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It’s a horrifying prospect, but maybe it had to happen sooner or later… the barista pin-up calendar has now appeared. It features twelve world champions, and is described as an exclusive historical document, ‘and in some cases rather steamy’! The calendar is available from Square Mile, the speciality coffee roaster of east London, at £10. All proceeds will go to Coffee Kids.

The second notable charitable appeal of the season comes from the cause supported by many in the trade, Shelter From the Storm. This is London’s only free homeless shelter that is open all year round, and which exists entirely through volunteers, donations and support… much of which comes from the coffee trade, because the shelter’s co-founder is Louie Salvoni of Espresso Service. This Christmas, it costs just £9.40 to support a homeless person for one night’s accommodation and food. The coffee trade has done great work already in supporting this project… please remember Shelter From The Storm again this Christmas, or go along and volunteer for an evening.

Contact: www.sfts.org.uk, 020 7697 9569.

Email: mail@sfts.org.uk

A quite remarkable site for a coffee shop has been taken on by Caffe Vergnano, who tell us that they are to officially open next week at Staple Inn in High Holborn, London. This spectacular black and white half-timbered structure is one of central London's few surviving Tudor buildings and, to use an overworked term, is an icon – it dates from the mid-1500s, survived the Great Fire and partly survived the Blitz, being reconstructed and restored after the war with the majority of the original facade. One travel guide has said that a Londoner from the 1500s would probably still recognise it today. Caffe Vergnano’s Luciano Franchi tells us: “the shop has been in steady decline, with very little money spent on it since Shevrington's tobacco shop fitted the unit out in the seventies. We have taken a bold step to salvage the decrepit shop, resurrecting it to its former glory, in order to make it the jewel of a coffee shop it is today.”

The latest mobile coffee service, using what appears to be a SmartCar, is GoGoGaggia, created by Jocelyn Robinson of Yorkshire, in association with Raj Beadle of Caffe Shop Ltd, who of course used to be MD of Gaggia UK and still distributes the brand. The machine is the Gaggia GD two-group compact, which sits just inside the rear hatchback, the coffee and ancillaries are all by Gaggia, the baked goods are by the lady’s mum, and the intention now is to open up a GoGoGaggia franchise.

Like so many others, Jocelyn entered the coffee trade after being made redundant… after being a barrister working for Manchester police. She actually is both a qualified barrister and a trained barista!

With just enough time to market it, Drury has brought out the year’s latest seasonal beverage, a Christmas tea. Drury has blended a black tea base with apple, orange and ‘Christmas spices’, and has added the product to its pyramid tea-bag range. The result is described as warmly aromatic and spicy, with the scent of cinnamon and cloves. The brand suggests it should be drunk black, but we have tested it and find that it can indeed be drunk with milk.

Starbucks will launch the facility of paying for a drink by iPhone ‘app’ in January. The brand has said, quite candidly, that while it believes mobile payments are going to be the future of shopping, it doesn’t know how this market will develop, but thought it had to bring some kind of technology out now instead of waiting. As we understand it, the ‘app’ is for people who already have registered Starbucks cards, from which the purchase value is automatically deducted.

Lavazza has opened fifteen of its Espression coffee shops in shopping centres in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. The brand has spoken of 200 branches in China within five years. Meanwhile, Illy, which is already open in China, has made the interesting move of taking a stake in a chain of Italian ice-cream shops.

The continuing story of ‘the people versus Costa’ in Bristol is now reaching soap-opera status, but we did enjoy the action taken at the weekend by protesters outside the Gloucester Road site which has been the subject of some angry planning rows. The protesters held a Mad Hatters’ Tea Party outside the offending site, with placards reading ‘Costa will cost us our high street’. The argument centres on an alleged opening without planning permission in what locals have described as ‘the most vibrant high street in Britain - because there are so many independent shops.’ The business is a Costa franchise, and a local councillor has written to Costa's managing director John Derkach asking, interestingly, whether he takes any responsibility for the actions of his brand’s franchisees.

A local roaster-café has replaced a Starbucks - the global brand’s site in Jersey airport is to be replaced by the Island Coffee Shop which, we understand, will be largely supplied by Coopers, the longstanding local company of St Helier. The airport director has said he wants more of a ‘local flavour’, to ‘help ensure the product range better matches the needs and expectations of our customers.’

Meanwhile, Starbucks starts Christmas this week – its seasonal Red Cups return on Thursday, for the arrival of eggnog latte, toffee nut latte, gingerbread latte, and this year’s addition, praline mocha. For the first three days, you buy one and get another free.

There is intriguing news from the Speciality Coffee Association of Europe – the organisation is inviting the trade to say what it thinks of the body. Following the SCAEUK’s AGM in London on 16th November, there is the offer of an open forum at 3pm for anyone who wishes to attend. “The idea is to have an open discussion and take questions/suggestions, to make observations and criticisms, offer to help/get involved and to generally have a rant if required,” we’re told. We are not yet sure whether there is any facility for those outside London to submit their rants or suggestions.

Following the recent unrest concerning the use of kopi luwak coffee, the AFP international news agency carried a story at the weekend in which a farmer suggested that 80 percent of civet coffee in the Philippines is now produced using caged ‘battery-farmed’ animals, and said there are similar problems in Indonesia.

The well-regarded London coffee house Kaffeine has taken high-quality speciality coffee into the corporate-catering sector, and will operate the staff canteen at the office of a big worldwide construction company. They occupy a 100-seat café and an eco-friendly roof terrace. The counter layout will be similar to Kaffeine’s main site, but food will be produced at the main store and transported up on trolley twice a day. The difference, as Kaffeine points out, is that this means speciality coffee onsite – as the entire facilities-management profession knows, one of the big catering problems from several years back has been that staff leave the office on too many unauthorised coffee runs. Kaffeine will trade as One Tree Coffee for this site.

Darjeeling tea has been granted Protected Geographical Indication status by the European Union, only the seventh non-EU product to be so designated. There will be a five-year transition period during which existing blends can mix Darjeeling tea with non-Darjeeling tea, and still use the name.

Following our story in the latest issue of Coffee House , in which several members of the trade spoke about the desirability of using the UK barista championships to promote speciality coffee to the general public, we are able to report this morning that the first such initiative is being planned - there will be a regional heat in Norwich in the spring, and the likelihood is that a public coffee festival will be held around it.

Richard Norman of Mad About Coffee tells us: "There have been no formal meetings on it yet, but I'm already going round businesses looking for support. This will be an event for the general public, to show them what coffee is all about."

There has been yet another adverse report about the coffee trade, which will result in the trade having to defend itself.

A report in Which? magazine has criticised the coffee trade’s work on the recovery and recycling of takeaway beverage cups, saying that customers are ‘confused’, and complaining that the café trade ‘does not go far enough’ on the waste issue.

Coffee House magazine was the first to directly complain to Which? about the item, pointing out that it was, at best, superficial. We told the consumer organisation that there have been meetings and conferences within the coffee trade about this for several years now, that there are organisations and working groups addressing the subject, and that Starbucks has regularly held international summits on the subject, even inviting its competitors to take part.

Several of the cup-makers to whom we showed the report are not pleased. The general feeling is that the report was not fully researched.

We shall be addressing the subject in our next printed issue – meanwhile, anyone who wants to see the Which item just ask, and we’ll send it on PDF.

It has been reported that Costa is now planning to open 75 drive-thru stores, having trialled the format during the summer. The sites are said to begin opening over the coming 12 months. Costa has made no comment on the report. By coincidence, we are fascinated to see that in Barrhead, Glasgow, a derelict petrol station is to be turned into a takeaway coffee house by a company to be called Coffeze.

There has been a fair amount of international coverage about Starbucks’ plan to introduce a light-roast coffee, to be called Blonde. As might be expected, many references have been made to the chain’s perceived preference for dark roasts. However, although the world’s press have kept banging on about cappuccinos and lattes, we are intrigued to be told by Starbucks that they are all looking in the wrong direction – Blonde is a filter coffee roast. There are, we are told, no plans for it to be introduced in the UK.

Starbucks is reported to be hiring an agency to increase its ‘customer relationship management’ work, and has reportedly sent briefs directly to potential applicants. It is said that Starbucks wishes to concentrate on its Starbucks Card loyalty scheme, following increased competition in loyalty-management from its main rivals…

… in which regard, Caffè Nero has launched a gift card programme. Customers will be able to purchase cards in the Nero sites, but also from other partner businesses, including WH Smith and Sainsbury’s. The cards will carry values from £10-£100.

