There is a call for entries in
another national contest this week. The BSA’s bev-e awards,
which recognise good work by cafes, have racked up a hundred
nominations for cafes around the UK to be judged for this year’s
title – but London is described as a ‘dead spot’, and will
probably not feature in the contest at all unless somebody
nominates some entries there.
“I just cannot believe that
individuals cannot get a decent tea or coffee, made by people
who are proud of it, in London!” the head judge, Ranald
Paterson, has told us. Judging of the awards will take four
weeks, and should be finished by the end of July.
*
Costa has nominated this
Saturday, 14th June, as its first Foundation Day, in
which all profits made from its 700 UK stores on that day will
be donated to the Costa Foundation to invest back into coffee
growing communities.
Costa cites
some research which it recently commissioned to show that
80 per cent of people in
the UK now want the option of purchasing ethical coffee from
their regular high street outlets - and that they are also
willing to pay an average of 14p more per cup to ensure their
coffee is an ethical choice.
According to David Hutchinson,
Costa’s marketing director, the money raised will help the Costa
Foundation build five schools across Costa Rica, Colombia,
Guatemala and Ethiopia.
Costa’s research found that 56 per
cent of consumers would choose a high street café based on
whether or not it sold an ethically-sourced product, and that 39
per cent of consumers would prefer cafes to have an
ethically-sourced product as their main or ‘default’ coffee.
*
Starbucks and SSP (operator
of Caffe Ritazza) have announced a partnership agreement to open
more than 150 Starbucks stores in prime travel channels in key
European markets within the next three years.
The agreement involves co-operation across the European travel
market,
covering both airport and
railway station locations. Starbucks will give SSP licensing
rights to the
Starbucks brand in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The
appeal for Starbucks is that SSP has the experience of operating
in travel locations in Europe for over 60 years. The European
deal is Starbucks' largest licensing agreement outside the U.S.
10th
June
It is a big time for
barista training centres – just a week after Illy announced
their new centre, Cooper’s Coffee has said it will build the UK’s
largest barista training resource outside London. This will be a
1,000 sq.ft. site, part of the company’s expansion which will also
involve an extra 2,500 sq.ft. of warehouse space.
The new training centre will
feature a 360-degree training bar and video facilities. David
Cooper has said that he has spent three years buying the land around
his existing office, to allow for the expansion; he will also be
landscaping the area, and providing a new car park and picnic area.
Work will begin this month, and completion is expected in September.
An additional piece of information
from Cooper’s involves their Dalla Corte UK operation – the new Pro
machine features what is thought to be the first control system to
allow a barista to change the temperature of the water flow halfway
through an espresso shot.
It is reported that Dalla Corte UK
has now reached 200 sales of Dalla Corte espresso machines, at an
average price of over £5,000.
The Rancilio espresso machine
company of Italy
has completed its acquisition of the Egro Coffee Systems
manufacturing operation in Switzerland, and members of the Rancilio
family have now assumed control of their new subsidiary. The
British distributor of Rancilio, Drury / Coffee Machine Company,
says that since it began distributing Egro, customers have reported
satisfaction with both operation and reliability. What is expected
now is some cross-fertilisation of ideas between Rancilio, a
dedicated espresso-machine maker, and Egro, a total bean-to-cup
operation. (Drury’s Anglo-Italian chief, Marco Olmi, has offered us
the wry observation that this will be a rare instance of the
Italians improving on Swiss efficiency!)
(Meanwhile, expect some
developments following Drury’s recent introduction of
environmentally-friendly packaging of roasted beans in hessian
sacks).
Café Sienna, the
Yorkshire supplier run by the top man in the Beverage Service
Association, David Veal, has increased its customer base by about a
fifth with one acquisition – the company has bought Janines of
Mexborough. Janines is a general supplier of beverages and coffee
machines to cafes, pubs, council offices, restaurants and the like,
with half of its customers in Yorkshire and the rest spread around
the UK. The former managing director, Mike Ritchie, has moved to
Style Café of Lancashire.
The coffee shop at
Gloucester
cathedral has been broken into. What did the thieves
take? They took the CCTV security system!
The latest and most bizarre
story of café planning regulations combines both a
change-of-use aspect and a reverse twist on the chairs-outside-cafes
story. In this case, a couple in Northumberland have been ordered by
the local council to erect tables and chairs at their home, and put
up signs advertising beverages for sale… because, the council says,
the building they live in was formerly a café, and nobody applied
for permission to change the use of the building into a
dwelling-house. To avoid being prosecuted by the council, they have
been forced to offer tea and coffee, even though one day’s takings
has been as low as £3.60.
Ringtons, the tea company
which has a unique selling point of home delivery in small
quantities, has begun another stage of its expansion plan –
it launched a horse-and-cart delivery service in East Devon this
month. And if the delivery service is successful, the firm will
introduce domestic tea delivery throughout the west country.
