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The Coffee House news archive is huge. It is absolutely enormous, and dates from 2003. While we're sorting it all out, we're simply archiving news from August 2009 onwards. If there's an old news item you need to find, email the editor and we'll try to help. |
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MAY 2010
18th May Two pieces of coffee-cycling news – it’s this weekend that barista Neil le Bihan cycles from Land’s End to John o’Groats for Coffee Kids – you can donate at http://www.justgiving.com/Neil-Le-Bihan . Meanwhile, Chris York of Marco did the Suffolk Sunrise 100 charity bike ride on 9th May, for Action Medical Research (research into medical conditions of unborn children) and you can give at www.action.org.uk/sponsor/chrisyork7 * Watch out for something unusual at the Taste of London food festival in Regent’s Park (17-20 June). Union Hand Roasted are part of the exhibitor list, alongside the likes of Rick Stein and Heston Blumenthal. But the really unusual thing is probably a ‘first’ – Union’s Jeremy Torz and Steven Macatonia are proposing to roast coffee in the open air, in front of the visitors. *
This
coming Saturday (22nd) will be opening day for the Penny
University, James Hoffman’s new retail venture. As we reported
recently, this involves a former world barista champion in an entirely
non-espresso service, concentrating instead on promoting the qualities
of great coffees through a variety of filter brewing methods. The venue
is 5 Redchurch Street, London
* In a similar filter vein, we hear that the World Aeropress Championships are to be held in London at the time of the world barista contest. The event highlights the skill of preparing a perfect filter coffee. * Another barista opening up in London next week is Tristan Stephenson, once of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, who reached the national barista finals a couple of years back. He is opening Purl, a wine bar in Marylebone. A ‘purl’ was a hot alcoholic beverage sold on the streets in the 1800s. * Costa is the subject of several petitions in the midlands. Although planning officers in Leek have recommended approval of a local branch to the applications committee which meets tomorrow (Thursday) 536 residents have objected. In what has become a familiar situation, objectors argued against the town becoming ‘just charity shops and coffee shops’, whereas the council has pointed out that the venture will bring activity to premises which have been empty for a year. Costa was also the subject of a petition objecting against it replacing the WRVS café at Sandwell hospital, where it opens next week. The WVRS business had an admirable record of contributing to the hospital – in one year alone, it raised £20,000 for medical equipment. * The Bath Coffee Festival visitor figure was 7,350 over two days, more on the Saturday than the Sunday. Quite a lot of older visitors, we are told, and not as many students and teenagers as expected. Organiser Linda Donaldson says: “I anticipated that we would have mainly local people and some Londoners – however, some people travelled more than 380 miles to get to the festival and two guys from Kuwait came for Daisy Rollo’s latte art masterclass, and one tourist came from Vancouver Island. Perhaps we will get the Aussies coming next year!” Local charities shared around £1,000 in donations as a result. * Starbucks in America has introduced a range of flavoured coffees packed for retail - Starbucks Natural Fusions feature cinnamon, vanilla and nutmeg. * The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has become involved in the One Pot Pledge, a campaign which encourages coffee drinkers to pledge to re-use disposable cups for simple foods – the charity Garden Organic says, optimistically, that growing cress in an old coffee cup ‘could prevent some of the 88,218 disposable cups which are used every 15 minutes, ending up in landfill’. Mayor Boris, observing that takeaway cups do offer good planting situations for seedlings, called them ‘one-cup allotments’. * This wins our award for ‘best missed marketing opportunity of the month’ - the Illy Art Collection of decorated espresso cups is to go on tour between 16th June and 17th September, and will travel to Strada restaurants in London, Brighton, Cardiff, Birmingham and Manchester. The Collection includes cup designs from names in film and music, such as Francis Ford Coppola, and Federico Fellini. Illy cups are collectors’ items, and some rare ones have fetched up to £25,000. We did ask why they weren’t tying it in with Caffe Culture, but reach London the week after the world barista championship – of course, it didn’t occur to them! * Jim Harding and Hannah Darby, both formerly of La Cimbali, have won an award for their new café, Café Black in Stamford. They won a ‘best new start-up’ prize from the local paper. * There’s a rather good video on YouTube about Java Republic of Dublin, and David McKernan’s latest visit to Ethiopia – his company has spent years working on constructing water projects there. It’s at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N0NuvoZVTo The things that leap out at you are the phrases: ‘they said a bucket of fresh water a day can change their lives’, and ‘every one of us cried’. And as one of the Irish visitors commented: ‘we drove the distance from Dublin to Newry on a dirt road, to reach a place with no electricity… how are we going to build anything?’ Good film – please spend eight minutes watching it.
7th May Nescafe has launched its new Milano machine for out-of-home catering – the aspect of this which is going to arouse some reaction is Nescafe’s comment that the product is ‘a high-end soluble system, which has been inspired by the true Italian espresso and stands proud against roast and ground competitors’ and that it is ‘a soluble system that holds its own against roast and ground in terms of taste, appearance and quality’. At the Allegra Summit in London a couple of weeks ago, the subject was again raised, of whether a drink produced using soluble coffee can actually be sold as ‘espresso’ or ‘cappuccino’. * Starbucks has now opened a New York store which is expected to receive a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification in July. The store incorporates various sustainable features - water-based paints, low-energy light bulbs, and water-conservation systems. The countertops are made of ‘re-purposed’ white oak recovered from barns. The magnetic community board is made of metal panels from ‘retired’ espresso machines, and the ‘wallpaper’ has been made of re-used coffee sacks. * There are two more scalding cases in the course of a few days – in the UK, a Lancashire family has criticised chain café staff for an ‘amateurish’ response to an accident in which another customer dropped coffee on to a 10-month-old boy; in the US, a woman is suing Starbucks for 'unreasonably hot' tea which she claims caused second-degree burns. * In Liverpool, a new mobile coffee operation has started – the coffee shop and caterer Bean has converted an ice-cream van. However, mobile traders all round the UK will not be impressed by the report in the local paper, which calls it ‘the UK’s only mobile coffee machine’. * The latest row about the number of coffee houses in high streets comes from Chippenham, where the former Woolworth’s site will be divided into halves, one becoming a Costa coffee shop and the other a Poundland. The local chamber of commerce has said that a street which is full of phone shops, charity shops and coffee shops now needs ‘some serious retail’ in it, but the owner of the former Woolworth building says that no such traders are interested in the site * Denny’s Uniforms, the kitchenwear supplier, is to provide over 700 shirts and aprons to be worn by the judges and volunteers at the World Barista Championships, being held at Caffe Culture in June. Uptodate details of the world event competitors can be found, we think uniquely, at http://www.coffee-house.org.uk/CH4WBCcountdown.html
4th May It is a good day for fans of careful beverage brewing…
We think the trade may do well to look with interest at the new venture by James Hoffmann, our first world barista champ. His Square Mile roasting business is now to be followed, maybe within the next week or two, by Penny University, a retail venture. The interesting thing is this… there is no espresso coffee involved. James says: ‘Penny University will be a showcase for the complex and varied filter coffees and brewers that, despite their clarity, sweetness and ease to brew, remain unjustly overshadowed by espresso’. (He also told us that he was surprised that people he has told about it haven’t clicked to the origin of the name).
And…
We rather like the sound of a new tea-house business in Wilmslow. A chap called Mohi Rahman has opened Caffe Am-ma (which means ‘mother’ in Hindi) to specifically serve Indian tea – that is, tea which is traditionally prepared with spices and often boiled in a pan together with milk. (The original chai, indeed). “It has a very relaxing effect and I really want to bring that to my customers,” he says.
*
The local press in Brighton have reported the problem of a café owner who has been arrested - for the second time, believe it or not – for attempting to make a citizen’s arrest on a gang of yobs shouting at his customers and threatening to break the café windows. Sussex police are quoted as saying the youths had done nothing; a professor who studies and reports on crime prevention said, rather more constructively: “if we are going to have any chance of tackling anti-social behaviour people must be prepared to intervene - the idea that the police can stop this kind of behaviour without public help is just plain wrong. We need to get back to a culture where adults are prepared to restrain misbehaving children without being afraid they will end up being arrested themselves.”
*
A former professional footballer, John Hawley (Bradford City, Arsenal and Sunderland) is to be the new owner of the Jaz Café in Beverley, Yorkshire.
*
Coolaboola, of Jesmond Metro station and Newcastle Central Metro station, has cropped up in the Independent’s latest list of good coffee places; Atkinson’s of Lancaster has appeared in the Times list of ‘local hero’ retailers.
*
Costa Coffee is to follow Starbucks in producing a new design format for its London cafes as part of some expansion in the city. Consultants have been briefed on new store acquisitions.
*
The financial press has reported today that Pret a Manger has reported losses of £44.8m, put down to ‘a rapid expansion drive’, although sales increased to £279m (from £190m).
April 2010 :
20th April We are now even more confident that this week’s Allegra Coffee Summit will produce some interesting debate – mainly because of the curiosity which we reported last week concerning statistics on the high-street coffee business. Starbucks will almost certainly be referring to research it has recently paid for, which suggests that a quite remarkable figure of consumers visit coffee shops every week – we have queried the figures, but we expect that we are in for some interesting debate about them. A brief précis of the research is now on our newsfeed, at http://boughtonscoffeehouse.wordpress.com/, and there will be a full editorial feature in our next magazine (early May) on the size of the trade. The Allegra event is at Vinopolis on Thursday; we believe it to be fairly full, but that some spaces still remain. * The Tea Guild’s award for Top Tea Place 2010 has gone to the Black Swan Tearoom, Helmsley, on the edge of the North York Moors. A rather curious report ion one of the papers says: “Judges said it was 'one of the best' visited for condition and service”. Well, if it was given the national champion title, it would have been one of the best, wouldn’t it? It is pricing we find interesting, having had a look at the menu – the cheapest pot of tea is £2.95, and some are priced as high as £3.95. Same with coffee – an espresso is £3.50, and a cappuccino is £3.75, and a mocha, would you believe, £3.95. And there are still some people in this trade who don’t believe that the four quid speciality coffee exists! And we do like to see that the venue puts on such events as talks on tea, and themes afternoon tea events – including the fascinating ‘rhubarb tea’. * At the other end of the pricing scale, the pub chain JD Wetherspoon is looking to take even more of the morning coffee market by opening up across its estate at 7am, from Wednesday 28 April. There are several deals at 99p, including bacon roll and coffee and teacakes and coffee. An unnecessarily challenging remark in a JD Wetherspoon publication quotes one of their senior managers as saying: “We felt sorry for those who were having to pay double for coffee and food at the likes of Costa and Starbucks… we think that one of the real bonuses will be all of the comfy chair and space, so much more relaxed that the oh-so-rushed coffee shops; there are also lots of quiet corners for people to use the free Wi-fi.” * Starbucks is reported to have submitted plans to build a drive-thru on the site of a petrol service station housing a former Little Chef just off the M50 at Ross-on-Wye. * Cafédirect has split its senior sales team into specific divisions – Harriet Gething has taken on the trade marketing manager role, Paul Carleton becomes national account manager, and Chris Haddy is foodservice controller. Elsewhere, a curious story in Market Research World quotes Mintel as saying ‘Fairtrade is becoming the norm in the coffee market’, which will rouse half of the roasting trade to apoplexy… * Pukka Herbs, the organic herbal beverage company, has won a Soil Association Organic Award for its After Dinner Organic Herbal Tea, made from organic fennel, chicory and cardamom. * Paddy & Scott’s coffee company, of Suffolk, has secured a regional listing with Tesco for its gourmet “When to you drink your coffee?” range. The coffee is marketed on the basis of research which said that 72 per cent of coffee drinkers are more aware of the occasion when they drink their coffee, than the characteristics of coffees from different origins – so the products are Morning Coffee (which is an all South American blend), All-Day (Colombian), and the Great With Friends, is a dark roasted blend from Indonesia and Africa. * Just when you thought that the row between the Cheltenham Council and Chris Crichton of the Green Coffee Machine couldn’t carry on any further… it does. The latest round in this long-standing argument over whether an operator should be allowed to trade from a Piaggio van has come with the advent of better weather – the borough licensing committee have said that he can extend his licence to include cold drinks, but that they would levy an extra charge of £3,000 on him, on the basis that his first licence was rated low because of his limited product range. When we asked Chris if he had to pay up, he replied: “Never! I'll battle on again with this one” One councillor has supported him, and a 60-signature petition in his favour has been presented.