It has been a busy few days for awards and recognitions. East Anglian youngsters honoured at the Prince's Trust Celebrate Success Awards included Hayley Draper from the Window coffee house in Norwich, which she promotes as ‘the smallest coffee shop in the UK’. In the north, Coffee Latino, which makes the mobile carts that could be seen on Fracino’s stand at Caffe Culture, is shortlisted for both Best North East Small Business and North East Woman Entrepreneur Of the Year awards. At the Manchester Food & Drink awards, the Chocolate Café from Ramsbottom (who we featured in our August issue) took the title of ‘Best Coffee Shop’. The most unusual award, we think, has gone to La Maison Du Cafe of Yorkshire, which operates coffee carts at outdoor events – it won ‘Outdoor Caterer of the Year’ in a contest which was operated for caterers across all British racecourses. In the London Lifestyle awards, the coffee shop prize went to Benugo.

A curious scam occurred in America and Canada last weekend – a Facebook page offered consumers a free drink at Starbucks and Tim Horton’s cafes if they ‘liked’ a page and shared it with their friends. They were then asked to provide their email address and other personal information, for which they would be rewarded with $25 vouchers to use in the stores. Both coffee chains were quick to dissociate themselves from the scam. The clue came in a reference to the promotion celebrating Horton’s 25^th anniversary – the chain has been going for nearly fifty years.

Beyond the Bean, the specialist wholesaler of coffee-shop items and operator of the Sweetbird and Zuma brands, has celebrated its 15^th year in business by opening an office in Los Angeles. The company, which launched as Espresso Essentials, has been selling in America for two years, and says that more American distributors are now looking for products which are free from various ‘nasties’. Beyond the Bean’s products are generally approved by the Vegetarian and Vegan authorities, and a Sweetbird Smoothie recently won a ‘best new product’ award in America.

Coffee House newsflash 10 Oct

Caffe Nero has appointed Neil Riding to be managing director of its UK operations; the post has recently been vacant. He has in the past been top man at Beefeater and TGI Fridays, and has a curious former connection with the coffee trade…at Beefeater he succeeded John Derkach, who is now top man at Costa.

The coffee trade saw two big acquisitions in the space of eight hours today. Following our newsflash about the acquisition of the Coffee#1 cafe chain by the Welsh brewer and pub chain S A Brain, the Irish roaster Bewley’s announced that it had acquired the Darlington’s coffee business of London.

Bewley’s is the influential roaster which has dominated the coffee scene in the Republic of Ireland for many years, and which also has operations in the US, in Boston and California.

Darlington’s has been operating since the early 1990s, and has a turnover in the region of £4.5 million. It has a strong business in restaurants of various kinds, significant pub companies such as the St Austell brewery chain, and food chains such as Eat, Caffe Uno and the Bagel Factory – but it has also been seen in the very newest wave of coffee houses, most notably working with Sacred of Soho.

Bewley’s managing director, Jim Corbett, has acknowledged to Coffee House magazine that the acquisition can be seen as providing a firm foothold for his company in the UK.

“We definitely see this as a springboard for further development in the UK. Bewley's already supplies a number of major UK retailers and foodservice clients, and this is a natural development for us – the Darlington's business model is very similar to ours in Ireland with a high focus and commitment to customer service and support.

“Darlington’s is now wholly owned by Bewley's but will continue to trade under its own name and brand, and we intend to develop and grow the Darlington’s brand.”

Darlington’s coffees are currently produced by a number of different roasters. Asked whether Darlington’s clients would now find their coffees roasted by the Irish giant, Bewley’s tactfully replied: “We believe that access to Bewley's procurement, blending and roasting expertise will enable Darlington's to expand the range of services they offer, to the benefit of all their customers.”

Coffee House newsflash, Friday Sept 30th.

The Bath Coffee Festival, which can reasonably be considered the event which has pioneered the promotion of speciality coffee direct to the consumer, will not be held in 2012 – the decision has been made to allow for a local project aimed at improving the town’s recreation ground, where the event is held.

The need for refurbishment of the area has been a topic of local concern for some time, and event organiser Linda Donaldson has said that although she had proposed to add an additional marquee for the 2012 festival, there is now a firm likelihood that the local council may wish to start their work in the spring, possibly at exactly the same time as she had proposed to run the coffee festival.

There is also no suitable alternative local site. So, rather than risk upsetting her supporters if the council makes a late decision on the matter, she has opted to step aside now and postpone the 2012 event.

The show’s main sponsors and supporters are said to be extremely disappointed, but to be understanding of the situation.

There have been suggestions that the organisers should simply move the event elsewhere – it is said that there have been offers from London and as far as Edinburgh. However, the Bath team have replied that their event is a local one, run by local people for the benefit and promotion of their local town, with the support of local businesses and in support of local charities, and so the idea of going anywhere else is not being considered. It is understood, however, that the organisers have been ready to advise councils from other parts of the country who have wanted to know how the event works.

One of the charming and popular aspects of the Bath festival is that local charities are encouraged to take an active part in the event, and in return are invited to receive donations, often amounting to thousands of pounds, to take away with them at the close of the show.

Following the recent popularity of the ‘pyramid’ type of tea-bag, which is promoted as giving the larger leaves more space to infuse, we now observe the launch of the ‘cube’ – this is, we hear, to be launched in three days, and yes, it is a six-sided cube-shaped tea-bag. It’s from some people called Lu-Lin of York, and we’re delighted to say we have samples on their way to us.

Next year’s UK Barista Championship finals will be held in London, at the Old Truman Brewery, during the period of the London Coffee Festival, 27th - 29th April.

We are delighted to see that the Australian media have had no hesitation in broadcasting the YouTube link to the song performed by a Starbucks barista, in which he gives vent to his exasperation about the people he has to serve. He got fired – but it’s a pretty good performance. You can find it here:

http://www.news.com.au/business/starbucks-gives-barista-christopher-cristwell-a-permanent-coffee-break/story-e6frfm1i-1226144437656#ixzz1Z2tjbD00

The barista in question said that he recorded the song to provide some ‘comedic relief’ for his fellow baristas after a typical stressful shift, and took his dismissal very gracefully. Starbucks, of course, was not amused.

In another sacking story, it is reported that a café owner has been ordered to pay £1,300 to a teenager who was fired because she was about to turn 18, which would have meant an increase in minimum wage. The café owner allegedly fired her for being ‘cheeky’ in asking for a pay rise. An employment tribunal found that the café owner discriminated against the employee on the grounds of her age.

In another bizarre story, police were called to a coffee bar which shows Bible texts on a video screen, following a complaint by a customer who had been offended by the content. The café owner reported that officers told him that displaying offensive or insulting words is a breach of Section 5 of the Public Order Act, and told him to stop displaying the Bible; he complied, but having taken legal advice, is continuing to do so. The Christian Institute commented that if a café customer dislikes the venue they are in, ‘the right course is to take their custom elsewhere, not dial 999’.

A Northamptonshire tea room which opened on Tuesday last week had its first burglary within three days – thieves broke into the ARTea Room, which doubles as an art gallery, and stole £200 from the till.

The most unlikely story in the saga of external café furniture now comes from Suffolk – a café owner employed a builder to lay a new outside patio, but the builder discovered a well. The county archaeological services were called in, and dated it from the 1200s, after which the café owner decided the patio was ‘no longer an option’. Instead he is having the well lit and will make a feature of it!

CNN, the news network, has created the ‘coffice’ – it is a combined coffee house, office, and newsroom, which offers customers not just free wi-fi, but computers and printing services, and a live feed of the CNN news channel on a large screen. “It is not just another coffee shop, but an information hub”, says CNN. The first one to be opened is in Korea.

11 August

While sympathising with all affected by the riots, we are truly fascinated to see that various coffee shops have been playing a part in community work. Typically, Karen and Gunter at My Coffee Stop in Enfield have been a drop-off point for contributed goods for displaced families, and Jack Spratt in Manchester gave free hot drinks to the volunteers working on clean-ups. Our pal Melissa Cole (the UK’s top woman writer on beer) has sent us a terrific picture of a police officer using her riot shield as a tray for cups of tea donated to the serving officers! Respectful congratulations to all helpful cafes.

Starbucks is in trouble again in China. This time, the brand has upset the descendants of an 11th-century judge by putting his image, or rather something which was not his image, on its cups. Bao Zheng is revered for his strictness in upholding justice and opposing corruption. His 36th-generation descendent told the China Daily that he was ‘shocked’ to see his ancestor's face on the mug. " It looks really absurd! He has a foreigner's face!" he complained.

