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BOUGHTON'S COFFEE HOUSE - NEWS ARCHIVE This is an absolutely immense file. It is the entire archive of our daily news stories, from the most recent archiving, going backwards to 2003... the very latest stories are on our home page, and every so often we shunt the rest over into this page. and no, I haven't indexed it. I haven't found the time !
News, 2008
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. 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.
*
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. 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.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. ”
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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 |