9th April:
First Choice Coffee and Gala Coffee
are to be brought together under the name United Coffee
*
It is reported this morning that
Kraft Foods has approved the idea of a national chain of
Cadbury-branded cafés designed to compete with high street coffee
shops. It is reported
that a 20-year licence has been put in place for maybe sixty
‘Cadbury Cocoa House’ outlets that will offer afternoon teas and a
dedicated chocolatier service. Negotiations are said to be already
going on with landlords in
*
Arla, the makers of Cravendale milk, have replaced Gold Top as the milk sponsors of the Bath Festival of Coffee (mid-May)
*
A curious invitation to a
coffee-tasting has been issued by Pollards of Sheffield and the
local university. Simon Bower, MD of Pollards, is using the concept
of ‘quality’ in the coffee industry as the basis for an MBA, and is
working in partnership with a fellow student who is studying the
same concept from a different angle, involving the amount of coffee
which the world wastes instead of using. On Tuesday, April 13, at
*
We expect there to be an unexpected
addition to the next Allegra coffee summit, to be held at Vinopolis
in http://www.ukcoffeeleadersummit.com/
*
A notable feature of our Countdown to the World Barista Championship, which we think is unique, and which you can find in progress at www.coffee-house.org.uk, is how many national champions are returning to the world event for the second time. And they are now joined by Colin Harmon, who retained the Irish title in
March 2010 :
30th March: Plans for the Bath Coffee Festival (May 15-16) are now beginning to take more shape. The event is going to be held in a marquee at the Bath recreation ground, and we know so far of three dozen exhibitors, including several known names – Illy, Lavazza, Metropolitan, Teapigs, Suki, Cafedirect and Whittards are all there. A notable feature is that around a dozen of the city’s coffee houses are co-operating in a general promotion. An indicator that interest is increasing through the coffee trade is that the SCAE has now joined the list of supporters.
*
Several of the old BB’s Coffee and
Muffins sites around
*
Glenfinlas of Edinburgh, already a
distributor of
*
We have another story of an
exceptionally long-serving coffee-house operator – Paul
Georgiou, who is 80 this week, has owned Fountains Coffee House in
*
There is a story behind a story
in tea this week. First, the west-country’s domestic tea
estate, Tregothnan, has shipped out something in the region of
six-thousand Cornish cream teas to
*
Sara Lee, the giant which is the owner of Douwe Egberts, has announced that it has developed a new espresso capsule that is compatible with Nespresso coffee machines. The new product, L’Or, will be available from the beginning of April. We observe that the Sara Lee announcement is not accompanied by a comment from Nespresso, as is usual in a joint venture… so perhaps it is not!
*
We are very well aware of the date – but this is still the last day of March, and not the first of April, so we take the following stories at face value:
We rather like this snippet from
Cravendale, the milk brand which is a sponsor of the barista championships, has created a prototype ‘magic jug’ which tells the user when milk has gone sour - a sensor built into the base of the jug measures the acidity of the contents and, and an LCD screen on the side of the jug shows an alert. Cravendale says that every year, 333,000 tonnes of milk which has not been used in time, is thrown away by domestic users alone.
This one has to be watched, rather than read:
Heatswell is ‘an instant hot beverage protection sleeve’. As the hot liquid is poured into the cup, the heat-resistant grip sleeve ‘grows’ from the side of the cup. We’re told that the coating appears to be painted on, and that the hotter the beverage, the more dramatic the growth… stay watching to 1min 50sec to what we mean!
* 19th March: Cafédirect have, understandably, been quick to respond to a news report in the grocery press this morning, which said ‘Asda has delisted two Fairtrade instant coffee brands, Cafédirect and Clipper, due to poor sales.’ The report added: ‘value sales of Cafédirect instant coffee at Asda declined 11.5 per cent in the year to 6 September 2009, while sales of Clipper instant coffee plummeted 64.7 per cent’. By contrast, said the report, Percol instant coffee had a sales rise of 16.8 per cent with Asda.
Jon Marlow, head of sales at Cafedirect, has confirmed to us that his freeze-dried instant Classic 100gm and the decaf 100gm have indeed been de-listed – but that Asda has at the same time taken on five new Cafedirect roast-and-ground products, and a new listing of their San Cristobal hot chocolate. Asda is, he tells us, still in discussion with Cafedirect about how to progress in the freeze-dried sector.
Clipper has not yet commented.
*
The GotSpot organisation, which works on wi-fi installations for independent coffee houses, has responded with unconcern to the news that legislation could ‘negatively affect’ coffee shops offering internet services. The Digital Economy Bill is about cracking down on illegal downloads, and the campaigners opposing the Bill say this is unfair to places like schools and coffee shops.
“Bring it on!” says Dave Birch of GotSpot. “The hardware / software combination that we provide allows us to prevent access to sites and limit actual traffic. Of course, if the bill doesn't include some kind of ‘best endeavours to prevent’ clause then this may become a problem, because smart computer people can hack through pretty much any restrictions implemented, and that might make outlets unwilling to take the risk, even if they take our precautions.”
*
Lipton Ice Tea has recruited actor Hugh Jackman for ‘global’ TV advertising, to start on Monday. Britvic has the rights to Lipton Ice Tea through a UK bottling agreement with Pepsi Lipton International, while Unilever has ownership of the Lipton brand and still distributes Lipton hot tea in the UK. Elsewhere, Carte Noire instant coffee will sponsor the radio station Classic FM for ten weeks, also from Monday. Classic FM is the biggest national commercial station with figures of 5.1 million people.
* A French company, Le Whif, has introduced inhalable caffeine. It comes in a lipstick-style container and costs about $3.
* Barry Mortlock, who used to run the Badgers old-style tea-room in Llandudno which won several awards, has re-appeared with the Coffee Culture café concept, which is a proposed franchise operation (more details in our next printed issue). His Coffee Culture in Llandudno has just won a poll run by the Wales Co-operative Centre for the best Fairtrade drinks in Wales; its sister café, Coffee Culture in Swansea, was second. Over a thousand votes were cast.
* 16th March You just can’t stop it, can you? The latest business to start serving a flat white is Coffee Republic, which launches the drink this morning. The chain says that it wil be using the correct formula of a double shot in a small cup, to provide what top man Tariq Affara calls ‘the antipodean Flat White with a genuine Italian taste’.
*
It is reported from the midlands that Caffé Vergnano 1882, which already has sites in London, is set to open a coffee bar at the Mailbox, a big shopping area in Birmingham. No confirmation has yet been received.
*
Starbucks is now working with the forecourt operator Euro Garages to open perhaps 30 drive-thru coffee stores in the UK. This follows Starbucks first drive-thru in Cardiff, in March 2008. The latest one is in Deeside in North Wales, and sites in Shrewsbury and Runcorn will open in the next four weeks. Seven further sites will open in the next 12 months with the remainder opening by 2013.
*
We do like a good kopi luwak story… and here’s a new one. As you may know, Australia has some of the very strictest rules in the world about what kind of products can be takeninto the country. So it was an unfortunate idea when President Yudhoyono of Indonesia sent a gift of civet coffee to the Aussie prime minister. It has been impounded pending a special permit because it could ‘potentially be contaminated with exotic and endemic pathogens’, according to the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) website.
*
Allegra Strategies have remarked that at their coffee summit in April, representatives of Starbucks, Costa, and Caffe Nero will all be speaking. The organiser reckons that this is the first time the leading competitors have spoken at the same trade event.
* 11th March The financial results for the pub chain J D Wetherspoon have included a fascinating item – it seems that the chain is now recording sales of around half a million coffees a week, across an estate of 746 pubs. It was JDs who drove the idea of morning coffee in pubs in 2006, opening early to do so – within a year or so, they were claiming sales of 200,000 cups a week. Not surprisingly, Wetherspoon’s top man Tim Martin now says he will bring opening time forward to 7am across all his pubs, to take more of the breakfast-and-coffee business. His MD, John Hutson, is reported to have said, not entirely tongue-in-cheek, that their ultimate aim is to sell more breakfasts than McDonalds. Barry Kither of Lavazza, the pub chain’s coffee supplier, told us: “Half a million seems about right – it’s the fastest growth in coffee volume I have ever witnessed. Of course, many pubs do coffee very badly, but this shows that there is no reason why pubs should not get a slice of the coffee market.”
*
Elsewhere, Lavazza has completed the purchase of the Italian company Ercom – this means Lavazza now owns the Eraclea brand of drinking chocolate, which has been available in the UK for some years.
*
Vegware, the pioneer of compostable packaging for takeaway beverages, is reported to be in negotiations to supply a new health-food restaurant chain in London and New York. The company’s Joe Frankel has been reported as saying that the new chain is ‘backed by Australian money and that they plan to give Pret-a-Manger a run for their money’. He has also been reported as saying that Vegware expects to sell five million of its compostable takeaweay lids over the next year, which will reduce the coffee sector’s carbon emissions by 53 tonnes. He has pointed out that on April 1, landfill tax goes up again, this time to £48 per tonne – the significance of this is that the price of eco-friendly disposal will become almost on a par with the costs of ‘conventional’ waste, thus making the eco-option more desirable to business in general.
*
Java Republic of Dublin has collected another recognition from the local business community - it was named as one of the top twenty best-managed companies in Ireland, all of whom were invited to a gala dinner in Dublin, attended by the Taoiseach (the head of government in Eire).
*
With the continuing arguments over pavement sales and ‘café culture areas’, there seems to be some good work being done by the ‘fair city’ of Perth, in Scotland. The local licensing board has decided on a trial ‘café culture area’ in the city’s St John’s Place, where many cafes already use pavement tables. The idea is largely based on the alcohol licensing laws, which say that for a café to serve alcohol to a customer at an outside table, food must also be ordered – the council is proposing to relax that restriction for a trial period. A typical reaction was from Willie White, of the Willows Coffee Shop, who was quoted in the local press as ‘cautiously welcoming’ the proposed trial, and saying that it could be a very good thing for the city’s café quarter.