From September, Jamaica's coffee regulator begins removing counterfeit ‘100 per cent Blue Mountain Coffee’ from the country’s stores. Fraudulent branding is ‘rampant’, the organisation has said, and does not only affect local sales – much of the counterfeits are sold to tourists.

The Wicked Coffee Company in Wetherby has won a contract from Roadchef to supply coffee at its 27 service sites, immediately after having renewed its contract with the National Union of Student Services to supply 120 universities with beverages and equipment for a further three years. Fergus Walsh, managing director (or ‘chief bean’) of Wicked Coffee, says that Wicked’s sales have grown 30 per cent in a year.

The high-street bakery-and-coffee chain Greggs has reported a 4.2 per cent rise in sales for the past six months, to £335 million for the 26 weeks to July. Greggs opened a record 39 new shops during the period, its fastest growth period, and has reported profits of £17.3 million, fractionally down from the previous year, but the company has referred to a ‘a one-off £2m hit due to the extra number of bank holidays in the period’. Chief executive Ken McMeikan said trading had proved “more challenging than we had expected”, but we have discovered that his bean-to-cup Fairtrade coffee sales for the period were up 23 per cent. Greggs makes a point of saying that its prices are considerably lower than other high street coffee chains, at around £1.45-1.60 for a latte.

A tea company in Gloucester has managed to sell tea to China. Only Natural Products, which runs The Tea Factory in Gloucester, is selling herbal teas to Shanghai and Guangzhou, and as the buyers collect the products, they have no shipping costs! The company has been bagging teas since October, at 1,250 traditional square bags a minute, and has made the pointed remark that "at a time when all other major tea manufacturers are taking production abroad it, was important to us to produce in the UK."

A well-known high-tech consultant from America has caused some consternation with his ‘social experiment’ based around a Starbucks card. Jonathan Stark was annoyed that his Starbucks account would only work on one of his mobile phones at once; so he took a picture of the payment barcode on one phone with his other phone, and discovered that this allowed him to pay for a drink with the picture on his second phone. He then wondered if he could give free coffees to other people – so he posted the image to the Internet, lodged $30 on his Starbucks card, and invited the first half-dozen or so people who found the code to download it on their own phones and have a coffee on him. What happened? A few days later, 177 people had used the ‘card’, and $3,651 had been spent on it – people were using his money to buy coffees, and then popping on the odd ten dollars of their own for the next person to use. "It's been a bit emotional, actually," said Stark. "People's reactions have ranged from accusing me of stealing to thanking me for renewing their faith in humanity.”

Urban Coffee of Birmingham, celebrating its second birthday this week, reports that it sold 182,000 cups of coffee last year, at a turnover of £300,000, and is aiming for half a million this year.

An Australian source says that the latest group of workers to be affected by RSI, or carpal tunnel syndrome, is baristas. It’s to do with the repetitive motions of tamping, but apparently more coffee shops over there are now working harder on convenient working heights, and in some cases, yoga exercises.

29th July: Darcy Willson-Rymer is to leave his position as MD of Starbucks' UK operation. He is to be replaced in September by US executive Kris Engskov, who will become managing director for UK & Ireland and senior vice president. Engskov has been with Starbucks for nine years

11th July - the Great Taste Awards are announced. You'll find the tea and coffee winners here.

7 July:

Today is the national launch day for Costa Light, described as ‘a brand new and unique coffee only available from Costa’. The description we have of it is this: ‘A new production technique of adding Costa’s Mocha Italia espresso to skimmed milk in its own jug, and frothing, creates a milder, well-balanced, light, yet indulgent coffee. It has been lovingly developed by Costa Coffee to fill a gap in the market for a lighter coffee, with an indulgent mouth-feel’. We apologise for a lack of further detail, but Costa’s master roaster Gennaro Pelliccia is currently out of action with tonsilitis, with which we sympathise, but which has rather prevented an interview!

Costa is offering customers a taste test guarantee, in which customers can buy the drink to try, but if they don’t like it, they will be given the equivalent size of their usual coffee for free. The new Costa Light starts from £2.15 for a Costa Light Primo.

There are no stories like tea promotion stories. We are indebted to a business writer from Liverpool for this one - Typhoo Tea is to sponsor St Helens rugby league club, and will be providing tea to the club next season. However, the rugby club has one notably famous fan, the comedian Johnny Vegas… yes, the one who promotes PG Tips with that woolly monkey. Typhoo’s chief executive has apparently said: ’the moment I want to see is Johnny Vegas drinking Typhoo!’

24 June:

It has been suggested that the coffee house trade should make a specific presentation to the Mary Portas project, in which the ‘shopping consultant’, famous from her TV shows, has been hired by the government to report on the retail mix of Britain’s high streets. There is a distinct suspicion that the trade may not come out of this report well… the constant complaint from councils throughout the country now is that their high streets are becoming too full of coffee shops. We shall report on this in greater depth in our next printed issue, but it has been suggested that the beverage trade should put together a concerted submission; we have spoken to an association in the pub trade which has done the same on behalf of their members, and the appropriate government department has told us that they are ‘not being prescriptive’ about how submissions might be offered, but that they certainly are interested in ‘evidence, analysis and figures’. We suggest that any in the trade who feel they want to be involved in this might contact the editor.

HM Revenue and Customs have confirmed to us that their next ‘task force’ will indeed be investigating the café sector. A national newspaper website reported this morning that cafes will be subject of a tax ‘crackdown’, and HMRC has now told us that this is indeed so – “this is based on a ‘risk-analysis’ process,” we were told. “We create temporary specialist task forces to investigate risk areas. It is well documented that we recently investigated the plumbing fraternity.

“There is of course a cash element to café businesses, and so it will be necessary for us to look at various things, but we will approach it in two ways – on the one hand, for the smaller café operator who genuinely needs help to get their affairs in order, we shall help. On the other hand, we will certainly prosecute those who are deliberately evading tax. “

We have a fascinating update on the story of Lavazza’s cafes at the Wimbledon tennis tournament. They have sixty cafes onsite – on Monday, one of those cafes alone did twenty kilos of coffee. We have also learned that in the Wimbledon press office (no, we don’t have access to it!) they went through more coffee in the first two days of the tennis than they did in the entire tournament last year.

Starbucks, together with its promotional agency, won the New Media Age effectiveness marketing award last night, for its Starbucks Rewards campaign. This used Facebook and mobile vouchers, to promote rewards in target areas set up around its various British sites. As a result, Starbucks doubled its Facebook community, to 360,000 fans, and registered 10,150 downloads for mobile vouchers for free filter coffee on the first day of the campaign.

Readers will recall our recent story about how Keith O'Sullivan of Ireland, a coffee drinker from outside the industry, won the Irish Brewers Cup… yesterday he took the world title as well, coming out above both the British and Australian coffee-trade entrants.

Starbucks’ accounts for the year to October 2010 show overall sales growth of two per cent, with a turnover of £396 million. There was a loss of £34 million, which included £25 million in royalties to the parent company, and the figures also include the cost of the Borders administration, involving Starbucks in-house cafes in the closed bookstore chain – that was around £10 million. There was £24 million in investment on store renovation. The company now has 717 UK stores, employing 8,700 ‘partners’, and claims over two million customers a week. Starbucks is now to enter the Norwegian market in 2012, in partnership with SSP – it will open ‘landside’ in the arrival section of Oslo Airport, and will have a site of about 200 square metres.

Meanwhile, owns Costa says it has experienced ‘strong growth’ in the quarter to June, and Whitbread has said it will double the size of the coffee chain to 3,500 stores worldwide in the next five years. Total sales were up 20.4 per cent to £182.5 million and franchised-store sales were up 18.8 per cent. Like-for-like sales were up four per cent and transaction values up 5.1 per cent. Costa opened 73 new stores in the quarter, and will add approximately 300 stores worldwide during 2011-12. Around 500 units will be re-branded as Costa Express and the total Costa Express/Coffee Nation estate will become around 1,100 units.

The Rainforest Alliance will hold its first ‘awareness’ event this autumn - Rainforest Alliance Week will run from 19-23 September . There are very few details yet available. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence has taken on a Rainforest Alliance coffee for troops in operational situations – it has given a contract worth £375,000 to the charity Cool Earth, for an instant coffee using certified Brazilian beans. The coffee is made and packed by FFI.