Ringtons already delivers to 280,000 domestic customers from 28
depots elsewhere across the UK. Meanwhile, a Newcastle IT company
has already said that it intends to make Ringtons 'the number one
resource for all things to do with tea on the web'.
The Beverage Service
Association is promoting a conference on the theme of
‘Turbocharge your Business’, to be held near Coventry on 24th
September (followed by a golf day on the 25th). The
subjects are finance, marketing, time-management and human
resources. (With regard to time-management, Speciality Food
Retailer magazine, for whom we occasionally write, tell us today of
research that says food retailers waste at least 7.5 per cent of
their wage bill through inefficient time planning).
Barry Mortlock,
who used to run Badgers café in Llandudno and now has other café
interests both in that town and in south Wales, will begin his
annual charity cycle run tomorrow. He cycles from Llandudno to his
Swansea site, and the four-day run aims to raise £10,000 for
children’s hospice work.
To donate online
please visit
www.justgiving.com/coffeeculturecyclechallenge
Joachim Herz, one of the
owners of German retailer Tchibo and one of the world's 500 richest
people, has died in a swimming accident in Atlanta, USA.
According to Forbes, Herz's fortune was about $3 billion, closely
followed by his mother Ingeburg Herz and two brothers.
Beyond the Bean
has named the winner of its recent contest to win a trip to support
the British entrant at the World Barista Championships in
Copenhagen. The winner wasTony Harris of Fig & Olive in Solihull.
(Elsewhere, expect Beyond the Bean to make some noise about
Starbucks' recent introduction of the Stix-to-Go and Stir Stix
products, the plastic things that go in takeaway lids. BtB can
claim to have been the first UK distributor of this product, and
will probably be reminding its customers that they can react very
quickly if the product gains popularity through Starbucks' use).
The Rainforest Alliance has
presented Lavazza with its Green Globe status
for the work that the Italian company has put in to build
partnerships for sustainable development with three coffee-growing
projects that it supports in Columbia, Honduras and Peru. The coffee
from these farms goes into the Tierra blend.
Colonel Grumpy, the retired
military man and diplomat who now trades coffee from a refurbished
Guatemalan bus at county fairs and the like, tells us that
he has opened his first static site – in an army garrison. Colonel
Grumpy’s Bus Stop café will open as part of the
Army Welfare Services
operation on 18th June. The idea of introducing a
speciality coffee bar in a garrison was supported by no less than
the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannat.
29th May 2008
The
visitor numbers for this year’s Caffe Culture event were 4433, slightly
up from last year’s 4377. More details of the show in our next
printed issue – meanwhile, we have the winners of the various SCAE
contests: the latte art was won by
Philip Gervaux of Origin, the Coffee in Good Spirits by Emma Chapman of
the Bottle Kiln, and the Cupping/Tasting award was taken by James
Hoffman (John Sherwood of the SCAE tells us that Guy Wilmot managed the
same score, but Jim was quicker).
*
One of the world’s
biggest names in coffee is opening up a training school in London –
Illy’s University of
Coffee will launch at the end of June. Illy’s Università del Caffè was
founded in
Trieste in 2000 and so far has schooled 7,000 baristas; the aim is to
open further branches in Brazil, China and India. The course is led by
Illy’s UK head of quality, Marco Arrigo, and the London course is
adapted to suit the UK coffee market. The chief executive of Illy,
Andrea Illy himself, will be in London for the launch in June.
At almost the same
time, Lavazza will open its new training centre in Dublin, a country
which it describes as ‘currently showing a great interest in all things
Italian’. It is involved with Batchelors Coffee there.
*
According to the
magazine Supply Management, more than half of Starbucks'
suppliers have failed to comply with the company's social responsibility
programme – the chain’s latest corporate social responsibility
report says that of the 78 suppliers it surveyed, 41 failed to meet its
"zero tolerance" policies, which included missing standards on child
labour, harassment of workers and payment of wages. Starbucks has
terminated the contracts of some of these suppliers, and will re-train
others. (We haven’t actually read the report
ourselves yet, although we have it on PDF; it will be available on the
Coffee House website this morning, or by email from the editor).
*
Reuters reports that
sales of coffee certified by the Rainforest Alliance have grown at an
average of 93 per cent per year from 2003 – the 2007 figures show
that 91.3 million pounds of certified coffee were bought. Lavazza is
reported to buy about two million 60-kg bags of coffee annually,
McDonalds has gone over to the cause, and Gloria Jean’s, which already
says it buys ‘several million pounds’ each year, intends to double its
commitment by 2010.
*
Kenya has reported a record price for its coffee. Immediately after
the international financial press reported that coffee from the country
would attract higher prices following the signing of regulations
allowing coffee from the country to be branded’, the country’s Daily
Nation newspaper reported Kenyan specialty AA grade coffee selling
for $1,138 per 50-kilogramme bag. The buyer was Kuster Sirocco Kaffee
AG of
Switzerland.
*
Reports from Rwanda
say that its output will increase by perhaps 93 per cent this year,
due to ideal weather in the last quarter of 2007 and the first part of
this year. The country has its first Cup of Excellence event this year.