*
The Guinness Book of Records is investigating a claim by the Window café, in Norwich, to be the smallest café in the world - it was opened last month by Hayley Draper, and has space for only five customers… cramped, at that. Apparently Chris Evans of Radio 2 encouraged her to approach the records people.
*
The pub trade press has reported the fascinating suggestion that Caffe Nero ‘will be showing the World Cup games in its outlets to capture those who do not want to go to busy pubs’. The coffee-house chain has told us ‘this is pure fiction’.
4th March Costa will launch its ‘Coffee Club’, points-based loyalty programme today. For every pound spent in Costa, five points are gained, and each point is worth a penny when redeemed. It replaces the pre-pay Costa card which has been operating for the past three years. There is to be a new supreme boss for Costa. Andy Harrison, formerly chief executive of Easyjet, and also of RAC, will take over as the top man of Whitbread when Alan Parker retires on his 64th birthday, at the end of November. * Research released today from Mintel says the UK market for in-home coffee has gone up by 17 per cent, at £782 million. Curiously, the researchers say: “one area the industry is particularly concerned about is the lack of uptake amongst younger consumers - the market stands to lose a considerable proportion of drinkers if younger consumers do not develop a taste for the product going forward.” A likely explanation comes in this later comment: "the issue with the younger end of the market is that these consumers don't drink instant coffee…” At £626 million, instant coffee is reported to account for 80 per cent of ‘value sales’ in 2009, but the interesting thing is that sales of instant have grown by twelve per cent over the last four years. Within the instant sector, freeze-dried is going up, and granules are in decline. Interestingly, powder is at just one per cent of the market, which leads us to the next item… * The national launch of Starbucks instant coffee powder, Via, is being supported by a Taste Challenge weekend in every store across the UK between 12–15 March, inviting consumers to taste Via and compare it with Starbucks fresh filter coffee. Starbucks’ staff have taken part in ‘in the largest education programme in Starbucks’ history’ in order to be able to answer questions on the product. It’s an active Starbucks week. In the UK, the Guardian will have a live question-and-answer session on its website today (Thursday) between 3pm-4pm, in which readers can quiz Starbucks about its Fairtrade work. ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/03/live-starbucks-fairtrade)Meanwhile, in the States, the ‘trenta’ has arrived – a 31oz Starbucks iced drink, if you please. Also in the US, a petition of 28,000 signatures has been raised, demanding that Starbucks change its policy of allowing customers to openly carry guns in states where it is legal to do so. Starbucks has made the interesting point that asking gun-carrying customers to leave its stores could actually be potentially more dangerous for its staff. We’re even more intrigued by the additional statement that ‘Starbucks has security measures in place for any threatening situation that might occur in its stores’. * The Fairtrade Labelling Organisation and the Ethical Tea Partnership have reached accord on a plan to work together. ETP will now recognise Fairtrade certification of producers, and focus its own monitoring activity on producers that don’t have another independent certification * There is another scalding case – a teenager has complained to a newspaper that he may be scarred for life down one leg after a lid came off a McDonald's takeaway beverage cup as the car he was in passed over a 5mph speed-bump. (He was not driving). * Barry Mortlock, who used to run the award-winning Badgers tearoom in Llandudno, is to franchise out a new concept called Coffee Culture. He already has two running, inside Waterstones bookshops in Llandudno and Swansea.
1st March - The UK barista championship was won by John Gordon, with Dale Harris and Neil le Bihan close behind. Report on the UKBC page here.
Jan-Feb 2010 :
25th February
In a move which will take the espresso machine sector completely by surprise, First Choice Coffee has taken on exclusive UK distributorship of Nuova Simonelli machines, including the one which will be used in this year's World Barista Championship. Coffeetech, the distributors up to now, will work with First Choice, probably contributing their vast experience in servicing the machines.
Elaine Higginson, managing director of First Choice, has said that the move reinforces her company's status as the leading supplier of espresso machines to the hospitality industry. First Choice, which already supplies many of the giant catering names, is now in the extremely powerful position of being able to supply espresso machines in all the formats and levels which the hospitality industry requires, from acknowledged top manufacturers.
Elaine Higginson, managing director for First Choice Coffee comments: “The range of traditional espresso machines including The Aurelia – the chosen equipment of the World Barista Championship competition – is the perfect addition to our proposition. As leaders in the hospitality industry, we work with our customers to provide bespoke solutions to fit the demands of their operation and this new partnership allows us to offer a complete range of equipment. Coupled with our unrivalled service and Spyder telemetry, the partnership gives us an enhanced platform to further grow our market share.”
18th February We regret to report the passing of Mr Emilio Lavazza, the honorary president of the Italian coffee brand, and father of Giuseppe and Francesca, current directors of the company. Dr. Emilio Lavazza joined the family company in 1955, was responsible for turning Lavazza into a brand sold throughout Italy, and was largely responsible for beginning the world-famous classy marketing programmes for which the brand is still known. * A café on the platform of Enfield Chase train station is in the finals of a European business contest. My Coffee Stop, owned by Karen Mercer and Gunter Hollenstein, is in the final stage of the LinkedIn European Business awards, voted for by members of the professional networking site. * Tetley has this morning announced that it will go over entirely to tea certified by the Rainforest Alliance.Tetley has committed to purchasing all of the tea for its branded teabag and loose tea products from farms certified by the Alliance – this is not just black and green teas, but also its red (Rooibos) products, and also its flavoured and decaf products. The entire changeover will be completed by 2016. Although this is a global move, the first Tetley Rainforest Alliance products will appear in this country, in April. The Canadian market comes next, followed by the US and mainland Europe. The news about Tetley tea going entirely over to Rainforest Alliance is almost, but not quite, matched by an entertaining story from Typhoo. The marketing press reported this week that the brand is ‘aiming to steal a march on its rivals by putting Fairtrade certification at the heart of its marketing strategy’. Oh no, they’re not, came a Typhoo spokesman’s response – “they support the Fairtrade foundation by using Fairtrade tea with their Ridgways brand… and over the next 12 months they intend to double the number of Fairtrade products that they sell, however, they believe that their core Typhoo customers should be allowed the opportunity to freely choose between Fairtrade accredited products and standard products.” 12th February
The trade has two new charitable projects aimed at helping growing communities.
Peros
has started a fund to send help to
(A report
elsewhere this month noted that Starbucks has slowed coffee
buying in
Allegra
has launched Project Waterfall, to provide clean drinking
water and education to poor communities in African
coffee-producing countries. The proposed idea is to collect
voluntary 5p-per-cup contributions at the tills of all chain
and independent coffee venues throughout the
*
Allegra also
has ambitions for a
*
Easyjet has announced that it will sell Starbucks drinks on all flights across its European network – it is, of course, the Via instant. Meanwhile, the journalist network provided this Easyjet news today, which we are assured is a real in-flight announcement, from the crew of a plane coming in to land: Please make sure you take all of your belongings with you. If you do leave anything of value behind - such as an iPod or a camera - please wait a few days and check for it on eBay. We'd be happy to offer you a discount.
*
Essential
Trading, who we know as a trade supplier of vegan and
vegetarian foods (before you ask, Ian’s the veggie, Trudi’s
the carnivore!) is now promoting what it calls
'the most ethical cup of
coffee you will find'.
This is
its Cafe Rebelde Zapatista coffee, an Arabica grown in
*
The
highest-level café job in
*
The Café Plus show, part of the Convenience Retailing event, is putting on a seminar programme on March 21-23. The theme is ‘Coffee from Convenience to Café'. Speakers are a market research company called Him!, Melitta on bean-to-cups, and Ivan Pantovich of Torelli talking about its ‘barista solution’. The London Tea Company will speak. Interestingly, there is a presentation by Matthew Clark, of the Sacred Café chain, whose speech at a trade event last year helped kick off the entire flat white saga. On Tuesday 24th, someone from Cilantro will speak and Love Smoothies will talk on the best way to deliver their specialist product.
*
Almost
unbelievably, two major tea brands have come in for
less-than-ecstatic reports in the marketing media at the
same time for new TV commercials.
PG Tips, represented by Johnny Vegas and that knitted
monkey, have attempted to recreate the ‘yes, yes!’ scene
from the film 'When Harry Met Sally', in the latest spot for
PG Tips. Meanwhile, Yorkshire Tea has launched a commercial
in which a young couple delay a passionate moment in favour
of a cup of tea. One marketing magazine was extremely
critical about the ad, noting that the theme was to suggest
that
*
Some retail
site news – the Local Data Company has produced its
end-of-year report, which goes into some detail about the
incidence of vacant retail sites around
Elsewhere, the
latest of Starbucks’ redesigned stores is going to be at
When Starbucks
top man Howard Schultz was in
Starbucks have
just launched the first official Starbucks App for iPhone
and iPod touch customers in the
*
We were keen to question the Esquires chain on a report that it will be seeking to open ten stores this year, including ‘less conventional sites’. Managing director Peter Kirton has told us that this may mean seeing his brand in drive-thrus and motorway locations, and maybe within museums and libraries.
*
The Association of Independent Espresso Engineers, whose launch we recently reported, has held its first national meeting with over 20 independent engineers attending. A spokesman said the organization had confirmed the value of independent engineers having personal contacts with their opposite numbers all over the country, for the exchange of technical information and assistance, and had now established a formal code of conduct – which includes an issue brought up elsewhere in the trade, the undesirability of engineers using technical visits to pitch for coffee sales.
*
Beacon, the largest purchasing consortium in the hospitality trade, has presented two of its annual prizes to Brodies, the Edinburgh coffee roaster and tea supplier. The company got the ‘outstanding customer service’ award for the second year in succession, and the company’s Ian Hannah won an award for ‘most exceptional staff member’ of a supplier company.
28th January.
We knew the launch of the Costa Flat White was going to be entertaining, but we honestly didn’t know how much fun it was going to be…
Following the use of the celebrity Peter Andre to launch the drink, the newspapers had a field day. According to both the Telegraph and the Guardian, a PR agency issued a series of demands which included the requirement that ‘photographs of Peter Andre must be accompanied by positive text/captions/headings’. The Telegraph’s online riposte was to produce a picture which was deliberately captioned: ‘the bad pop singer Peter Andre’ and followed with a spoof interview about his well-reported love life and its relationship to coffee.
If this embarrassed Costa, they’ve tactfully not said so. However, they have provided information which tells us the following: “The Flat White is a rich, creamy full-flavoured coffee with a velvety texture, made from the purest extract of the coffee bean” (we are enquiring for more details of this question of purest extracts) and that “the launch of the Flat White comes after more than 12 months of research, development and training of over 6,000 of Costa’s baristas at a total investment of over £1 million.” (Readers will recall that Starbucks claimed their baristas in London taught themselves to make a flat white, which was presumably cheaper!)
Rather more dangerously, we thought, Costa then went on to say: “Our unrivalled coffee expertise and highly skilled, talented baristas make us unique in our ability to offer an authentic Flat White”. We have already received some trade comment ion this.