Yael Rose, who put on the Tea & Coffee Festival at the South Bank in London this Spring, has invited the trade to put forward opinions about the dates of her next events – there may be one on 18-20 November 2011, and either 9-11 March or 27-29 April, 2012.

15th June:

The Waitrose chain has advised us that press reports of plans to open a chain of standalone coffee shops throughout Britain’s high streets are premature. Managing director Mark Price was reported as telling a retailing conference that he would do so, but the company has now confirmed to us that what he actually said was that he has trialled his new café concept in a number of branches, and will develop it throughout his chain in time. He did add that ‘some time in the future’ he might consider a standalone café, but that was simply a passing comment, not a strategic plan.

Meanwhile, we reported recently that Twinings had hired a property agent to find it a major London retail site, to develop the retail business of its famous Strand shop, which is very nearly 300 years old, and which receives around 5,000 visitors a week. It has now been reported that Stephen Twining is ‘drawing up a blueprint that could result in a chain of tea shops across the country’.

Following our recent story concerning the activity of the Health and Safety Executive over the machine-safety question, we can now reveal that one regional authority has begun its own check-up operation – the New Forest council has sent a letter to all the coffee shops it knows of, to ask whether they are in possession of their machine maker’s manual and instructions, a ‘written scheme of examination’, and the last date of such an examination. The council tells us that the project is intended to be ‘educational’, but that coffee shops who fail to respond may be pursued by personal visit. An espresso engineer commented simply to Coffee House: ‘it has started…’

Costa has named its Portishead, Bristol, branch as the best-run franchise for the year. The operation is run by Stuart and Lynn Montgomery, who are reported to hold the franchise from Costa Coffee for Bristol and the South West. They will open a branch in Clifton later this year.

The Sweetbird brand from Beyond the Bean has won the ‘Best New Product’ award in the Speciality Beverage category at this year’s Speciality Coffee Association show in Houston, Texas. Sweetbird syrups, smoothies and sauces are promoted as being free from artificial colours, flavours and preservatives, and as the only range in the world to be approved by the Vegetarian Society and for vegan diets by Viva.

The first I-phone ‘app’ for the location of espresso engineers has been created by Chris Palmer of Xpress, who is also the founder of the Association of Independent Espresso Engineers. It allows catering operators to locate their nearest engineer, and we are told that it has already been used by those who run mobile espresso stalls at outdoor events.

Malmesbury Syrups, the independent maker of coffee flavourings, has become the first UK user of a ‘revolutionary’ new system of ESL (Extended Shelf Life) technology, which is described as something between normal ‘chilled pasteurised’ products, and a UHT/long-life product. It uses ‘pulsed white light’ to deal with pathogenic bacteria, but uses a tiny fraction of the energy associated with conventional heat treatments, and also allows Malmesbury Syrups to use lighter, clear and easily-recyclable packaging

16th May:

In one of the financial press’s better headlines, Whitbread has been told to ‘wake up and sell the coffee’ – it is reported that investment analysts at the Royal Bank of Scotland are now recommending that Whitbread shares are a good buy, because ‘it is now less a question of if Costa will be spun off, and more a question of when.’

Still on financial topics, Virgin Money is to open four ‘customer experience’ coffee lounges in London, Edinburgh, Manchester and Norwich. The theory is to use a coffee house ambience to ‘generate good feeling between customers and the bank, at a time when consumers lack trust in financial institutions’. It is not necessary to be banking to use the coffee lounge section; the idea is for Virgin to have seventy sites in due course.

There are further moves on the pressure-vessel situation - it is now known that one of the regulatory bodies has begun a fact-finding research exercise to help it understand supply, servicing and inspection in the espresso machine trade. Meanwhile, the Coffee Council has now produced a long report detailing the different attitudes towards espresso machine inspection by engineers, insurance companies and the relevant authorities – although there is doubt as to exactly which one is the relevant authority, and the insurance companies seem set to remain deliberately obscure about their stance on the matter. As a result, the Council has warned that caterers really must question their suppliers, service engineers and their insurers and attempt to establish where they would stand in the event of an accident.

The brief story can be seen at

http://boughtonscoffeehouse.wordpress.com/

while the full report – it’s a long one – is at

http://www.coffee-house.org.uk/CH8CoffeeCouncilPressureVessels.pdf

The British coffee trade has long known of the massive and long-standing promotion by the Tim Hortons chain of Canada, in which customers are invited to ‘roll up the rim’ of a takeaway cup to see if they have won a prize – over 25 years, there have been court cases to settle rows over ownership of big prizes, while there are millions of smaller prizes of free drinks and food... and that it what has now caused a problem. The chief executive has reported that the chances of winning this year were increased from one in nine to one in six, which means far more customers are receiving free drinks instead of paying, and the result of that is that Hortons has reported its worst financial results for several years!

Boston Tea Party, the south-western coffee house chain, has become a theatre - the Metta Theatre Company is bringing its new adaptation of Pirandello's play The Man with the Flower in his Mouth to seven of the chain’s nine cafes this month.

BB's Coffee and Muffins has opened its first re-designed store, and it is expected that a makeover of its full 70-shop estate will follow. At the site in Watford's Harlequin shopping centre, the white-on-red logo has gone, and a new theme of pink, white and black has been brought in. The chain’s owner, Kapelad, has also reportedly reduced the size of its muffins, as a result of customer research.

This is Christian Aid Week, and we are delighted to report that several bishops have been trained in espresso work, as a way of highlighting the situation of coffee farmers. The bishop of Knaresborough has been trained at Chimes Café in Ripon by owners James and Vanessa Bell, while the Bishop of Pontefract received training at Costa in Halifax. The Bishop of Bedford underwent training at The Coffee House, and Barry Cook at Café Licious in Swindon was invited to train his local bishop. At the Aroma coffee shop, in Haxby, they didn’t get a bishop but trained the district chairman for the York & Hull Methodists. We expect a significant increase in quality of after-service refreshments…

There are several items of late news before this week’s Caffe Culture show. La Marzocco have taken a last-minute stand, at K15, operated by Mulmar. Illy is going to launch Illyissimo, a ready-to-drink coffee-based beverage developed between Illy and Coca-Cola. At the Coffee Machine Company/Drury, Rancilio will launch its XCelsius Project, a new temperature profiling technology.

The Coffee Boys, who as usual will be giving talks and consultancy, may announce that they are going to be taking ten coffee shops on a one-year group mentoring process. And look out for a Coffee Boys project similar to Ramsay's kitchen nightmares but focused purely on coffee shops…

26th April

Taylors of Harrogate has a new chief executive – the first to come from outside the founding family. Andrew Baker will take over on May 3, having previously worked with Duchy Originals, Cadbury and Tate & Lyle.

Whitbread is to open its first drive-through Costa. The outlet opens in Nottingham in mid-May and there are to be at least six more in the near future.

An exhibition will be mounted this month into a remote area of Queensland, where it is hoped that they will find Australia’s first native coffee bean. The discovery itself is not new, but there has only recently been a realisation of what it means – and the discovery is so new to science that nobody has yet brewed the bean! The director of the Australian Tropical Herbarium at James Cook University, is reported to have said: "It is the very first and only native species of coffee found in the wild in Australia. As far as we know it is not growing anywhere in cultivation - the specimens we have are preserved and archived.”

The new St Ali coffee company in London has a story behind its name – it’s the latest Aussie company to arrive, and they say the name refers to the patron saint of coffee. The generally-accepted patron saint of coffee-houses is St Drogo, who is also the patron saint of unattractive people (!), and we cannot forget Marco D’aviano, ‘friar cappuccino’, who was beatified in 2003 for his services to bringing coffee to the civilised world.

We are advised that there are questionable goings-on in the lead-up to the Caffe Culture show – exhibitors have been targeted by a publisher who apparently claims to be producing an ‘official’ publication for the event, and who is soliciting advertising. This is not a jokey dig at our competitor magazines – it is a perfectly serious story. The organisers, Upper Street Events, would be interested to hear from any exhibitor who has received an approach from someone outside the usual trade publication channels.

Three business reports have been published in recent days : two are very big files, and if you care to see them on PDF, email the editor. The first is What’s in your Cuppa? , produced by the Ecologist. It’s a report on alleged human rights abuses and other problems in the tea and sugar supply chains, and one thing we’ve reported on before, alleged battery-farming of cows, both in the US and the proposed ‘mega-dairy’ in Britain. The other report is Starbucks’ latest Global Responsibility report, in which they acknowledge that their big savings in water usage are related to stopping the practice of leaving taps running all day!