*
The
combination of coffee and cereal at breakfast may not be a good one,
according to new research. A research team working on the links
between caffeine and type 2 diabetes has suggested that instead of
choosing low-sugar cereals and coffee, some people may be far better off
with a sweeter morning cereal and a decaffeinated drink. The essential
finding is that drinking coffee at breakfast can dramatically increase
blood sugar levels. This is not thought to be a problem for people who
live a generally healthy lifestyle, as their bodies can probably handle
short-term increases in blood sugar. However, those who have a weight
problem may find that it is their morning coffee which will give them a
problem, not the sweetness of their cereal.
*
Ringtons, the tea company which made its name through home deliveries,
now has ambitions to become “the number one resource on the internet for
all things to do with tea”. The Newcastle local press has reported
that the company has hired a local IT consultancy to
“drive
sales and find a new customer base”.
15th May -
The latest updates to
the Caffe Culture show,
which is on at Olympia next Wednesday and Thursday, include the news
that Matthew Algie will indeed actually be roasting coffee on their
stand - we couldn’t confirm this before, because they needed
permission from the organisers. This is part of their ‘freshness’
campaign, which seeks to have visitors taste the difference in freshness
between ‘just-roasted’ coffee and that which may be weeks old. By
coincidence, the international newswires this morning include an item
accusing Starbucks of, perhaps accidentally, putting a wrong ‘freshness’
date on their retail sales of beans – it is alleged that the staff write
on the bag the date, but that it’s the date they spooned the roasted
beans in, which may be thought to be a totally different thing from the
date of roasting.
Elsewhere, we learn
of another super prize being offered – at Antica (upstairs) you can win
a La Spaziale machine by going through a test rather similar to a
barista contest, making some cappuccinos for a couple of judges. Among
the other novel exhibits, we see that Quickfire Tableware, who had a
roulette game on their stand last year, have a ‘hook the ducks’ this
time round. And we make no comment at all on the news that Monin
flavoured syrups are doing something with cucumber.
The Countdown to Caffe
Culture, produced in partnership with Espresso Warehouse, appears on
this website.
*
We also hear of more
prizes for the Beverage Service Association’s café awards, the Bev-es.
We now hear that Rombouts (who, you will know from our latest issue, are
back with something of a bang) are giving the winning independent café
owner a trip to Antwerp, including some very good tours. Cimbali are
sending the ‘chain/group café’ winners off to Milan to see their
factory, and Monin are taking the winner of the best cart/mobile
operation to Bourges for a course on the use of flavourings.
This is a remarkable
set of prizes. May we invite would-be applicants to our own website,
www.coffee-house.org.uk, where
you can find the entry form. And if you have any trouble downloading it,
email the editor and we’ll send it to you on PDF.
*
This afternoon in
Halifax,
Costa Coffee is hosting the national launch of the iwantmymum.com
organisation, which was set up locally four years ago as a breastfeeding
awareness group. The launch will be hosted by the model Nell McAndrew.
Costa is providing free drinks.
*
Fairtrade is holding
three schools conferences in June,
at Glasgow (12th). Birmingham (16th) and London
(18th), in which the star participants will be two teenagers
from the Kuapa Kokoo cocoa co-operative, probably the best-known
provider of Fairtrade chocolate. We do not yet know of any opportunity
for the trade to be involved in their visit.
*
Tristan Stephenson,
the barista from Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant who made it to the
finals of the UK Barista Championships, leaves Fifteen this week to
take up a cocktail training position with Diageo – he is, we gather, now
temporarily lost to the world of espresso.
*
Starbucks has made another move towards developing inside hotels in the
UK. It
has done a deal with Village Hotels to open in ten of their sites, the
first in Ashton Moss (near Ashton under Lyne). Details are, we regret,
a bit vague – it is all supposed to ‘build
on Starbucks growing hotel licensee business portfolio’, but that is
being a bit generous, because this is only the second one, following an
opening in Shire Hotels in Bristol in March. Starbucks does, of course,
have 171 in-hotel concessions in the States. We do know that the new
site is operated by Village staff, uniformed as Starbucks, but beyond
that, nothing further is known - we can’t get beyond the corporate
information that Starbucks ‘will provide products such as coffee’, which
we might have guessed…
*
We are also intrigued to hear that Starbucks has apparently picked up on
the Stix-To-Go product, the little plastic flag thing that acts as a stopper in a takeaway cup
(and which, we might add, we exclusively reported on a few years
back!) The product was taken up here last year by Beyond the Bean,
who advise us somewhat regretfully that Starbucks have sourced their
product direct from the States; nonetheless, Beyond the Bean have been
quick to advise British cafes that the same product is already available
here!
*
The latest barista trainer to set up his own
bricks-and-mortar academy is Robert Henry,
who helped devise the ‘how to open a coffee shop’ courses with the
London School of Coffee. He is about to open a
650sq ft fully-working
training café in Milton Keynes. He will also be running the City &
Guilds VRQ course there.