However, it must be said that Costa’s point-of-sale work is, as always, spot-on. Their posters and A-boards were out very early on the launch day (even down here in the far west), their literature uses the very good phrase ‘creamy, not frothy’, and they have a clever marketing line in ‘we make it better’.
*
Elsewhere, the SCAE reminds everyone that next week is competition time in Devon, at the Expowest show – it’s not just the regional heat of the barista championships, but it’s the cupping contest, the latte art contest, and our particular favourite, the Coffee in Good Spirits contest.
The UK Latte Art contest is from 10.30am – 12.45pm on Tuesday 2nd February, and the Good Spirits follows from 1.30-3.30pm. The Cup Tasting is from 1.30pm – 3.30pm on Thursday 4th February). The south-west heat of the barista championships are on the Wednesday. Apparently the Expowest show offers ‘barista visitor’ badges at reception.
*
The gluten-free bread brand Genius says that it has made a deal with Starbucks, and will be supplying the ‘carrier’ for Starbucks’ tuna mayonnaise sandwich from mid-February. The bread is manufactured by United Central Bakeries, who say they are in talks with other foodservice and catering outlets.
*
Two pieces of people news : first, we are permitted to confirm that Helen Ostle, who has been Beyond the Bean’s marketing lady for some time and has also been extremely active on the organizing and promotional committee for the barista championships, will be joining Relish in Wadebridge – that’s the deli run by a recent UK barista champion, Hugo Hercod. Jo Young will be taking over at Beyond the Bean from the 15th February. Elsewhere, we are told that Jenny Bray, formerly of FFI and (we think) Barry Callebaut, is available. Anyone who wishes to make contact please email the editor, and I’ll pass your details on.
*
27th January: Well, we told you Costa was going to launch a flat white… it appears today (27th) in their Piccadilly branch. What we didn’t realize was that they are going to hire Peter Andre to be there and launch it. They too have promoted the drink as ‘a new coffee’, which has already drawn the expected response on one marketing magazine’s website from those who already serve it. Our favourite aspect of this launch, which actually came from Costa, was the information that ‘the coffee will be served in a 30ml volume with 21grams of coffee’. Yes, that’s what we thought, too… we think it’s 340ml. * Coopers Coffee is to launch a ‘cheaper’ coffee range, the Telegraph reports. It comes in a Telegraph Business Club update, which said that last year, they criticised David Cooper’s decision to take over sales himself, instead of hiring a sales manager – but, he has told them, he did achieve an increase of 16 per cent. Now, it is reported, he aims for 25 per cent growth or more, which means that either he has to convert more enquiries to sales than he actually does (a quarter of the thirty or so received a month) or increase the enquiries he receives. Part of the strategy to achieve this, says the Telegraph, is his new coffee, reported to be priced 30 per cent below his premium brands.
21st January
This year will certainly turn out to be the best opportunity the hospitality trade has ever had to capitalise on espresso-based coffee. The latest news from the barista championships, potentially the biggest promotional event in speciality coffee, is all good, with a full list of very good entrants – and with the world championships to be held in London in June, this means that the spotlight will be on good coffee for at least the next five months.
The full story is a little long, so you can find it on our newsfeed, here: http://boughtonscoffeehouse.wordpress.com/
And the full line up of entrants is here: http://www.coffee-house.org.uk/CH4UKBC2009-10.html
*
The Flat White never stops! Today, Costa announces the launch of its own version, with a launch event on 29th January, in which the media will be able to learn how to make the drink, complete with latte art. This may, we suspect, be a quite deliberate mischievous response to Starbucks’ promotion, which claimed that their staff had taught themselves how to do it! Meanwhile, Starbucks has this week launched its flat white in Cardiff, and is running a local paper contest in which readers can win a £100 store card by answering the question ‘how many shots of espresso in the drink?’ It is reported that Starbucks is also announcing the arrival of specialist 'Coffee Master Classes' where customers can attend events in its coffeehouses or book a personal appointment ‘to help them find their perfect coffee’.
*
The international press has generally been quite respectful this morning of the latest Starbucks results, which showed a net profit of $241.5 million (£148 m) in the three months to the end of December, compared with $64.3m a year earlier. Starbucks’ chief financial officer Troy Alstead told the Associated Press news agency that the company was extremely pleased the progress it had made. However, there has been a sour reaction to one item, which cropped up in a conference call with financial analysts this week – Starbucks said that half of the 4 percent increase in Starbucks' average U.S. customer purchase came from its new Via instant coffee, a product which they intend to distribute through grocery stores this year. The extremely-critical Starbucks Gossip website said: “Everyone knows that VIA ‘sales’ were goosed by ringing up other products as VIA purchases and by basically brow-beating employees into moving the stuff.” (The site made exactly the same allegations about the product’s sales four months ago.) Meanwhile, Starbucks top man Howard Schultz, who was in the UK this week, said that his Seattle's Best Coffee brand, which recently became available in some Subway stores in the US, is Starbucks’ “hidden treasure”, because the flavour of its coffee is "more approachable."
*
It is reported today that Arla, the European milk giant which is an enthusiastic sponsor of the barista championships, is working with Starbucks on a ready-to-drink coffee product. We know the product has been the subject of a presentation in the UK,.
*
This marketing site link is quite fun – a McDonalds bus-stop poster campaign which features ‘live’ steaming coffee -
*
Further to our recent report of the launch of the Association of Independent Espresso Engineers, we hear that one of the founders, Xpress Coffee Commercial, has closed down its domestic machine operation to concentrate on trade work. The company’s Chris Palmer says: “our commercial and servicing side of our business is thriving, but it is with great regret we have been forced to close down our domestic side. This has been mainly due to one of our main domestic suppliers going into administration, and another reducing margins and selling against us direct to the end user. “
*
The Real Food Festival, which promises 400 small food producers and suppliers, is on at Earls Court between 7-10 May. The 10th is the day which gives free entry to trade.
*
The celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz has settled a breach of copyright lawsuit with an Italian photographer, who accused her of stealing his pictures for use in the Lavazza calendar. The Italian claimed $300,000 for unauthorized use of his pictures, but according to a New York gossip column, after the settlement suddenly changed his tune and said "Annie Leibovitz is one of the great photographers of our times.”
7th January The owner of the Spar franchise in Northern Ireland has taken over the cafe chain The Streat, which has 37 cafes in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Republic. The buyer is the Henderson Group, which owns the Spar and Vivo franchises in Northern Ireland, has a turnover in excess of £500million and employs over 2,000 people. It supplies 400 independent retailers and also operates 70 convenience and petrol forecourt retail outlets The financial press has observed that the move is ‘something of a departure’ for Hendersons. The retail group already has two Streat franchises within its existing Spar stores, and managing director Damien Barrett has suggested that he will ‘continue to explore this as a collective opportunity’. The Streat was started in 1999 by Michael and Nikki McQuillan; the business employs around 350 people and its turnover was over £8 million in the last year. Hendersons said it will keep The Streat brand name and Mr McQuillan will continue to run the café business. * Entries so far for the UK barista championship have shown a curious reversal to the position in recent years – the London regional event, which has in the past been cancelled for lack of entries, is now full and some contenders have had to be moved to other regional heats. The North and Midlands event is also full, and places only remain in Scotland and the south-west. Strangely, however, the Northern Ireland event has been cancelled for lack of entries – this is the region from which the toughest competitors have come in some recent years. Only four people applied, and they will now compete in Scotland. In the other competitions being held soon, the cupping and latte art contests are almost full, but places remain in the Coffee in Good Spirits event. (We are entertained by a query from Marco Olmi of Drury, who enquired this week about the collective name for a quantity of baristas… the best suggestions so far have been ‘an exasperation of baristi’ and ‘an overparticulation of baristi’.) * Peros, the leading foodservice distributor of Fairtrade products, is to re-brand its own coffee range. The company has simply knocked the ‘P’ off the front of its name to produce the brand name Eros, which is says fits nicely with well-known phrases ‘love coffee’ and ‘passionate about coffee’. Notably, however, all the twenty blends in the range are now Fairtrade-certified. * Many independent coffee suppliers trade through farmers’ markets – we now have the first ‘virtual’ farmers’ market, an online marketing idea. You can find it at www.vfmuk.com , and we know some beverage names are involved – although, curiously, there’s no beverages ‘department’ in the listings. *
Nov-Dec 2009:
21st December
We are, we regret, unable to find any further details on the matter of coffee kiosk firm Puccino’s entering administration – the first news appears to have been quietly published on 18th December, and has certainly come as a surprise to everyone in the trade we’ve spoken to in the past few days. Puccino’s Ltd is reported to have sold the leases for 43 of its units, “parts of the business and certain assets” to Puccino’s Worldwide, and then to have immediately ceased trading from the 29 remaining units. It has previously closed 14 other units. Tenon Recovery was appointed as Joint Administrator. In the year ended 31 December 2008, the company experienced a loss before tax of £1.6 million, compared to a loss of £793,762 in 2007. Turnover for the period was £4.08 million, up £10,000 from 2007. * Later,. we learned that the 29 units will remain trading under the names of the former franchisees. But the administrator said that the total losses were £11 million over three years!
*
Ad Age, the medium for the promotional industry, reports that Lavazza and Nespresso are arguing over a campaign theme. Nespresso's European ad involves George Clooney visiting heaven, where he encounters God. Lavazza has apparently complained that the theme is pinched from its own campaign, which featured angels and St. Peter enjoying coffee in heaven. The matter has been referred to the Italian equivalent of the ASA. Nespresso is reported to have made the delightful comment: “The after-life is not particularly linked to just one brand.”
*
Elsewhere, Nespresso is the latest big name to have come up with an environmental move based on packaging recovery. It has launched Ecolaboration, in which it proposes to recycle its aluminium capsules. A hundred shops in Spain are the first to take back the capsules, which go to a site where the spent coffee grounds are removed and used for fertiliser, while the remaining capsules go to an aluminium recovery plant. Kenco is currently promoting the re-use of its packaging, which is being re-made into consumer goods.
*
A couple of very different moves on loyalty cards have cropped up. The Brew tea bar in Liverpool is offering to take in any other café chain’s loyalty card and exchange it for one of its own, with the same number of stamps. However, world barista champ Gwilym Davies has now created the Disloyalty Card, which exists to promote high-quality coffee venues in east London – drinkers who buy a coffee at each of eight coffee houses in the area can present the finished card to Gwilym, and get a free drink from the world champ.
*
Bolling Coffee is making its Grumpy Mule brand available to foodservice, in a new range comprising six single estate Arabica coffees, 6 espresso blends and five ground coffees. Foodservice is not a move into the unknown, says the company – it has been supplying the sector for thirty years, but research among foodservice clients has shown interest in a high-quality offer featuring full traceability. Grumpy Mule will be available in 500g bags of beans and a range of filter and bulk brew pack sizes. “We’ve won around ten Great Taste awards in the last few years, and the retail sales generated from this have, honestly, been exponential,” Bolling’s Ian Balmforth told us. “Our sales are through farm shops, delis, and the kind of department store where people are looking for ‘something more than the superrmarket’. We’re now bringing this kind of high-end retail coffee to foodservice.”