The third is Dawn of a New Reality from the Local Data Company, who are probably the main ear-to-the-ground researchers in the field of retail shop premises. Readers may recall that in our last magazine, we had a story which said not to get carried away in all the gung-ho enthusiasm about café openings, because so many were closing down. Guess what’s the highest ‘negative performer’ sector in retail closures? Cafes! Local Data’s Matthew Hopkinson tells us that he thinks this is largely down to so many people opening up beverage outlets as ‘a lifestyle choice on a low/incentivised rent’, and finding the return was not what they hoped, as well as the big chains doing some end-of-lease shuffling.

The bubble-tea concept is arriving in Britain, with the launch of Bubbleology, promoted as the UK’s first such café, in Rupert Street, in Soho in London. The product originated in Taiwan, and is formed of tea, flavourings, and ‘pearls’ of tapioca, a drinks have a red, white or green tea base which are infused with fruit flavourings, with the unique addition of Tapioca pearls at the bottom. We recall reporting a couple of years ago that although there were many thousands of bubble-tea cafes and stalls operating in Taiwan at the height of the craze, that many of them had gone bust… this, we understand, was due to far too many ‘me-too’ businesses.

The latest charity fund-raising event through percentages of beverage sales has been by ISS Facility Services Healthcare, which has reported the result of its three-month project in 42 hospital sites – they have raised enough to renovate a children’s ward in a Kericho, Kenya.

Lavazza has confirmed, as we are glad to say we revealed in January, that it is sponsoring the Wimbledon tennis for three years. Lavazza will be served across 60 sites over the championships area (and we can’t wait to see a little espresso machine by the umpire’s chair!) What we hadn’t seen before are the commemorative espresso cups. Collectors (like us) will be looking to get their hands on these.

The former distributor of Gaggia espresso machines in the UK, Raj Beadle, is once again a distributor of the brand. After Gaggia UK closed in August 2009, a direct result of the acquisition of the manufacturers by Phillips of Holland, he acquired six of the old company’s retail sites and started up as Caffe Shop Ltd. The Gaggia service business was largely rescued by Watermark of Dublin, who are opening up their own site in the south of England very soon, and who have now taken Raj Beadle back on as their northern sub-distributor.

There is never any shortage of charity bike rides and the like in the coffee trade – the next is by Sam Tawil, who runs Bold St Coffee in Liverpool. He and some friends and colleagues are starting from their shop and riding through Wales to Cardiff, taking in all the hardest climbs along the way – 260 miles and 14,500 ft of climbing, over the Royal Wedding weekend, for Diabetes UK. In July, Steven Prime of the Esquires chain will cycle across America from Carolina to California, with a target of 3,000 miles in 30 days, in aid of Coffee Kids.

We are quite used to reporting various authorities denying permission for work on coffee-houses and tearooms for the usual reasons, but this is a ‘first’ for us. Lord Carnarvon, owner of Highclere Castle, (where the TV series Downton Abbey is filmed) has been refused permission for a tea-room in his old stable block because of bat droppings – they’re a protected species, and now he has to have experts in to do night-time surveys of the premises and chart bat activity before he will be told whether he can convert the building for catering.

Property Week has reported that a Rwandan coffee business, Bourbon Coffee, has hired consultants to find it a central London café site.

14th April

We are able to report that the charitable total from Allegra’s Coffee Week and Coffee Festival has reached £100,000.

Organiser Jeffrey Young tells us: “My best assessment at this stage tells me that the numbers for UK Coffee Week and the Festival will be approximately: a minimum of £60,000 in direct consumer donations in UK coffee houses and others for Project Waterfall; miscellaneous donations of £4-5,000; £1,200 from direct consumer donations at the Festival; £39,000 in ticket sales. Total: In excess of £100,000 raised.”

It may sound extremely churlish to observe that this pretty admirable total did not reach the million pounds originally hoped for – we are simply relieved that the editor does not now have to eat his hat at the Caffe Culture show.

11^th April.

We have now been able to get a more complete view of the reasoning behind the BSA’s new awards scheme, and it certainly does appear to be something quite new, and not the normal run-of-the-mill trade awards. Essentially, they have ditched the old ‘café of the year’ kind of thing, and have gone for what are hoped to turn into a ‘Michelin-style’ kind of grading system. It’s a bit long to try and explain here, so we’ve put the story on our newsfeed, and you can find it at http://boughtonscoffeehouse.wordpress.com/

What is currently the highest-profile beverage award, the Top Tea Place awards by the Tea Guild, has named the winner of its Top London Afternoon Tea prize – Claridge’s has won it for the second time. (We couldn’t resist looking up the price – it’s £35 a head for the basic afternoon tea. Champagne is extra.).

Jeffrey Young of Allegra tells us that his London Coffee Festival drew 7,000 visitors, and that his team of a hundred baristas broke the world record for the number of espressos made in an hour’ by producing 12,005 on 31 machines. The total is to be submitted to the Guinness world record people. (Readers may remember the ‘espresso races’ of five or six years ago, most notably when the likes of ‘Five Hands’ Cinquemani, then of Bar Italia, and Dan Gilmore of Verdi’s in Swansea were among those who went head-to-head on two-group Brasilia machines, sending the record per person up to 70-odd in five minutes. The difficult bit, of course, was tasting them all to make sure they qualified as legitimate drinkable espressos. (And memory fails us here, but we’re not too sure whether the world record for the largest cappuccino, made by a collection of baristas in Sheffield about five years ago, ever got ratified by Guinness.)

Meanwhile, back at the Coffee Week, our reference to Urban Coffee having the highest-priced charity-related kopi luwak has already been topped by Raschid Gibrail of the Ismail in Tonbridge Wells, who tells us that his kopi luwak is a standard menu item at £10 per cup, of which he gives £7 to Help for Heroes.

The latest anti-Costa protest comes in Midhurst, where the local press reports that ‘unprecedented numbers of protesters’ have written to Chichester District Council demanding that they turn down Costa’s amended plans to change the use of what was the Unusual Food Company store.

6^th April

We are three days into Allegra’s ‘Coffee Week’ – we always enjoy stories of local promotions, and this week has produced two we like. First, Urban Coffee of Birmingham is selling kopi luwak this week at - wait for it - £8.95 per cup, only five pence less than the most expensive retail coffee we’ve come across. Urban experimented a bit with brewing options, and although originally the original idea was to use a siphon brewer for the sheer theatre of it, practicality meant that they are using an Aeropress instead. We believe 20p of the price goes to the charitable cause, drinking water in coffee-growing areas of Africa.

Elsewhere, we were delighted to hear that Annabel Townsend of Afternoon Tease in Darlington has been inspired to run the parallel North East coffee festival this week, on the understandable argument that ‘everything is usually based on London’. (We couldn’t agree more!) She has ‘absolutely no budget’, she told us, but has managed to get some of the local coffee businesses involved in roasting workshops, barista classes and tasting sessions. Annabel has recently been involved in doing a PhD based on coffee.

Again on the subject of water-aid charity work, Java Republic of Dublin has pointed out that this week is also the sixth anniversary of its work to bring water to regions of Ethiopia, and so this is a fundraising month to raise another 100,000 euros or so – events in support have apparently been held as far afield as Abu Dhabi, and we believe there has been one personal donation of 5,000 euros. Those who share our aversion to the modern tendency for an attitude of ‘wackiness’ in support of people who are in dire need (we have moaned at Fairtrade about it on several occasions!) will probably be interested in David McKernan’s attitude in his report on the subject from last year – as always, Mac doesn’t mince his words, and you certainly don’t usually see recipients of charity referred to as ‘lazy good-for-nothing bastards’. His writing certainly brings the truth of the subject into sharp and appallingly realistic perspective. If you care to see it on PDF, just ask the editor.

The latest local campaign against a big chain is in Sandbach, Cheshire, where five petitions have been signed by traders and customers against the proposed arrival of Costa, which will be discussed at a council planning meeting today. One local trader said: “Sandbach is a pretty little market town and it should stay that way. The public do not want it here – there’s a Costa a mile away on the motorway and that's where it should stay.”

The UK Youth organisation is to receive three years of support from Starbucks, which will make around £10,000 available across each of ten regional locations. Young people will be encouraged to bid to run projects of their choice, to be judged by a local panel, with Starbucks staff then helping run the projects. The first ten locations are Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Dublin, Edinburgh, Leeds, London (Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea) and Manchester.