*
The soft drinks industry has showed its ability to adapt and innovate in
an ever changing climate, says the British Soft Drinks Association in
its 2008 report.
Although last year
was the wettest summer on record, and the usual summer surge simply did
not happen, the nation’s soft drinks consumption was still rated at
about 234 litres per person
(see our Trade Reports page for the
full report)
The two categories to
grow were still juice drinks and 100-per-cent fruit juice, although
orange juice, historically the UK’s core flavour, saw its share
decrease.
The smoothies sector
grew by a quite remarkable 44 per cent, and sports drinks providing
hydration and replenishment for active lifestyles and energy drinks
delivering a caffeine or natural energy boost, rose by 12 per cent.
There was a slight
decline in bottled water sales, which the BSDA puts down to the bad
weather – even so, 2007 sales were still higher that they were in 2005,
and the industry believes that the sector will recover well. Plain
unflavoured bottled water accounts for 15 per cent of the soft drink
sector.
Carbonated drinks did
not do well. These remain the nation’s favourite, at 41.5 per cent of
the soft drinks market, but dropped by one per cent in sales. Diet
carbonated drinks, however, grew to reach a third of the total
carbonated market.
Cola remains the
favourite carbonated drink, with just over half of the market, but other
flavoured carbonated drinks declined, as did fizzy flavoured water.
Sales of 100-per-cent
fruit juice rose by 1.8 per cent, with chilled fruit juices now
accounting for over half the market, and ‘not from concentrate’ juices
continuing to build.
Rombouts, one of the most famous high-street coffee brands before the
espresso boom, will be re-launched to the catering trade at this month’s
Caffe Culture show. The re-launch will include an interesting product
addition – the brand known for its ‘one-cup filter system’ has devised
its own version of the ‘pod’ espresso format.
The out-of-home
and foodservice business is back under the ownership of the founding
family, although Premier Foods still deal with retail sales. The
re-establishment of the brand in catering will be handled by
Rob Briggs, Teresa
Pullen, and Jonathan Wadham, who between them have 30 years Rombouts
experience.
Public perception of the brand had dropped in recent
years, the new team acknowledges. “In recent years, Rombouts
was subject to large corporate pressures, which led to customer neglect,
and little investment in sales and marketing has diminished our brand
presence.
The obvious signs of support, the swing signs and window stickers,
dwindled to nothing. This was the main rationale behind the family
buying back the out-of-home side. We believe that the quality and
reputation of our coffees, along with a lot of hard work, will help us
regain the position we once held in the
UK.”
18th April -
Mr. David Williamson.
We are distressed to record
the passing of David Williamson, head of Matthew Algie,
Espresso Warehouse, and Tinderbox. He was 42.
He joined the family
business in 1991 as Marketing Director before taking
over from his father, Charlie, as Managing Director of
Matthew Algie in January 1995. David led the company
through a period of unprecedented growth during his time
as Managing Director.
10th April
Scotland’s
two best-known chains of coffee houses have come together - Tinderbox
has acquired Beanscene.
Tinderbox has branches in
Glasgow and London, and is owned by Carlo Ventesi and David Williamson,
who is the head of the Matthew Algie roastery and the Espresso Warehouse
wholesale business. Beanscene is the coffee-and-live-music chain set up
by Gordon Richardson eight years ago. The acquisition comes barely
twelve days after it was reported that Gordon Richardson had left the
company, but would remain a shareholder.
At the time, the Scottish
press reported that the founder had been succeeded by Alan Stewart, who
proposed investing ‘a substantial amount’ into the company. He was
quoted as saying: "Beanscene needs a stronger balance sheet to take
things forward and we are looking at our options.”
Today, Carlo Ventesi of
Tinderbox confirmed that Beanscene had become available because of the
level of investment it required.
“We know Beanscene very
well, and we’ve spoken to them many times over the years. We have always
liked the concept of coffee and music, which we thought was very strong,
and because we see it as a great independent brand, we are happy for the
opportunity to get involved with its development.”
Tinderbox has three
branches, while Beanscene has 14. Carlo Ventesi says that he has
‘absolutely no plans’ to merge them, and that the two brands are to
continue independently.
*
High-street coffee-bar chain
Costa has confirmed that within two years, all its coffee will be
certified by the Rainforest Alliance. By September of this year,
a third of its coffee will be RFA-certified. In 2006 the company
founded the Costa Foundation to support coffee growing communities,
and last year the foundation raised more than £300,000, which was
invested in building schools, providing teacher housing and teaching
materials in Columbia, Ethiopia and Uganda.
*
As always happens, the general
media has got in a tizzy about the source of the latest ‘most
expensive coffee in the world’, which was put on sale this week at
£50 per cup.
The world’s media gets agitated
iwhenever they hear the name of Kopi Luwak – the coffee trade is
going to be rather more interested in the practicalities of what
roaster David Cooper of Yorkshire has achieved.