*
The financial commentators have enjoyed reporting Whitbread’s £36 million pitch for the Coffeeheaven chain, and while most of them concentrated on the effect on Costa’s presence in eastern Europe, one writer thought to look at founder Richard Worthington’s stake – he concluded that the chain founder would get £275,000 for his stake and £300,000 from options. Another investor, it is suggested, will make nearly four million. Coffeeheaven's results for the six months to September 30 showed pre-tax profits of £200,000 on sales up five per cent to £12.5million.
*
The north-western media says that Starbucks’ ‘first drive-through coffee shop in the country’ could be built in Blackburn. Strictly speaking, they’re correct – the other one’s in Wales. Starbucks has made no comment.
*
Allegra Strategies has finished its latest study on the UK branded coffee shop market, and considers that although growth in both store numbers and sales has halved, the coffee chains are still expected to outperform the retail sector in general. This ‘branded’ sector is around 4,100 of the estimated 11,000 coffee shops in the UK, as café culture becomes more engrained through the UK. Allegra comments that Caffè Nero is ranked highest overall for coffee quality, atmosphere, value for money, speed of service, friendly service, food quality and cleanliness; Starbucks is rated best on ethical practices, convenient location and food choice. The total coffee shop market is forecast to grow by 4.4% per annum to exceed 12,500 outlets by December 2012
*
Metropolitan is having a Sale Day! The company which recently came together with the Kimbo brand is holding a one-off (but two-day) January clearance sale of coffee equipment. The list we’ve seen includes new machines from Rheavendors, Matrix, Marco, Segafredo, Sunbeam, La San Marco, Bravilor, Vitamix, Animo and WMF. There are some used machines, including Brasilia, CMA, Gaggia, Faema and Azkoyen. A full catalogue is available from sales@metropolitancoffee.co.uk. The event is at 28-30 Telford way, London, on12th and 13th January between 10am and 4pm. Nearest tube is East Acton, and visitors can be collected from the station.
*
An American court has brought in a ‘guilty’ verdict in the bizarre case of the coffee flasher. A chap was making coffee, stark naked, in the kitchen of his home very early on a pitch-black morning – he didn’t realise there was a mother and child outside. The judge convicted him of indecent exposure, and handed down only a suspended sentence and no fine, but the accused says he plans to appeal anyway.
*
Look out for some new work from Union Hand Roasted early next year. We expect their newest premium blend, developed with Taylor Street Baristas, and are intrigued by the idea of the UK's first amateur barista championship.
16th December We are, the editor is pleased to say, finally allowed to tell you of the formation of a new co-operative body of service mechanics for coffee machines. The Association of Independent Espresso Engineers has been formed as ‘a national network of highly motivated and passionate local espresso engineers’. There are to be about 15 operators in the new body, forming a national network of engineers which will shortly be found through a single portal website, www.aiee.org.uk. The companies which we know to be involved so far are: Caffeine Fix, Northern Central Espresso, Espresso Repair, Uno Coffee Service, Coffix, Dave Harvey, Kent Coffee, Universal Espresso Care, Roy Ireland, Espresso Technical Services, and Xpress Coffee Commercial. By coincidence, the company which has taken over a large amount of the responsibility for providing Gaggia spares has come up with a similar idea. David Lawlor of Watermark, based in Dublin, has been working on the availability of spares since Gaggia UK went under. “We’ve gone through all the griping about Gaggia, and got to the point where people are now saying about us - ‘these people are doing the job’. Customers are impressed with the contacts we have made, and now we shall probably put together a Gaggia service team. It’s similar to the idea from Xpress… but that’s a coincidence.” * Whitbread, the owner of Costa Coffee, is in talks about buying eastern Europe’s big coffee chain, Coffeeheaven, for a reported price of £32m. Both sides have confirmed that talks are going on, although it has been said that a deal is by no means a forgone conclusion. Costa has around a thousand coffee shops in the UK and 400 abroad; Coffeeheaven is the market leader in Poland and also has coffee bars in the Czech Republic, Latvia, Bulgaria and Hungary. * The IT media has reported that Caffe Nero is ready to introduce cashless payments in its stores – we have no information yet on the system it will be using. * We
have been asked to invite café-bar owners to take an interest in the
second year of the Restaurant and Bar Design awards.
These awards are judged by a dozen journalists and editors from the
design and lifestyle press, and the awards organiser
Marco Rebora has told us: “I am looking
for some exciting new cafe openings for my awards. The call for entries
is now open, and with a wide selection of categories and free and simple
online entry, You can find details at www.restaurantandbardesignawards.com9th December In the past few days, barista champ James Hoffmann has raised the possibility of the big chain coffee bars beginning to sell the ‘flat white’ - and indeed, Starbucks called us yesterday to confirm that the beverage is now available in the re-designed Conduit St store, in their other Soho stores from Thursday, and will go nationwide next year. The formal announcement, which arrived later, carries some interesting phrasing, which we attempt to reproduce without comment: “At Starbucks, we noticed that some customers in the West End of London, in particular in our Soho district, were asking for a new drink.” (‘Our’ Soho, if you please !!! – editor). “Our highly trained baristas rose to the challenge and taught themselves how to make it… “Starbucks Flat White is a small strong coffee made with two shots of Fairtrade certified espresso in an 8 fl oz cup topped with creamy, steamed whole-milk. The milk is given a velvety texture by being ‘stretched and spun’, which allows the espresso shot to rise through the milk. Patterns or ‘foam art’ can be made in the top of the cup with the contrasting colours of the coffee and milk. “Darcy Willson-Rymer, managing director, Starbucks UK and Ireland, said: “This is much more than just a new drink for Starbucks. It’s about us listening and responding to our customers at the same time as highlighting the superior quality of Starbucks Fairtrade espresso and the skill and artistry of our baristas. We’re proud to bring the Flat White, first and foremost, to our customers in Soho who have led the demand for this intense and creamy coffee.” (Costa has failed to reply to queries about doing the same, although James did say he had had it confirmed that they will do so). * According to the above story, Soho may now belong to Starbucks, but in the 40s and 50s it largely belonged to the Italians. And in 1949, a notable opening was of Bar Italia, which celebrates its 60th birthday this month – nobody knows exactly which date. We’re delighted to say we have a feature on the bar in our next printed issue. * Instant coffee will save the planet, reports a Scots newspaper today. Dr Dave Reay, quoted as a world-renowned expert on carbon emissions, has calculated that the average cup of black filter coffee creates 125 grams of carbon emissions, against around 80gm for a cup of instant He has had a go at the coffeebar chains, too: "Coffee vendors are in the vanguard of those promoting more 'sustainable' products, with organic and fair trade options now widely available. Starbucks even boasts a programme it calls Shared Planet which has the declared aim of minimising the company's environmental impact and increasing involvement with local communities. The irony of that trademark appears to be lost on them.” The scientist also reckons that adding milk to coffee puts emissions up by more than a third: "The environmental group WWF has calculated it takes 200 litres of water to produce the coffee, milk, sugar and cup for just one regular takeout latte. If everyone ditched their pre-work coffee that would do wonders for the planet." * Our note a few days ago that Atkinsons, the north-western roaster, had achieved coverage in the Independent was followed by a note from Alice Rendle of Edgcumbes in Sussex, pointing us to a full feature on her company in the Telegraph. You’ll find it here :http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/finance/businessclub/6537568/Business-Club-Edgcumbe-Tea-and-Coffee-Company-profits-rise.html We were intrigued by the last sentence – and have now confirmed with Alice that she does indeed have ambitions to start in-house roasting as soon as she can. “I have known for a couple of years that I need to reinforce the company’s stated aim of being an ‘expert solutions provider’ in the speciality coffee market,” she told us. “A small coffee roaster will help to reinforce that fact, although I will keep the main bulk of my roasting with my current roasters.” * Coffee houses have again not distinguished themselves in the Loo of the Year awards – very few entries from the café sector, but we can report a prize taken by the Blue Pool Tea Rooms of Wareham in Dorset. Two other cafes, the Malt Barn Coffee Shop in Dufftownand Harrisons of Newcastle Emlyn (Cardigan) won awards for what we think is their second year running. * Let nobody think that the coffee-house scene down here in Cornwall is not as exciting as it is in Soho (Starbucks permitting). A staff member of the Gyllyngvase Beach Cafe in Falmouth (we walk the dog past it every day) chased a knife-wielding robber who grabbed £19,000 from the till, pushed the robber off his motorbike, and reclaimed the money. At Truro Crown Court on Friday, he was awarded £500 from public funds for his courage. The robber, who got three years, made the bizarre claim in his defence that ‘he was given the motorbike to do the robbery, so he had no choice.’ Barely half a mile down the cliff path from that café is the Swanpool beach café, which has also made the news. Pete Lochrie and his staff are handing out free ponchos and hot water bottles to customers on his beachfront decking area – the idea has apparently gone down very well.