Pukka Herbs has won the ‘best new organic food product’ award for its organic herbal tea.

Penny Manuel of Soho Coffee has been named ‘Woman of the Year′ at the Gloucestershire Media’s Women in Business Awards, which recognise female entrepreneurs

A tea café brand which, reportedly, ‘has plans to expand nationally and rival Costa and Starbucks’, has opened its first site in Milton Keynes. The brand is Tea Monkey, which features a curious alternative to complimentary newspapers – it has eight complimentary iPads connected to the wall, which are loaded with games and music. The intention is for a new site every six months, with one due in Bath in June, and a portable ‘tea pod’ for rail stations and similar sites.

31st March:

The one-time ‘reluctant CEO’ of Coffee Republic, Steven Bartlett, has made an unexpected return to the coffee trade as a supplier, under the name Ministry of Coffee. Bartlett, whose recollections of his time at Republic have been the subject of several irreverent and entertaining trade speeches, has already opened his own Americano coffee house, and now follows that with his first range of coffees blended specifically for use in cafes. He told us: “The Coffee Republic coffee blend actually did work well, so I knew what I wanted - a blend geared to be good enough to work with milk in cappuccino and latte. Unusually, I started from the cappuccino requirement first, not from the espresso.” He has a Coffee Shop Blend, a Barista Blend, a Fairtrade blend, and a bargain blend; a Restaurant Blend is in production. The prices are deliberately realistic for the café trade – around the £7.50-£9.50 mark. The roaster is a very well-known British operator. http://www.ministryofcoffee.org/index.html

Vegware, the eco-cup makers, have launched the Royal Wedding cup. We have to say it’s a sight more tastefully designed than a lot of these things. Details from www.vegware.com .

The barista from the John Lennon airport in Liverpool, Marta Twardygrosz, has won SSP’s national barista contest. The interesting thing about this is that the giant catering company had entries from right across its group of brands, which includes Upper Crust, Pumpkin, Millie’s Cookies and the Camden Food Co, that it has trained over a thousand baristas in the last eighteen months, one of whom reached the top twenty of the UK championships last month, and that it credits this training with productivity increases across 600 sites.

AMT Coffee, the railway-station kiosk specialist, is proposing considerable expansion after raising a million pounds of financing. The chain has 72 sites in the UK, Belgium, Germany and the Republic of Ireland, has recently launched the two sub-brands of AMT Coffee Naturally and the AMT Coffee Cart, and is installing improved bake-off facilities in much of its estate. There are plans for 15 new kiosks and eleven more mobile units this year.

Something that AMT and Pret A Manger have in common is a healthy porridge business. Pret has reported a 37 per cent rise in profits to £46.1million for the year to December, on sales up 17 per cent to £327.5million. The chief executive highlighted two strong performers – the 99p filter coffee and the porridge, of which Pret now sells 50,000 bowls a week.

The Eat sandwich and coffee chain has proposed to triple its number of stores to around 300 following a management buyout. The founders, Niall and Faith MacArthur, remain in position and intend to develop throughout the UK. Eat’s sales last year were £85million.

The next Starbucks drive-thru unit will probably be in Chorley, Lancashire. EuroGarages opened its fifth such site this month, and also expects to build one on both sides of the service area at Bolton West on the M61.

The Café Rouge group has also moved into fast-food service at travel sites – it is reported that after a successful test of Café Rouge Express at Euston station, discussions are going on with the rail authorities over other sites.

A timely warning to all busy operators of how carelessness has cost a coffee shop a £7,000 fine – the staff were using craft knives, which have snap-off disposable blades, to open delivery parcels. One snapped off and ended up in a little girl’s food. The court said that if the café owner had not readily explained how the incident happened, the fine could have been £20,000.

And finally, today's silly section:

The tabloid and ‘celebrity’ press has been breathlessly agog with the news that the newest coffee bar entrepreneur is to be Peter Andre. The trade will recall that he was involved in the flat white launch of one of the major chains a year or so ago, though we don’t know if he actually made any drinks.

A London entrepreneur is attempting to reopen 26 disused underground stations for a variety of businesses including pubs, bars and catering businesses. South Kentish Town, which closed in 1924, is currently home to a massage parlour and a pawnbroker, and Euston is said to have a whole network of potentially-usable closed tunnels, platforms and office areas.

A really curious St Patricks Day story from Boston tells how a man burst into a Starbucks store, shouted ‘I’m rich!’ and threw hundred-dollar bills into the air before departing. The customers were so surprised that nobody picked any of the money up – a staff member collected it, and donated it to charity.

And finally… a man in Cleckheaton has had the Tetley Tea Folk tattooed all over his arms and back. He really has! We’ve seen the result, but frankly, we’d prefer not to show it.

14th March

The entry form for the BSA awards has today gone on to this site - click here.

May we remind barista-contest fans that the finals of the UKBC begin on Tuesday at the IFE show, at Excel in East London. Twenty contestants have made it through to this stage, and it has to be said that there is a fine regional spread of contestants this year. Just about every major area of the UK is represented. John Gordon will be defending his title, but when we asked him about it, he graciously deferred attention to the demonstrations to be given by young Callum Hale Thompson, the teenager who was the star of the London heat, and who will perform solo at about 9.30, before the competition event begins. “I sat in on a run-through of his the other day, and that kid is amazing,” John told us. “He could quite simply put a lot of London working baristas to shame – we’re extremely proud of him.”

Meanwhile, the British barista team, which includes two of this week’s UKBC finalists, has scored a notable triumph at the weekend by winning the European Barista Team Cup in St Petersburg. Our team consisted of Aysin Aydogdu (who we think is the reigning world ibrik champion), Paul Stephens, Edmund Buston, and Neil Le Bihan. The UK were six points ahead of the Ukraine, and the Russian team came third. Ken Cooper, the SCAE UK national co-ordinator, says this puts us in a good position for the world team title. We have it on good authority, direct from St Petersburg, that celebrations continued until 5.30am – not, as Ed Buston pointed out, ideal preparation for beginning a UK championship on Tuesday morning!

Reports from Zurich say that Nestle will not give up its actions against companies making ‘compatible’ capsules designed for use in Nespresso machines, despite an adverse court ruling. The giant brand had sued the discount supermarket Denner, and although a first court hearing ruled manufacture of the compatible pods should be halted, this has now been changed. The court held that only the three-dimensional form of Nespresso capsules was protected under trademark law, not the concept of compatibility with Nespresso machines. European legal writers have said the reason for Nestle’s aggression is clear – Nespresso has rapidly become a multi-billion brand, and actions against other capsule makers have been quickly raised. One of those sued, France’s Ethical Coffee Company, has said that most of the 1,700 patents filed on Nespresso are ‘smokescreens’. More on this in our next printed magazine.

Coffeetech, the machine maintenance specialist, have a merger deal with drink equipment service giant GVS Assist, effective as of today. Precise details are not yet known – we have just the brief comment that: ‘Basically it’s the merger of Coffeetech into GVS Assist, making GVS Assist strategically focussed on being a major national player in servicing the roast and ground coffee market across the UK, using Coffeetech’s expertise and experience’.

The shortlist for the 2011 Restaurant & Bar Design Awards involves half a dozen in the coffee-bar and fast-food sector – Tinderbox in Spitalfields, Costa in Great Portland Street, Beas of Bloomsbury, Chilango of Kent, Peggy Porschen, and Moo:bar of Birmingham. The section was won last year by Outsider Tart. Meanwhile, the London Lifestyle awards, which apparently drew 100,000 votes last year, will again have a London Coffee Shop of the Year category – last year’s was dominated by Soho, with Bar Italia winning over Sacred and Flat White.

Still on awards, we are intrigued to see the Plymouth media report that the Fresha café, on the Sowton Industrial Estate in Exeter, has been named ’the UK's most-loved coffee shop’, by ‘thebestof.co.uk’, a business directory. We regret that we can get no precise details of the criteria.

Following our recent mention of Lincoln and York suggesting that the royal wedding is a fine promotional event, we now have details of the first commemorative happy-couple compostable takeaway cup. This comes from Vegware, who describe the design as ‘an intricate one incorporating their portraits as well as all sorts of symbols associated with the happy couple's lives and characters – a sort of intricate tapestry’. A penny from each sale goes to the Vegware Community Fund. Vegware is also one of four finalists in the products section of the first Climate Week awards.