The creation of Caffe Raro, ‘the
world’s rarest coffee’, is a joint project between Coopers,
deLonghi, and the Peter Jones espresso bar and brasserie, in
London’s Sloane Square. All proceeds from the sale of the coffee
will be donated to Macmillan Cancer Support, and so David Cooper,
charged with blending a suitable coffee, went for a combination of
the world’s two most expensive coffees – Kopi Luwak, and Jamaica
Blue Mountain.
In this case, he roasted the two
coffees in 500gm batches for about 12 minutes and then post-blended.
He told us that he was happy to find the result to be a very rich
and full-tasting espresso. “The result is very sweet and earthy
bodied coffee and low acidity. It was amazingly smooth.”
David Cooper said
that although only 60 tins of 100gm have been produced for retail,
he expects around £3,000 to be raised for Macmillan.
“I personally
drank £350 worth of it at the launch event!” he told us.
*
Coffee Nation,
the company which made premium-quality espresso-based coffee a
regular feature of motorway service stations, has completed its
management buy-out.
Coffee Nation was founded in 1999,
can be found in Welcome Break, Tesco, Esso, Moto and Somerfield,
sells 15 millions cups a year, and has a turnover of £20 million.
Scott Martin, the company’s CEO,
told us: “We have already proven that Coffee Nation is a successful
business model, and our ambition is to turn Coffee Nation into one
of the leading coffee brands in Europe.”
He has a new self-serve machine due
– full story in our next printed magazine.
*
Starbucks has confirmed that it will open its first British
drive-through coffee house some time in May. Although the
international chain said last year that it had chosen Cardiff as the
site for its pilot, the site has only now been confirmed as Dunleavy
Drive, which is a development area that includes a business park,
retail park, and the Cardiff international Sports Village, a giant
undertaking which the Welsh Development Agency has called ‘the UK’s
most exciting regeneration project’.
Starbucks has made no comment in response to practical questions
concerning the staffing and operational practicalities of drive-up
coffee service – typically, the possibilities of serving a 20-oz
vente through a car window.
*
Alistair Blake of Prima Coffee has
told us that one of his customers, Juri’s in Winchcombe, has won
the Tea Guild’s award for Top Tea Place of the year. We have
been unable to find out any further details, other than that we know
Juri’s is strongly Japanese-influenced. We are intrigued to see that
they use the T-Sac, which will again be exhibited at Caffe Culture
this year.
*
Britain’s leading barista champion,
three-time winner Simon Robertson, has made a local appeal for the
owner of a wedding ring which turned up under the floorboards of his
coffee house in Yorkshire. As he renewed his flooring three years
ago, he thinks the ring was lost before that, and is worried that
the chances of finding the owner are now slim.
*
The man who will be in charge of
Mahlkoenig UK, the company set up by the La Spaziale guys to market
the extremely wide range of grinders in the UK, will be James
Shepherd. He joins two days before the company's appearance at
Caffe Culture.
28 March
Gordon
Richardson, the founder of the Beanscene coffee house chain, has
resigned. Reports in the Scottish press say he did so following a
disagreement over expansion plans. Although he has resigned as managing
director, having already negotiated a refinancing deal, he will remain a
shareholder.
In a report today, Mr Richardson said there had been "a difference of
opinion" over how to progress the business, which has 15 sites and 150
staff.
Alan Stewart, a director of Beanscene, is said to have agreed to plough
a "substantial" investment into Beanscene, and is quoted as saying that
refinancing would give the company "a solid base to build on and secure
its future".
Further reports suggested that Gordon Richardson is already planning to
open two music-and-coffee cafes, which was his original plan for
Beanscene.
27 March:
We have been watching the
international coverage of the results of the big Starbucks AGM last
week, and are extremely pleased to see that several of the items
which have begun to get coverage aren’t the obvious ones.
At his AGM, chairman Howard Schulz
unveiled his five-point master plan for putting Starbucks back at
the top of the credibility tree in the café sector. He announced
that Starbucks would introduce a ‘revolutionary’ new espresso coffee
machine, and that he would also buy the maker of the ground-breaking
Clover machine for filter coffee, which has drawn so much recent
comment in the coffee trade.
At the same time, he promised to
introduce a new rewards programme, launch the MyStarbucksIdea.com
project to create ‘an online community to take the Starbucks
Experience outside the store’, and an expanded relationship with
Conservation International to demonstrate progress in ethical
sourcing.
The new espresso machine is the
Mastrena, made by Thermoplan of Switzerland, the company behind
Black and White machines. Starbucks were unable to give us a picture
of the machine, or indeed any practical data on it, but Thermoplan’s
managing director Adrian Steiner has been in touch and told
Coffee House that the Mastrena would feature ‘quality
improvement through continuous shot monitoring’.
From what little he tells us, the
Mastrena appears to follow certain machines already on the market
which have software that monitors and controls dosing, tamp
pressure, and extraction time, making appropriate changes when
necessary. That new machine is to reach Starbucks’ international
stores this summer.