3rd December James Hoffmann, our first world barista champ, has created a job-exchange website for baristas. Although it is very new, and to date has not a lot of content on it, you can find it at http://www.londoncoffeejobs.co.uk/ . James told us: “It really is just a point of connection (I hope) for coffee businesses and staff. Lots of cafes are usually looking, and the need for decent baristas has never been greater, plus I get lots of emails from baristas looking for jobs so this seemed the sensible thing. It took an hour, and a small spend, and if it helps keep the London cafe movement going then it was worth every penny! * The conference programme at this year’s Caffe Culture show will be split into three parts – one day will concentrate on the management of change, a second day will look at changing retail concepts, and the third will offer an insight into the evolution of the café-bar concept. * After an appeal and a review, the Advertising Standards Authority has upheld its original decision against a television advertisement for Tetley, after complaints about implied health benefits. In what might seem a harsh decision, the ASA ordered Tetley to cease broadcasting a commercial in which a woman was shown warming up for an exercise run, but when she discovered it was raining, went back inside and had a cup of green tea instead. Four viewers complained that Tetley was trying to suggest that its green tea had the same health benefits as physical exercise. Bizarre though the complaint may sound, the ASA ruled against the tea company. * Twinings, one of the great names of British tea with a history which goes back to the 1700s, is the subject of a workforce revolt after suggesting that it might ‘consolidate its manufacturing operations’, in China and Poland. The result of this could be around 380 British job losses at two sites, Andover and North Shields. Twinings says that the majority of its sales are overseas, and that it is unnecessarily bringing tea into Britain simply to re-export it; the shopworkers' union Usdaw has said: ''Twinings are moving abroad to seek cheap labour. If we allow this to happen, no manufacturing jobs will have a future in the UK.'' It is also reported that John McDonnell MP has tabled an early-day early day motion in the Commons, and has said: “There is absolutely no reason to close the factory in North Shields. The company’s biggest market is France, so what is the sense of moving most of its European operations over to Poland?” * The Bath Coffee Festival has opened the show for exhibitor bookings, and has named four major sponsors - Taylerson’s Malmesbury Syrups, coffee roaster Martin Carwadine, Gold Top Milk, and the Marshfield bakery. The festival is expected to host around 100 exhibitors in the city centre, while other venues around the city will host coffee-related activities and events. Consumers will be able to learn about barista work in making espresso, coffee roasting, and latte art. There will be educational talks, films about coffee, and music from the coffee growing regions. Among the contributions from the coffee industry is a project by Metropolitan Coffee of London, which is planning to demonstrate the importance of coffee-house work to the national employment situation by training six unemployed youths to barista standard, and working to place them in local catering positions. The organisers are Geometry of Bath. Details: http://www.bathcoffeefestival.co.uk/* Atkinsons, the north-western coffee roaster, has managed to be included in a guide to the nation’s top 50 best food and drink shops, as published in the Independent. "We set ourselves a marketing goal of getting some national press coverage this year and this inclusion is a fantastic result," roaster Ian Steel told us. * There is another incidence of the Cup of Excellence programme bringing a new record price from a coffee-growing country not usually regarded as one of the classic origins – the latest auction has produced a record price of $35 per pound for coffee from Bolivia. The highest price paid in the country last year was $12. A certain amount of this year’s coffee is coming to the UK – Mercanta reports buying lots for Andronicas, Has Bean, Origin of Cornwall and Bolling of Yorkshire. Other buyers included Bewleys and Gala. “Bolivian coffee can be fine,” Mercanta’s Stephen Hurst told us, “although a great many are not owing to poor husbandry and fieldcraft. The country’s total exports are less than some single estates in Brazil – but the growing conditions are superb, and there is superb potential for the production of boutique micro lots of outstanding quality. We are now finding some excellent ‘’micro lots’’ from small farms, with each lot being maybe only 15 bags." * Despite following up press reports elsehere, we have so far failed to obtain samples of the new Nescafe instant coffee which is said to help protect the body against ageing. The editor, with Peter Pan ambitions, is still trying and will report on its effectiveness as soon as possible…
26th November The competition season is now getting into its swing – the latest in-house barista championships was run yesterday, and will produce two entries into the UK Barista Championship. This was the Krispy Kreme final, and the company has decided to put both its champion and runner-up in for the national barista championships – the winner was Becky Jane Marlborough of Krispy Kreme’s branch in Reading, and the second-placed was Michelle Gregory from Portsmouth. The winner also gets a trip to the Rancilio espresso machine factory in Milan, and both receive a Rancilio espresso machine. This contest was another pointer to the broadening progress of high-quality coffee, said Marco Olmi of Drury, main supplier to Krispy Kreme: “They have seen the importance of coffee sales - whereas coffee used to be three or four per cent of their business, it now accounts for something like 15 per cent, and hasn’t done so at the expense of doughnut sales. Krispy Kreme has just had its first ‘barista conference’, in which all stores were expected to come up with realistic ideas to realistically take business from the big coffee chains. It’s exciting to see a company being so positive about the prospects for its coffee.” Paul Meikle-Janney of Coffee Community, entries co-ordinator of the UK Barista Championship, has advised that entries for the 2010 contest can now be made at www.scaeuk.com .* Meanwhile, coffee-houses and cafes have also been in competition. Nobody seems to have spotted it yet, but Wales can now claim to be the UK’s distinguished beverage centre, with the Waterloo Gardens Tearoom of Cardiff becoming the first tea house to win the BSA’s Bev-e award. This follows Coffee#1, which has its head office in Cardiff and its cafes in south Wales and Bristol, winning the chain award in the same contest. * A traditional tea room near Wolverhampton is to remain closed for at least a year after its owners were involved in a road accident. The couple who run the Poplar Cottage tea rooms in Claverley have been told by doctors to allow a long time for their full recovery before re-opening. * A Yorkshire beverage operator has had her entire café stolen. The owner of Tip Top Tasters arrived at her 20ft x 8ft sit-down café, by a lay-by near Keighley, to find that only an advertising sandwich board remained. The police say that it can only have been removed with the aid of a sizeable crane; the owner has actually appealed to the transport industry to keep a look-out, on the basis that the café may still be on the back of a lorry somewhere. * The tea sector has again been in front of the advertising watchdogs – this time, the ASA’s independent reviewer has upheld an earlier judgment against Tetley, over a television commercial referring to the benefits of green tea. The tea company claimed that the ad responsibly promoted the health benefits of drinking Tetley’s green tea, and referred to studies on the beneficial health properties of both green and black tea. The ASA said that the studies referred to specific medical conditions, and that a number of the studies stated that further research was still required to confirm their findings – it ruled that the evidence submitted was not adequate to demonstrate that green tea had some general health benefits for the average viewer. This is not the first time that tea advertising has been questioned – in one notable recent case, even the Tea Council was told off for its claims, in spite of providing an extremely robust counter-argument. * We have heard from Mal Pope, the man behind the Cappuccino Girls musical – the show is now in production, has had sell-out weeks in Swansea and Cardiff, and is now to tour the UK next summer and autumn, which as Mal points out brings the possibility of transferring to a small West End theatre around the time of the world barista championships in London. He can of course see the link between the show and a trade sponsor – anyone who is interested, email us and we will put you in contact. * Peros, the fair-trade supplier, has been short listed for the Caterer’s Website of the Year award. You can vote for them at http://www.caterersearchwebawards.com/caterersearchwebawards09/p/3823 * The Ground espresso bar business from northern Ireland has won the business to open an 80-seat café inside the local branch of Next. *
19th November
The winner of the Brasilia Barista Challenge is Howard Barwick of J & S Ventures, which is the Costa franchisee in Horsforth, Leeds. Although a barista for only twelve months, Howard has a close interest in experimenting with flavours, which served him well when the contestants were offered a curious variety of ingredients, which ranged from Golden Syrup to peanut butter, and were challenged to make a speciality drink from them. Howard’s winning drink was a macchiato featuring raspberry, blood orange, lime and demerera sugar. He wins a trip to Brasilia’s academy in Italy, and is expected to enter the UK barista championships, for which entries are now open – he told us today “I haven’t made up my mind – but I’ll be surprised if I don’t!" * A notable move towards the long predicted roaster-retail concept is expected tomorrow (20th), when Nude Espresso of London launches what is said to be the city’s only in-house roastery, with its own East blend. This, says owner Richard Reed, is a ‘first’ for London. Several London baristas will be invited to attend the launch and make their own drinks with the blend, and the noted coffee guru Instaurator will also be on hand, signing copies of his book The Espresso Quest. Nude Espresso is located on 26 Hanbury Street, London E1 6QR, and there will be free tastings from midday to 3pm. * The latest stage in the trading-permission saga has taken an entertaining twist. As we recently reported, Chris Crichton of The Green Coffee Machine in Cheltenham was first refused permission to trade from a Piaggio, being told that coffee was not ‘an allowable food’. The authorities than changed their minds and granted him permission to trade, but having done so, then told him it would be illegal for him to actually park his vehicle – so he could only sell coffee while actually in motion. The answer came from, of all people, the DVLA, who pointed out that if he removed the fuel tank from the van, it would no longer be a ‘motorised vehicle’, and not subject to the prohibition. He did so, and the local authorities have now accepted him as a trader. He had his first trading day this week, towing the van on-site, and experienced support from local people. *
We reported a few days ago that Coffee Republic is considering a re-design – we can now confirm that the company has hired Conran & Partners to refresh the chain’s image on the high street. A curious comment by Paul Zara of Conran is that: “design quality is sorely lacking in the other high street coffee shops”. We understand it will first appear in Berwick Street, Soho, and in Hove during January. * Peter Goodey and James Roberts, joint managing directors of Peros, have been presented with the Global Ethics Life-Changing Award in recognition of their work with the One Water play-pumps scheme in Africa – this is the device by which a children’s roundabout serves as a water pump. With donations as a percentage of One Water sales, Peros has established nearly seventy such pumps. * Reports say that firefighters spent two hours attending to a roastery fire at the Nairobi site in Watford on Monday. The firemen said it was a ‘tricky’ situation, requiring a lot of ingenuity to deal with – but damage was limited to the machine concerned and nobody was injured.
1 6 November
Starbucks has unveiled a much-awaited new look for its British coffee houses – and the first of its refurbished cafes shows that the chain has certainly been closely watching the newest breed of ‘cool’ venues in central London. The move marks a radical change to the company’s long-held belief in building a worldwide chain of stores all looking essentially the same, and the appearance of a different Starbucks in London follows trial runs in America, where the company has already tested new-look cafes which it has opened under different names. The re-designed store in London’s Conduit Street shows the clear influence of the leading modern coffee houses in nearby Soho, with the use of much plain wood, and matching earthy, rustic colours… and, indeed no trace of the company’s usual corporate colours and branding. Indeed, outside the Conduit St store, even Starbucks’ conventional logo is in brown, not the usual green.
Meanwhile, it has been reported that the Coffee Republic chain has hired Conran and Partners to advise on new café design. * During the final week of November, the AMT chain will celebrate the fifth anniversary of its move to selling only Fairtrade coffee. It was the first national coffee company to announce a complete move to Fairtrade, and at the time, the company reported that it had made the move as the result of a clear demand from customers for products bearing the Fairtrade mark. “We went Fairtrade as that is what our customers wanted, and we believed it was the right thing to do,” says operations director Allan McCallum-Toppin. “The growth of Fairtrade products since that time has been fantastic, and we have played our part in that.”
To celebrate the anniversary, AMT will run a one-week offer in which any customer buying a Fairtrade drink can have a Fairtrade brownie for half price. * The final of the Brasilia Barista Challenge 2009 will be held on Wednesday (18th) at the Caffe Society HQ near Leeds. The finalists are: Hannah Davies from Broderick's Love Coffee at Manchester Airport, Richard Dixon-Teasdale from Coffee Aroma in Lincoln, Howard Barwick from J & S Ventures (Costa Coffee) in Leeds, Will Corby from The Caffeine Kid in Cardiff, and Naveen Bisht from Carluccios in Reading. Trade sales manager Clive Danby says that the vast majority of entrants in the contest had never taken part in a barista competition before, which has borne out the company’s intention of bringing in the average street barista, as opposed to ’competition specialists’. “The regional heats have been great fun and very relaxed – but the overall quality of competitors has been of a high standard, with all scores being very close together.” The winner gets a training session at Brasilia’s 9 Bar Academy, which is a prize with a twist… getting there involves a trip to Italy! * We always like good promotions, and we liked this one from Rainbow Flowers, which is one of those bouquets-by-post services. They’re offering a New Year tea gift which you send by mail – it’s a flower-tea ball, one of those that opens in the pot. The clever thing about this is that they’re selling a clear glass teapot with a pack of six flowering teas, at £19.45 – and an extra pack of six flower tea balls at £12.95 * Fascinating item on Channel 4 today concerning star anise, the ingredient which has often cropped up in barista contests. Apparently it is believed to be the major ingredient in countering swine flu… but don’t bother popping out to buy any, because the pharmaceuticals people are now reported to have cornered the world market * The beverage trade has again distinguished itself with Shelter from the Storm, the charity for the homeless in Islington – at the cause’s evening event last week, the coffee trade was represented by several senior managers and directors (it would be unfair to go into detail, because some have reached deeply into their pockets), and as a result the charity benefitted by around £20,000, and can now open for its fourth night every week. A new video on the work of the shelter is now available – here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcLt_zKds_I The new video was, we hear, received with silence and then tears… it shows, quite clearly, that even the educated business classes can end up on the street. (But the funniest line in the video is from the shelter caretaker, who says: ‘I used to be a bank robber… obviously, not a very good one!’)