Twinings, the tea brand, is looking to move more into retail. It already has its quite historic site on the Strand in London, but is now looking for a new flagship store location in high footfall areas of central London, such as Covent Garden or Regent Street. It is reported that Twinings is also planning to open a number of shops selling teas and accessories across the country, and is considering concessions within other large stores in the UK.

Following our recent mention of Starbucks dropping both the company name and the word ‘coffee’ from its logo, we see an interesting reference right at the end of a story about them in the Wall Street Journal. The chief executive Howard Schultz was asked about the curious change. He replied: ‘it's very possible that Starbucks as a corporation will now be marketing and selling multiple products that don't have coffee in them, or coffee associated with them’.

Mr Schulz has a new book out - Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul. Yes, we’re trying to get a copy…

7th March:

Another interesting charity project has cropped up – this rather admirable one is by Helen Marriott, who does the publicity for the Caffe Culture show. She’s running a half marathon on 20^th March, in aid of Comic Relief’s work in Africa. The creditable thing about it is this – Helen had back surgery a few months ago. She’s not supposed to be running at all… and she says that if she doesn’t make the distance, she’ll match all donations pledged. You can donate at http://my.rednoseday.com/HelenM1

Tim Bacon, the entrepreneur behind Living Ventures and the New World Bar Company, will open a coffee and tea house plus deli, developed under the working title of Marmalade, in the north-west area. He is reported as saying: “I have been wanting to do a coffee/deli format for a very long time and I am very excited about this new business, which we hope to open near the end of this year.”

The trade has been intrigued - although not much - by a lengthy and quite sycophantic report in the Independent about Starbucks new ‘Reserve’ scheme, although Marketing magazine says it published the information first. The story involves what is apparently a revolutionary method of serving one-cup filter coffees through what is described as a ‘pour-over’ method. With Starbucks’ usual careful phrasing on these things, the report quotes the company as saying: "Our buyers occasionally discover exceptional coffees that are only available in limited quantities. Starbucks Reserve allows us to share these unique flavours that really showcase the expertise of our coffee farmers." The inference is that such coffee as Aged Sulawesi was ‘discovered’ by Starbucks, and is produced by ‘their’ farmers, which will come as a shock to those in trade who have been using it for some time; the inference is also that the use of single ceramic filters may be a company innovation, described as ‘the latest method to hit the high street… requiring special new equipment’. Our enquiry concerning where credit lies for these innovations has not yet been answered.

And one magazine covering this story really did spell ‘baristas’ as ‘barristers’ … !!!!

The latest remarkable café versus council row comes, in the middle of Fairtrade Fortnight, from Garstang, the world’s first Fairtrade Town. Bruce Crowther, one of the guys who drove the town’s first Fairtrade movement, has attempted to open a café as part of his FIG (Fairtrade in Garstang) project, a museum dedicated to the history of the Fairtrade movement. However, several councillors said it was “very unfair” on established cafe owners for Mr Crowther to be opening another cafe in the town. The local paper reports a delightful exchange in which one councillor protested ‘can’t we just wish him luck?’ to which the mayor simply replied: ‘no’. Other café owners in the town seemed relatively unconcerned.

A better council story comes from Melton Mowbray, where street café licence charges are set to be halved. Councillor Matthew O’Callaghan, who organised a protest meeting last August about the amount of charges and proposed regulations over street furniture, said: “Although Melton led the way, all of Leicestershire will benefit from the decision.”

We learn from Graham Stewart of Newcastle of his new product, the Milk to Perfection steaming jug. The principle is of a milk pitcher which features a stainless steel tube in the centre of the milk jug, which is said to make the action of milk steaming and frothing considerably easier. He has also designed an ‘audio digital thermometer’, which sounds when the right temperature is reached. There is a demonstration video at www.milktoperfection.co.uk.

Lincoln and York have pointed out that opportunities for limited-edition ‘themed’ branded products are going to crop up with the royal wedding and the Olympics. Lincoln and York are working on specific blends which will allow traders to offer a ‘celebration’ coffee, without committing to large order volumes.

Boston Tea Party, the south-western chain, has hired its first Head of Coffee, who will be Andrew Tucker – that is, the one who has worked with Origin roasters and the Jika-Jika coffee house, not the one of the same name who runs San Remo espresso machines.

The latest news on the Costa takeover of Coffee Nation is that Nation’s chief executive Scott Martin, who bought out the company in 2008, will share an estimated £11.9 million with his management team. The private equity company backers, who put in a quarter of the money required for the management buy-out, have quite reasonably been crowing about doubling their money. Costa has spoken of plans for 3,000 (three thousand!) of the proposed new Costa Express bars, which will be based on the Coffee Nation format, in the next five years. One typical reaction from the trade was: “not good news for the smaller operator who is now being pushed out of the traditional markets of universities , hospitals, etc – it wouldn’t surprise me if lots of these places stop having their traditional cafes and rely on a half-way house.”

In the disposable cup sector, there has been a row in the American Congress over the return of polystyrene coffee cups, in an about-turn of a 2008 Democrat project which introduced cups and utensils made of biodegradable corn starch. Recycling stations were introduced, and waste was pulped onsite before being sent to commercial composting plants. The Republicans have now said that ‘it is neither cost-effective nor energy-efficient to continue the programme’.

Starbucks has been named ‘the most unethical cafe chain’ by Ethical Consumer magazine, although to be fair, most of the magazine’s criticisms seem to be centred on Starbucks’ operation in America. Editor Dan Welch says that he “uncovered a record of unethical behaviour that runs completely counter to Starbucks image as an environmentally friendly, bohemian coffee shop… if you want to see it on PDF, just ask and we’ll send it to you. In Britain, Ethical Consumer names AMT Coffee as its most ethical brand. Interestingly, the magazine had harsh words for certain chains who promote ‘fair-trade’ coffee, as opposed to Fairtrade – this, says the magazine, is a claim which cannot be measured.

The Beverage Standards Association can now provide its entry forms for its new-format 2011 awards. Every outlet will receive audited BSA judging reports from the mystery-shopper judges. BSA members will pay £30 per entry, while others pay £45. The closing date for receipt of entries is Friday 29 April. Forms from: info@beveragestandardsassociation.co.uk

28th Feb:

The tea trade is intrigued by Unliever’s announcement of ‘a major innovation’ under its PG Tips brand. The March launch of The New Ones features ‘new patented technology to preserve freshness’. The company has said that ‘the tea leaves received an extra phase of pressing to more effectively lock in flavours’. One of the other main brands has already responded with some derision.

The Cafe2U mobile coffee business has recognised two of its franchisees in its national barista awards. Paul Abernethy of the Worcester franchise and Nick Sayani of Nottingham West tied for the brand’s national barista award. This is not a conventional barista contest, but comes from the regular auditing of each franchisee in the business, covering all aspects of the franchisee’s work. “Some criteria are loosely based on the barista championships,” managing director Tom Acland told us, “but adapted by barista trainer Jon Skinner for outdoors work. By the end of the year we have a quantitative points total from which the winners are decided, and customer comments are also taken into account.”

Drink Me Chai, inventor of the powdered chai, has won the ‘Best Product and Service’ category of the National Best Business Awards. The judges made a pointed comment about the company’s founder Amanda Hamilton being ‘an outstanding example of a successful niche business in a market full of conglomerate global players’.

Pumphrey's of Newcastle has, according to its web designer, achieved a 25 per cent increase in online visitors and an increase in repeat sales of around of around 43 per cent through its redesigned website.

Fairtrade Fortnight starts today. The Wales Co-operative Centre is running its annual contest to find the best Fairtrade beverage served in the region during Fairtrade Fortnight – consumers can vote by Freepost postcard or by text. Last year, 1,390 votes were cast – the winners were two Coffee Culture branches, in Llandudno and Swansea. Meanwhile, the MMR research organisation has suggested that Fairtrade is not a ‘major purchase driver’, following its latest poll of shoppers. “First, consumers seek products that promise to benefit themselves (health), then animal welfare and their local area (locally-sourced produce), and then those that address the plights of the rest of the world,” said the researchers. “Despite this, food and drink manufacturers see the importance of Fairtrade certification for their corporate reputation – in categories such as coffee, tea and chocolate, it has become a ‘hygiene factor’.”

Layton Fern, the coffee roaster and tea blender of Basingstoke, is under new ownership. The new MD is Justin Slawson, formerly founder of the Cheese Cellar Company. All existing staff will be retained.