The acquisition of the Clover
figured in a scripted question-and-answer session after the AGM,
which included a query on whether other caterers would still be able
to obtain the machine, or indeed if other distributors would get a
look in. The answer was, at best, vague, saying that Starbucks now
holds the exclusive rights to this technology and “will need to
prioritize production capacity to meet the needs of the business”.
However, Matthew Algie, which has been working on distribution and
promotion of the machine here, commented that when Starbucks
purchased a tea brand some years ago, they did not cut off
availability to other markets.
The data about MyStarbucksIdea.com.
was extremely vague – it appears that the idea is for customers to
tell Starbucks what they want from the stores, and that senior
executives are tasked to respond on the website. This week, an
American news organisation has produced a survey of the first week’s
activity on the site, and reports that the most popular suggestion
is for a reward system which brings free drinks - 394 people
commented on it. The second most popular suggestion was free wi-fi
access.
The important thing about this, it has
been observed, is that it follows the trend for companies to use
‘social-networking’ as a means of customer research. It was three
years ago that corporates clicked to how to use ‘blogging’ to
interact with customers, but a survey last month said that 24 per
cent of international corporates now recognise ways to use social
networking sites, wikis, ‘folksonomy’ and blogs (although that is
now decreasing in popularity) through the concept of Web 2.0, which
itself is a theory based on a more interactive use of the internet.
Elsewhere in Starbucks plans were
ideas for free refills on filter coffee (many privately-owned
American cafes have always offered that) , and for filter coffee to
be freshly brewed at new set intervals to avoid staleness, and that
there will be two hours of free instore wi-fi for certain registered
customers.
Meanwhile, Starbucks in America has
been ordered to pay back more than $100 million in tips owed to
staff across outlets in California. A lawyer successfully argued in
court that supervisors were unfairly receiving a share of tips which
should have gone to the serving staff.
One American syndicated columnist, by coincidence named Schultz, has
made the interesting comment that there is an unwritten contract
with customers, which assumes that money in the tip jar goes to the
person who gave the service. That same writer was the
whistle-blower in a notable case in
America some time ago,
in which a catering organisation had simply kept everything in the
tip jar and put it into the corporate coffers.
*
Peros, the UK’s leading independent
distributor of organic and ethical beverages to the foodservice
sector, has doubled the size of its High Wycombe distribution
centre, and is to build new capacity at Brigg, where it serves
northern customers. All the new facilities are to meet the
company’s carbon-zero ambitions.
Managing director James Roberts
says that he needs to add 25,000 square feet of warehouse capacity
just to keep up with existing demand.
*
Following our report that Youri
Vlag, former barista trainer with Coopers, has set up his own
website on how to start a coffee shop,
we now see that he has also started the company Absolute Coffee,
which will offer training, consultancy, La Spaziale espresso
machines, and coffee roasted, we’re told, by Pollards.
*
The Russian news
agencies have reported that Costa Coffee has opened its first shop
in Moscow.
The company
plans to open around 200 shops in Russia in the next five years,
although the local press point out that their culture is not used to
the coffee shop concept, which is a very recent habit for a small
number of Russians. It is
reported that coffee-shop coffee is expensive by Moscow standards
- a cappuccino can cost the equivalent of $5-$10 (£2.50 - £5)
*
PG tips is to be served in all
1,200 McDonald’s restaurants across the UK.
The move follows an announcement that PG tips will now work with the
Rainforest Alliance. At least 50 per cent of PG tips tea comes from
the Rainforest Alliance-certified farms and the intention is for all
supplying farms to be certified by 2010. McDonald’s also switched
to RFA-certified coffee from Kenco last year, and suggests that the
move contributed to an increase in the number of cups of coffee sold
every day.
*
Twinings has been cleared by the
Advertising Standards Authority of ‘playing on negative racial
stereotypes’. The ASA
received a complaint from a woman viewer about recent television
advertisements for Lady Grey and Earl Grey tea, from a woman viewer
who complained that the adverts suggested that black men were
sexually promiscuous and existed to provide sexual services for
white women.
In the commercial, the black man writes a message on a notice board
telling customers that Twinings tea "puts the zing in your
ding-a-ling", a term first heard here in a Chuck Berry record in
1972. That year, moral campaigners unsuccessfully tried to get the
record banned – this year, the makers of the commercial said they
believed the innuendo to be no worse than in a Carry On film, and
the ASA has now issued a polite ruling which makes it fairly clear
that they think the complaint was nonsense.
*
The latest in a
series of rows between café owners and local authorities is reported
from Yarmouth, where seafront traders have declined to pay for a
licence for outside seating.