5th November
We have (at last !) the first thing approaching a statement from anyone involved with the matter of Caffe Nero getting its own coffee roastery. We now have an acknowledgement by Caffe Torelli that Torelli ‘has sold its Battersea roasting facility to Caffe Nero, who have taken a lease on the existing roasting building owned by Marco Costa (Torelli’s owner). The statement adds that Torelli has entered into a roasting partnership with Masteroast, but has kept its sales and training offices at Battersea. It adds that Torelli’s latest move is to: ‘introduce a new management structure, working with Andy Fawkes (of Masteroast) and Murray Leslie of Gala’. Gala’s new product, espresso pods, was devised in partnership with Marco Costa.
*
In our latest issue (out in a few days’ time, delayed by our office move) we report on the quite dramatic anti-Fairtrade presentation by Dr Peter Griffiths, at the Allegra Strategies coffee summit in Vienna. Dr Griffiths has now advised that he has started an online Linkedin group ‘to bring together people who are researching or investigating Fairtrade and ethical trading’. He adds: ‘quite a few people have done research on this, and come up with disturbing answers’. The group can be found at: http://www.linkedin.com .
*
Meanwhile, the government is reported to be giving Fairtrade £12 million to assist the development of the concept. Elsewhere, Anne McCaig, the CEO of Cafedirect, has said that climate change is already `wreaking havoc’ on small-scale coffee and tea farmers. A three-year study has reported that ‘a huge number of growers are now experiencing increased instances of pestilence and disease from rises in temperature. They are also facing prolonged drought from changing weather patterns’.
*
Also our report of the Allegra summit will be the remark by a leading coffee chain operator that ‘the day of the independent is coming’. According to the Local Data Company, it’s here – that research house says that the number of independent coffee shops in the 705 town centres it researched has grown to 9,441. The major coffee-house centres, says the company, are now Camden Town, with 66 outlets; Brighton, with 121; and Edinburgh, with 182. London is reported to have one coffee shop for every 1,105 shoppers. We’ve got the report, and will report on it more fully soon.
October...
It is a day for bizarre news. The editor, as always humbly grateful for the opportunity to bring you these tit-bits, is now honoured to provide more confirmation that the world is going quite mad.
Following the row over Costa’s ‘7 out of 10’ research campaign against Starbucks, and recent research elsewhere to prove that mid-morning is the preferred time for a coffee-break, we have the latest from the world of scientific analysis. This is from Costa again, who report that they have interviewed 3,000 people, to discover that 47 per cent of consumers prefer coffee made by a barista, against 11 per cent who are happy with coffee made in an automatic machine. (There is no word on what the other 42 per cent said).
Meanwhile across the pond, a story from Vancouver, Canada’s coffee city – Vancouver is said to have more coffee shops per capita than most major international cities, and Canada’s Tim Hortons coffee is considered the unofficial national drink. The winter Olympic Games go there in 2010, and the local media have been horrified to find that the ‘official games coffee’ is to be provided by… Coca Cola. It’s the Far Coast brand, which we think is a single-serve pod or capsule system that has already been trialled in the brand’s own test-pad cafés.
Three in a row – you’ll like this. We were at the south-west’s big food fair recently, in Truro. Coffee there was by Origin of Falmouth, who were flattered to see themselves described in the Telegraph’s preview of the event as ‘Britain’s first roastery’. We’re sure that puts all the rest of you in your places…
And fourth: a European press report this week said that the McCafe chain has plans to open 1,100 stores. A quick call to Munich produced the news that it would actually be opening the 1,100th in a few weeks, which is a rather different thing…
It never ends - Peros has today announced its One World range of Fairtrade confectionery, which includes a Fairtrade Eccles cake. Not the first in the market – but it has inspired director James Roberts to the idea that a company mission from now on should be to have Eccles declared a Fairtrade Town!
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The latest step in the continuing Gaggia story is that Watermark of Dublin have confirmed that they will be able to provide spares and support for commercial machines in Britain, partly through Rich Coffee of Berkshire and probably some other distributors elsewhere. Watermark is proposing to establish a UK base. “We’re starting a big adventure in the UK,” Watermark’s MD David Lawlor told us. “In Ireland, we do only commercial Gaggia machines; we have all spares, and can get them to the trade in the UK with two days.” Website contact – www.watermark.uk.com
*
It is reported that Starbucks UK has returned a loss of nearly £47 million in the year to 28 September, compared with £4.95 million in the previous 12 months. A spokesman said: "Selective closures will continue through fiscal 2010 and the result should be a healthier store portfolio." The spokesman said the size of the loss had been exacerbated by a bigger than usual (£20million) tax charge and the cost of renovating about 100 stores.
*
We have the list of nominees up for awards at Allegra’s European Coffee Symposium in Vienna next week:
The ‘most admired coffee shop chain’ is split into regions – in the UK and Ireland, it’s between Butler’s Chocolate Café, Caffe Nero, Costa and Pret a Manger. In Germany/Austria its between Coffeeshop Company, McCafé and Starbucks. In France, Columbus, McCafe and Starbucks. The title of best performing chain in Europe will go to McCafe, Costa or Coffeeheaven. ‘Best industry supplier’ is between Cafés Richard, Illycaffè, Lavazza or Matthew Algie. The ‘most ethical company’ will be Java Republic, Matthew Algie or Starbucks. The most innovative product or brand will go to Beyond the Bean, Coffee Consulate, La Marzocco or Nespresso. An award for ‘outstanding contribution to the European coffee industry’ will be between James Hoffmann, Andrea Illy, Steffen Schwartz (Coffee Store), Katarzyna Tondera-Rokkan (Coffeeheaven) and Cafes Richard. The late Simon Hargraves of Pret a Manger will also be recognised.
25th Sept.
After a series of contradictory claims about exactly who is the current rising star of the Fairtrade coffee market, the Fairtrade Foundation has now advised us that Starbucks is the company with the most shining halo.
We were puzzled when Sainsbury’s made the dramatic statement that its move to all-Fairtrade ‘will more than double the size of the roast-and-ground market in the UK from 2,248 tonnes to 4,600 tonnes’, because Fairtrade's own figures say that the roast-and-ground market is already 8,046 tonnes, At the same time, Starbucks had said that its move to all-Fairtrade will increase the amount of Fairtrade coffee sold in the UK by 18 per cent. Starbucks announced that it would be buying 17.000 tonnes of Fairtrade coffee this year - but strangely, couldn’t say how much of that would be for the UK market.
Finding a path through the various statistics is made difficult by the fact that all the various parties measure in different ways – some give their statistics in kilos, some in pounds, some in retail packs and some in cups and some in trade-supple quantities, some in raw coffee and some in roast, and across different geographical areas.
However, the Fairtrade Foundation has now said that Sainsbury’s figures were incorrect, that Starbucks’ claim of increasing the market by 18 per cent does seem reasonable, and confirms that Starbucks is now the biggest foodservice provider of its certified coffee.
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23 Sept.
Yesterday, the Fairtrade Foundation told its latest Commercial Conference that the theme for the next Fairtrade Fortnight ( 22 February – 7 March) is to be ‘The Big Swap’, in which the Foundation wants to encourage consumers to move over to fair-trade versions of their usual products.
According to Foundation marketing director Cheryl Sloan, “we need everybody in the UK swapping for Fairtrade - your usual bananas for Fairtrade bananas, your usual cuppa for a Fairtrade cuppa, your usual T-shirt for a Fairtrade cotton T-shirt.”
Bearing in mind the perpetual question of how much quality Fairtrade-certified coffee is on the market, it will be interesting to see how many coffee companies (and which!) prepare a like-for-like swap campaign.
*
There is a follow-up to our recent reports concerning the failure of Gaggia UK. The brand’s retail outlets are to continue under the control of Gaggia’s former managing director, Raj Beadle.
“The decision by Philips UK, who acquired Saeco, the owners of Gaggia, to provide their own services left Gaggia UK without any viable way of continuing the distribution, helpline and after-sales services and therefore a decision was made to put the company into administration,” he told us. “I have however been able to set up a new company called Caffe Shop Limited to purchase some of the assets from the administrator so that we could continue the four outlet shops, two high street shops and two department store concessions. I feel that retailing of coffee machines, coffee and accessories within a specialized shop/area is the way forward and am looking forward to developing this business further. The shops will continue to sell Gaggia, Caffitaly and other coffee brands.”
www.caffeshop.co.uk
22nd Sept. A query over the unexpected appearance of the Gaggia name in a forthcoming trade show has brought us a comment from Richard Millar of Rich Coffee in Berkshire: “Before Gaggia (UK) Ltd ceased trading on the 27th August, it imported both domestic and commercial machines from Italy. Approximately 90 per cent of its business was in domestic coffee machines and around 10 per cent was commercial coffee machines, sold through regional distributors to chains, individual restaurants and hotels. Sales of domestic machines have plummeted whilst Gaggia commercial machines continue to be highly sought after, and sales of these flourish. “The new UK importer for Gaggia commercial machines is Watermark Coffee Technology, the Dublin- based distributor for Ireland. Since 2006, Rich Coffee have been the largest Gaggia commercial machine distributors in the UK, and Rich Coffee is now working with Watermark to ensure that Gaggia’s commercial customers do not suffer in the changeover of business, and to ensure that servicing and maintenance are not interrupted.” Enquiries - email gaggia@richcoffee.co.uk or telephone 0118 979 6222. * As predicted in our latest issue, Kenco has launched its partnership with Terracycle, the American organisation which donates cash to charity when consumers send it used packaging. The British project will start as a consumer system, in which 2p will go to charity for every used pack of Kenco Singles, Tassimo or Eco Refill that participants collect. Those packs will be converted into bags and plant pots which can be bought on Terracycle’s website. Kenco is looking at the possibilities of following with a foodservice project. * A report in the dailies suggests that Starbucks’ UK stores may be in for a redesign, with the effect of looking less ‘corporate’ – out will go the uniform signage, says the report, and in will come ‘ local artefacts, bigger community noticeboards and possibly second-hand furniture’. The suggestion follows an interview with the MD of Starbucks in Britain, Darcy Willson-Rymer, which in turn follows Starbucks’ American announcement that it would ‘set the stage for a re-invigorated customer experience’ with a new localised-design programme involving locally-sourced materials and local tradesmen. * The latest effort to interest the food world in good coffee comes from Grumpy Mule, the retail brand of Ian Balmforth’s Bolling Coffee roastery. There will be a tasting event on Thursday 22 October in the LG Lecture Room at Waterstone’s Piccadilly, London. The event showcases five Great Taste award-winning coffees - Kenya Gethumbwini, Rwanda Musasa, Organic Brasil Fazenda Santa Terezinha, Organic Ethiopia Yirgacheffe and Tanzania Footprint. The point of it, Ian Balmforth told us, is to get the food writers and wine writers interested in the potential of great coffees. * It was only a matter of time before Starbucks got back at Costa for those ‘sorry Starbucks’ posters. The chance came with some radio adverts that repeated the claim that seven out of ten people preferred Costa drinks – Starbucks complained to Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog. The radio stations’ owner protested that it ‘did not have room’ to include supporting information to qualify the details of the Costa claim in its broadcasts, and so Ofcom ruled that ‘the claim as aired was in breach of the Broadcasting Code’. * A remarkable statement has been made in the early days of the court case in which Gordon Richardson, founder of the Beanscene café chain, is claiming a share of the proceeds of the chain. In Glasgow Sherriff Court, the judge said that the claim ‘does not accord with commercial sense, and may indeed be said to be absurd’.
We are extremely sad to record the death of Graham Knight, who ran the Period Life General Store in Nottingham, a very interesting venue. Graham was an enthusiastic pioneer of the idea of tasting evenings, and in particular held some quite superb events to show the wide variety of chocolate drinks which he stocked. He was equally imaginative with his teas - some were unique, such as the Georgian Old Lady and Old Gentleman teas, from Russia. The first is processed by Natela, a farming lady in West Georgia, and is an extremely large leaf tea of which probably only 20 kilos is exported from any harvest – and Graham Knight took 10kg of that! When it was first discovered, Graham jokingly said to the producer that he would like an Old Gentleman tea to go beside it – and he was referred to a farmer in the next village, who provided exactly the right artisan tea.
8th Sept: A barista trainer from Sheffield has devised what may be a unique barista-training and support system. It is a one-to-one system in which the participants are not in the same room – it is all done across the internet, using a webcam and the Skype system, by which live motion pictures can be transferred at the same time as a spoken-voice call. The idea comes from Youri Vlag of Absolute Coffee, who says that the new idea offers a remarkable combination of benefits in both cost and practicality. He told us : “I was brainstorming about barista training and how to offer something unique, and this was the result. We are going to be, to my knowledge, the first company in the world to offer a one-to-one online barista training course. For those who think this is crazy and can’t be done, we would like to prove them wrong - it can be done and we are going to do it! http://www.absolutecoffee.co.uk/online_barista_training_course.html We now have the dates for the UK barista championships, courtesy of Paul Meikle-Janney. The opening date for entries is 1st November, and the regional contests begin on 22nd January in Belfast. The 26th is the Scottish event, and the south-west is 2nd-4th February at the Expowest show, (This also features the finals of the UK Latte Art championship, UK Coffee in Good Spirits competition, and the UK Cup Tasting championship). The midlands event is 16-17 February, and London is 20th February. The semi-finals are 2-4 March at Hotelympia, after which of course there’s a bit of a gap for the champion to get their breath back before the world final at the back end of June. Sainsbury’s has re-designed the packaging for its entire range of coffees, which is also going Fairtrade. The agency behind the redesign has used imagery of brewing gear, such as moka pots and cafetieres, on the packs to make it abundantly clear what the consumer should do with the contents. Those who always compare the coffee market with the wine market will be interested to see that Sainsbury’s has followed the same style as it did for its wine, in giving guidelines to strength, taste, and the foods which might accompany each coffee. The back of the pack is also used for promoting other coffees in the range. Costa has given its recent poster campaign the credit for an 18 per cent increase in sales over the last six months. The chief executive said that the ‘7 out of 10 coffee lovers prefer Costa’ campaign, a tactic which quite clearly took a swing at its major opponents, was “the primary reason that Costa has out-performed them on the high street.” 5th Sept: Starbucks announced at the beginning of September that all espresso-based drinks in its British and Irish coffee-houses will be made from Fairtrade coffee, and announced to the marketing press that it would be embarking on a ‘multi-million pound’ billboard, poster and press campaign to reinforce its ethical values. Curiously, at exactly the same time as Starbucks made its move, the Fairtrade Foundation came under criticism from British coffee roasters for increasing its administrative demands on them. The Starbucks move is not a surprise – ever since Costa scored a great deal of attention with its poster campaign claiming that surveys had proved consumers enjoyed its coffee more than Starbucks, the trade has been waiting to see what the ‘green giant’ would do to fight back. Word had already leaked out through the beverage trade that the Fairtrade move was coming. Starbucks will now become the biggest buyer of Fairtrade coffee in the world, doubling the amount of certified coffee it bought in 2008 to a new total of 40 million pounds. For the first time, coffee is being commercially roasted in Cornwall. In an area where so many players in the hospitality industry are fiercely proud of showing that they can source all menu items from within their own county, this is a very significant move. The company which has taken the bold step is Origin Coffee, from Constantine, a tiny village near Falmouth. The company has already made its name in supplying many of the region’s best-known restaurants, such as Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen in Watergate bay, and many of the area’s best-known baristas – the 2008 British champion, Hugo Hercod of the Relish Deli in Wadebridge, used an Origin blend in his winning campaign. Origin has now invested in its own small roastery and has begun to create speciality and gourmet coffees on what is known as the ‘seasonal’ basis. In the ‘seasonal’ theory, a roaster will actively seek out the best current crops from anywhere in the world at any time – if it is a rare coffee, it may only be available to caterers for a month or two, but that allows hoteliers and restaurateurs to promote it as a high-priced ‘special’. The beverage industry has been unimpressed by an announcement from the World Cancer Research Fund, alleging that iced coffee drinks are a danger to health. The WCRF claims that it has used the drinks as an indicator of calorie content, saying that second to giving up smoking, attention to a healthy weight is the best protection against cancer. The organisation says that 19,000 cancers a year in the UK could be prevented if people lost their excess weight, and Dr Rachel Thompson, Science Programme Manager for WCRF, said: "The fact that there is an iced coffee on the market with over a quarter of a woman's daily calorie allowance is alarming. This is the amount of calories you might expect to have in an evening meal, not in a drink. The WCRF undertook a survey of such drinks available on the high street, and reports that its’ ‘chief offender’ had 561 calories, others contained more than 450, and the majority had in excess of 200. The highest calorie count came from Starbucks' Dark Berry Mocha Frappuccino, the one which the WCRF rates as equivalent to a quarter of a woman’s daily calorie intake.
28th August 2009 We are now permitted to report (at last!) the imminent launch of what is said to be the world’s greenest coffee roaster, with a claimed 80 per cent energy savings over conventional roasters, and a virtually smokeless and emission-free operation. The roaster is the Loring Smart Roast from California, being launched in the UK by Chris Glossop and Steve Penk, the guys behind the La Spaziale UK business. The theory behind the machine which ‘will change drum roasting forever’ is that the drum does not rotate – the drum stays static and a paddle system agitates the beans. In addition, heat and energy is not allowed out of an exhaust – it is recirculated and re-used. Tests by Pacific Gas and Electric in the US have confirmed that the Smart Roaster uses just under 20 per cent of the energy of a traditional roasting machine. The launch is on 2-4 October at the James’ Gourmet Coffee roastery in Ross-on-Wye. Attendance is by invitation – call 01246 454400. The latest solo charity effort from the trade is by Nick Kilby, the ‘tea evangelist’ of the unconventional tea supplier Teapigs. He’s doing ‘a bit of a bike ride’ next week, from his office in West London to Cardigan in South Wales, covering 250 miles in two days, to raise funds for the orphanage that Teapigs supports in Rwanda, adjacent to one its suppier tea estates. “The Noel orphanage is adjacent to and closely linked with a tea estate that we buy tea from for our English Breakfast blend. It is home to over 600 children who live in very poor conditions and need every help that they can get,” Nick told us. “If I can raise £490 that will mean one child can be supported for nearly 3 years so it’s clear that a little can go a very long way to improving someone’s life. And worth getting a little saddle sore for.” Details and donations - www.justgiving.com/teapigsnoelorphanage Waitrose claims to have noticed a distinct trend towards better coffee and tea in the home – sales of beans are up 34 per cent, and ‘fresh espresso’ (probably roast-and-ground) is up 26 per cent. Sales of what the chain describes as ‘posh teas’, an undetailed description, are up 48 per cent. At the same time, sales of teapots and cafetieres are up 56 per cent. The chain is suggesting that this is the result of consumer cutbacks in purchases from coffee-shops and cafes We’re rather surprised that nobody in the chocolate sector seems to have noticed, but there’s a promotional period coming up for this sector – Chocolate Week runs from 12-18 October. The Chocolate Unwrapped show is at the Mayfair hotel, London, on 10-11 October. So far as we can see, no supplier is using the event to promote hot chocolate at all… if any supplier is putting any trade support in, please tell us! 21st August We have news of another promotional event set up in good time for the ‘year of promotion of speciality coffee’, in 2010 - this time it’s the Krispy Kreme doughnut chain, which has planned its own internal barista contest for autumn, with the intention of putting its champ and maybe its runner-up into the UK championship. The chain’s Lee Leadbetter tells us that the wider promotional value of the contest will be to demonstrate to the public that the doughnut company is equally serious about the standard of its coffee. Krispy Kreme is supplied by Drury and Rancilio, whose Marco Olmi told us that he is encouraged by the idea of more surrounding contests feeding into the national one… so are we. The international press is having more fun at the expense of Starbucks - this time because of reports from America that the chain is attempting to improve revenues by cutting the prices of its more basic drinks and raising the prices on fancier ones. Reports say that the price of 20oz hot drinks up between 15 cents and 25 cents, while the big frappuccino size is up five cents. The ‘tall’ cappuccino (in Starbucks language!) is down ten cents, and filter coffee down five cents. The Wall Street Journal reports that staff at Starbucks have been sent a memo advising them to tell customers that the price increase ‘reflects the increased cost of doing business’. Starbucks in the UK has not commented.
It really has been a bizarre week for café-related TV items. First, we hear that the café from the Friends series is to be recreated in London in what is referred to as a ‘pop-up shop’ - that is, a promotional venue which appears, stays open for a couple of weeks, and then disappears to a new location. The ‘Central Perk’ café will be somewhere in Soho for two weeks from late September. Second, we hear that a caterer called Fresha in Exeter has been auditioned to appear in a commercial for NatWest. Third, and our favourite, is that the Piaggio vans made available by Big Coffee of Yorkshire are going to crop up in an episode of The Hustle, which the Editor likes. It’s one of Big Coffee’s Lavazza-branded three-wheelers Even more bizarre, and we have to steel ourselves to report it, is that Sayers in the north-west have begun serving cappuccinos with stencil toppings representing the ‘celebrities’ Peter Andre and his estranged model wife Jordan. Apparently customers select a topping according to which one they prefer… good grief, as Kaldi would say. Fittingly, in a week for such unusual news, there has been a story in the Scottish press which suggests that Gordon Richardson, who founded the café chain Beanscene, is now taking court action to try and win some cash from the sequence of events last year in which his business was sold, then put into administration, and then bought from the administrator by the retailers Fifi and Ally. He is quoted colourfully in the Scottish press as saying: "I busted my balls for nine years building that company from nothing. It's a strong brand, I want my money back." The Sunday Herald has attempted to chart the history of the various deals, including the personalities and amounts involved, and even suggests that the current owners have not actually paid the purchase price – so Beanscene effectively remains in administration. Martyn Fraser, who was managing director of Duchy Coffee in Cornwall until its recent closure, has now joined Coffee West
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