As we have reported
several times recently, there is a problem with local authorities
who seem to like the concept of ‘continental-style’ areas with
outdoor tables and chairs, but want to charge for the right to use
pavement space. In Yarmouth, the local press reports that the
council’s charge is ten times higher than the one levied in
Blackpool, and even higher than Covent Garden in London. As a
result, not a single café has applied for a pavement licence, and
the council officer for tourism is now reported to have warned that
if existing cafes and restaurants do not take up the offer, the
council would consider offering licences to independent traders to
run street cafes from coffee trailers. He has suggested that one of
the national chains is already interested in doing so.
*
Leeds City Council is offering a
disused toilet block for around £25,000, following the breakdown of
plans to turn it into a café.
It has taken four years of negotiation between the council and some
prospective tenants, who had intended to lease the building and
invest £170,000 in creating the café – although the intended new
owners obtained planning permission for the change of use, they are
reported to have become exasperated waiting for the council to agree
the terms of the lease.
*
The press in
Georgia, USA, has reported the strange case of a barista fired from
a certain coffee chain, who took imaginative and drastic action to
highlight what he believed was unfair dismissal.
He staged an outdoor rock-protest concert right outside the
establishment. Performers came from all over the state, and although
it didn’t win him his job back, it certainly publicised his CV.
(The offence which led to his firing was, apparently, complaining
that his supervisor was making whipped cream to a standard below
that dictated by company policy).
16th March:
Java
Republic, the highly-opinionated, idiosyncratic and award-winning coffee roaster
in
Dublin, has appointed First Choice as its UK distributor. Java
Republic has now been supplying
Ireland’s leading restaurants, coffee houses, boutique
hotels and offices with premium, artisan, hand-roasted, ethical coffees,
speciality teas and real hot chocolate for seven years. In that time it
has won 69 Great Taste awards, has grown to a turnover of seven million
Euros, and will soon complete the building of what is thought to be
Europe’s first carbon-neutral coffee roastery.
”
*
Fair Instant, the soluble coffee from Fine Foods
International, has achieved a milestone with its donations to Save the
Children totalling £100,000 in the last twelve months – this is halfway
to its projected target.
Although the
coffee in Fair Instant is already Fairtrade-certified, FFI has also
promised a separate donation from every jar or tin sold to Save The
Children. The aim is to get more children from impoverished
coffee-growing regions into school, providing education
for disabled children,
providing schools with equipment and teacher-training, providing
uniforms and shoes, and protecting schoolchildren from abuse.
*
Lavazza is to supply the entire JD Wetherspoon estate with its
Rainforest Alliance-certified blend, Tierra.
Following a new
agreement, all 680 JD Wetherspoon pubs will now be serving Lavazza's
ethical coffee blend, a 100 per cent Arabica blend, full bodied with a
floral aroma.
*
Bill
Fishbein, founder of the Coffee Kids charity which is most commonly seen
here on the labels of Percol coffee, has resigned from the board of the
American office of the charity, but remains on the board of directors of
Coffee Kids UK.
"It became obvious to me
that Coffee Kids was going to have to be around for a long time," he
told us last week. "To do so, it had to become free from its dependency
on me. We have been working towards this for several years, and we have
now appointed an executive director whose heart and sensibilities are
deeply rooted in our programmes. The board is more capable than any
other time in Coffee Kids history, and I have no concerns about the
future of Coffee Kids.” In the UK, Coffee Kids is supported
by donations from several coffee roasters. The pioneer of its work here,
however, has been Percol, which has donated something approaching half a
million dollars to the cause in recent years.
7th March -
Ian Steel and his
team at Atkinson, the roaster in Lancaster,
are up for an award tonight – they are in the last four of
the Independent Retailer section of the Bibas, which are
north-western business prizes. “To reach the last four of a
possible 400 is still quite an achievement for such a small outfit,
so fingers are crossed!”, Ian told us this morning. Atkinson’s is
also to receive a gold medal from the North West Fine Foods Awards
next week.
Bill
Fishbein, founder of Coffee Kids, has resigned from the
board of directors. Bill says that he is to pursue other
opportunities to help coffee-farming families as well as offering
consultancy services on companies with regard to their social
responsibilities. This is the 20th year of Coffee Kids.
The latest
row about tables outside cafes comes from Whitehaven. The
local paper reported yesterday that Cumbria County Council is
considering licences to have tables and
chairs on the pavement. The fee, likely to be about £50, will apply
everywhere in
Cumbria, except Carlisle, where the paper says that city council
already levies a charge.
The authorities in
Hawaii
have decided not to ban genetically altered coffee, and
there are reports from the island that this has not gone down well
with some farmers. The legislators have shelved the proposal for a
ban, and decided that they want a study
into the science, benefits and dangers of genetically enhanced
crops. Coffee farmers are reported to be worried that genetically
modified coffee could contaminate their expensive Kona, which is
exported worldwide – the sales manager for one plantation is
reported as saying that the danger of contamination by GMO coffee
would ruin their business in
Japan at a stroke.
We can
reveal that the Bev-e awards, in which the Beverage Service
Association recognises cafes doing exceptional work, have been
overhauled for this year. As usual, there are awards for
the best single-unit café, with four regional winners, one of whom
becomes the national winner. This year, Rombouts is offering a trip
to Antwerp as an additional prize. There will be a separate award
for the best chain of five outlets or more – three entries from any
chain will be judged. There will also this year be a section for
carts and mobile operations, with one national prize. The judges’
guidelines have been revised, and 51 per cent of the scores are now
directly beverage-related, as opposed to marks for ambience and so
on. This year, the judges are obliged to write reports on what they
see and taste, and cannot simply award points without any
explanation. (For the first time, the BSA has also resolved to do
something we have been preaching for years, and promote the contest
and the winner around the regional press).
A Manchester
cafe has become the first cafe to be successfully prosecuted for
permitting smoking on its premises… but there’s more to it
than meets the eye. It’s the Shesha, and is one of several venues
which claim that the shisha, also known as hookah or nargila pipes,
should be exempt from the smoking ban on cultural grounds. There has
been a request for a judicial review.
Starbucks
has complained that different councils operate the A1 and A3 retail
rules differently, following the rejection of its latest
application by Harrow Council. Starbucks is reported to have run
into difficulties with residents over its new branch in High Street,
Pinner. Its signage was called ‘shoddy and out of character’, and
its application to keep its new sign and shop front was rejected by
the council; this followed a previous rejection for a certificate of
existing use, when the chain was told it needed A3 permission to
operate from what was previously a bookshop. The council has said it
will enforce its decisions and could close the coffee shop if it
fails to get proper planning permission.
Coopers Coffee has
confirmed that
barista trainer and web manager Youri Vlag has this week
left the company ‘to pursue other interests in the coffee
industry’. As we have already reported, those interests include
his new website,
www.howtostartacoffeeshop.co.uk .
Coopers is now seeking a replacement barista trainer. Youri,
meanwhile, says he leaves with no hard feelings, that it’s time to
move on, and he will be setting up an independent consultancy.
The
international press has been lining up to take pot-shots at
Starbucks following the decision by top man Howard Schulz
to close the entire American operation down for a few hours while he
gave his staff a pep-talk. We aren’t going to add to that, but were
intrigued by some of the resulting entries which cropped up on the
forums of various American newspapers’ websites. One included these
comments from a Starbucks employee: “Our orders are to remake a
drink as many times as it takes until the customer is satisfied, so
technically, as long as you keep saying nay, we should remake your
drink until it is, indeed, perfect,” and “there are new ways we are
being forced to make the drinks, including pouring shots into shot
glasses and then into the cups instead of directly into the cups,
which is extremely hard on your fingers because the shot glasses are
scalding hot and this new system poses an imminent burn hazard.”.
Cliff
Burrows, formerly head of Starbucks in the UK and then in
Europe and the Middle East, is now to take up a senior position in
the company’s US operations.
Urnex, the
American maker of innovative coffee-machine cleansing products, has
set up a new distribution centre in the Netherlands. The brand
already has distribution in the UK.
We are at the end
of Fairtrade Fortnight, but a BBC Good Food survey has
suggested that consumers are still confused about the principles
behind the Fairtrade mark. It seems that 80 per cent of
consumers think that brands carrying the Fairtrade logo all work
directly with growers, build long-term partnerships, and reinvest in
grower training and development. Cafedirect has commented that only
a few brand-owners, such as themselves, do so. The survey also said
that shoppers really have no idea how much money actually gets to
the growers.
Thursday, 4.40pm
The new UK Barista Champion is Hugo Hercod of Relish, a
deli in Wadebridge, who won the title this afternoon at the
Hotelympia show.. He was closely followed by Neli
Petkova of Cafe Krem in Belfast, and then Subi Tweed of Ground,
again Northern Ireland. This is a remarkable
success also for Steve Leighton of the roaster Has Bean in
Stafford - he had his coffees used by three of the top six,
including Neli in second place.
Our home page news section has sometimes been allowed to grow to
ridiculous lengths... we're going to try and keep it in check.
Items more than a few weeks old will now go to
the news archive. Now, that is an immense file... it goes back to 2003!
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Bev-e awards - the entry form is now available
from this site. Click here.
(it may take a few seconds to load)
A quite brilliant new book on cafe
operation...
reviewed here
first!
*
www.coffeecreations.co.uk
Aero, having created its new hot chocolate
mix, has now devised some new recipes to go with it. The interesting
thing is a making price of 35p or less against a suggested retail price
of over £2. Click here.
Look at the new Espro milk-foaming jug - see
the Great Ideas section.
|
Have you
tried the fun
of mobile
trading with a
Piaggio?
|
 |
It's time for the
APE EXPERIENCE!
This interesting item comes from
Adminex. It’s a mug-and-cup set in which the saucer has a deep
recess for holding the spent tea-bag.
Enquiries: 01621 891501
Full details
here.
*
Your very own coffee bar is
something you go into wholeheartedly...
... so don't settle for advice that
misses out
half the elements!
Consult Andrew Sanders -
www.andrewlsanders.co.uk
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