The owner of a well-known coffee-house in the Royal Mile of Edinburgh has become a spokesman in the local press against a local authority plan to save half a million pounds by closing a large number of local public conveniences. The idea is for local businesses to be asked to open their loos to the general public, in return for which they will be given a place on a special tourist map. Graham Kenny, whose Has Beans coffee shop has won a couple of awards, has criticised the council for expecting local traders to provide basic services, and a large number of pubs and cafes in the surrounding tourist area have agreed, and refused to take part in the scheme.

The former Gloria Jean's coffee bar in Westfield, Derby, has relaunched as Kona Blue Coffee and Deli. The three owners have also taken on the former Gloria Jean's coffee shops in Leicester and at the East Midlands Designer Outlet, South Normanton.

The Irish press reports interesting business for Ristretto of Banbridge, which has just achieved its first export business to the Republic of Ireland, following an investment grant. The company was offered £20,156 of development support from Invest NI, including part-funding from the European Regional Development Fund, to produce ten new coffee blends for the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain markets.

14th Feb:

Coffeetech, the espresso-machine technicians of Redhill, have agreed terms to acquire Espresso Parts of Gatwick. The smaller company was formed three years ago by Ryan Page and Tommy Coleman, as ‘an innovative supplier of boutique barista equipment, spares parts and cleaning consumables’, working on an e-commerce business model. Its customer base has become the barista community, roasters, and its new owner. Coffeetech’s managing director Duncan Gaffney said: “The guys at EP are a young, energetic team who will fit very well within our organisation.”

It was a good day for Edinburgh companies at the Scottish heat of the barista championships – Megan Barker of Artisan Roast took first place, while Jonathan Sharp of Kilimanjaro was second, and Stuart Lee Archer of Pumphreys in Newcastle made a successful raid across the border to take third place. Megan also took prizes for best cappuccino and best espresso, and Jonathan took the award for best signature drink.

Only one heat remains – the north-west on Thursday. There are a couple of experienced competition hands appearing, but we have an idea that a couple of dark horses in this heat may cause surprises…

A coffee shop in Jersey is to have the fastest internet connection in the world – but, we fear, Jersey telecom is not saying where it is. It seems to be a preparatory part of the island’s overall plan to be the fastest online place in the world, and all we know is that the company is installing a wireless internet connection at a St Helier café which will give a speed 25 times faster than the fastest mobile broadband connection so far available, and 15 times faster than the quickest home broadband.

Readers will know that we have recently reported a great deal on the matter of pubs getting into coffee. Now, the president of the world’s largest brewer, Stuart MacFarlane of AB InBev UK, has told the pub trade to ‘think more like world class retailers’. He said that the benchmark for most publicans is other pubs, whereas they should in fact be looking at coffee shops.

North-West Vending say they have ‘stunned’ the vending world by bringing Kimbo coffee to the UK vending market. The country’s first Caffè Kimbo vending offer has appeared in central Manchester. What is equally interesting about this is the comment made by NW’s managing director, Mike Cowley about the standard of modern vending machines: “I’d back one of our Kimbo coffees against any High Street offer”, he has said.

Meanwhile, Kimbo is appearing at the Dolce Vita show in London, from 10-13 March. Tickets are supposed to be £8, but we do know that some free ones are available to trade readers who send their company details to Angus McKenzie at Kimbo.

The actress who starred as a posh housewife in the 1970s TV series The Good Life is about to open a tea-room on a Scottish isle. Penelope Keith is to open on the Black Isle, although the move has involved six years of planning arguments. One delightful local report says that a petition was raised by local people objecting to the business – ‘a total of 240 people signed it, but it then transpired many of the names belonged to people who were dead, while others thought they were signing a petition to keep the local post office open’. Another report says that the petition also included the names of local people who backed the proposal, and that as a result, the matter is currently under investigation by the Scottish legal authorities.

After café designs were criticised and rejected by both Highland Council and the Scottish Government, a revised design was finally approved by the local authority’s planning department.

Fine Foods International have reported that their Fair Instant coffee has now succeeded in raising half a million pounds for Save the Children since it first went on sale in 2007. The money has gone to education projects at schools in Colombia’s coffee regions.

Cafédirect will donate 10p to Comic Relief from every limited-edition pack of ground coffee, whole beans, and tea sold during the next Red Nose Day campaign, which is in mid-March.

The Coffee Boys will be running their first ‘webinar’ (internet seminar) on Thursday 17^th February, at 7pm. The subject is the potential for doubling profits, and Coffee Boy John Richardson asks in advance whether participants care to give him some opinions - do you believe you could double your profits this year, and what do you think you would need to do in your business to double profits? Details of participating from john@thecoffeeboys.com, and registration for the event is at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/ register/136738582

31st Jan

It is an extremely interesting day for new ventures…

We are now able to announce that, following all the kerfuffle about the required annual inspection of espresso machines, a west-country engineer has become (we think) the first person to set himself up in business specifically as a ‘competent person’, the term which the safety authorities use to describe someone who is allowed to certify a pressure vessel. It is Mark Allen, who for some years has been an engineer with Origin Coffee, and who is now in business as Espress Test, of Redruth. The interesting thing that Mark has discovered is that while it is not allowed for a café operator’s existing engineer to be the ‘competent person’ who inspects and certifies his espresso machine, there is nothing stopping the ‘competent person’ also being an espresso engineer. The result may be a considerable economy for coffee-houses. Full story on our newsfeed: http://boughtonscoffeehouse.wordpress.com/

We are interested to see the launch today of a proposed purchasing consortium for café owners – it is by Andy Goss, under the name of Thirst Drop, and what appears to be an early version of his website is now at www.thirstdrop.com. The idea is of one we have come across in other industries – a group of like-minded independent businesses banding together for better buying prices across a range of commodity requirements. As we understand it, Andy Goss does not seek to change anyone’s buying preferences with such major decisions as their brand of coffee, but observes that the buying of miscellaneous items from milk to cleaning materials can be an inconveniently time-consuming matter for a small business owner. He tells us that he has worked with a number of small and medium size suppliers to offer competitively-priced, quality products, and also wants to act as ‘a source of exciting and innovative new products’.

The SCAE has made a new move in the sector of coffee education and qualification – the SCAE Coffee Diploma System will be launched in June. This, we learn today, will allow coffee professionals to earn education ‘credits’ in all aspects of coffee, which ultimately add up to qualification for a Coffee Diploma. An interesting aspect of it, the SCAE tell us, is that they recognise that “our members partake in coffee education courses sporadically, as they juggle their professional responsibilities with their professional development. The Coffee Diploma system breaks its education programme into sensible courses. While the SCAE's 110 authorised trainers have been imparting education on many topics over recent years, it has been delivered in a fairly loose manner - to date, only the Barista Certification and Gold Cup Brewmaster training have had any system of controlled certification. The SCAE Coffee Diploma system will introduce controlled certification criteria.”

Of the two schemes referred to, the Barista certification programme now has over 3,000 level one baristas and the Gold Cup programme has recognised 200 Brewmasters.

Coffee Nation, the business which provides speciality coffee through automated machines around the motorway network, has launched a Sat-Nav tool to show drivers the nearest of the brand’s 800 sites. The brand observes that while high-street chains have experimented with similar work in locating their branches, the Coffee Nation one is specifically designed to be ‘car-friendly’, as many of its sites are based in service stations and other ‘on the go’ areas.

Readers will remember the Coffee Council’s recent work on the scalding issue. The curiosity of the latest incident, in which a woman from Georgia (USA) has been awarded $1.2 million, is that the burn injury occurred from what appears to have been an automatic machine in a convenience store. We haven’t heard of such an incident before.

Costa is to build its first drive-thru coffee shop in Scotland, near Loch Lomond as part of a roadside services area close to the A82, which links Glasgow with Fort William in the Highlands.

25th Jan -

The BSA, now the Beverage Standards Association, is about to revive its awards with a noticeable difference. In its proposed new series, the BSA will seek to recognise not cafes, as it did before, but individual drinks – the UK's best small espresso, best cappuccino/latte/flat white, best filter coffee, best tea and best hot chocolate drink. We'll bring details later. Meanwhile, the interim top man of the BSA is Martyn Herriott, who has recently done some good work in turning the association’s website from virtually moribund into something respectably interesting.

19th January

There has been some interesting trade reaction already to our newsflash of United Coffee’s acquisition of Coopers, with readers’ comments roughly divided into three broad views: first, that it appears to be a busy time for the sale of owner-operated coffee businesses, and second, the opinion has been expressed by a couple of our readers that the acquisitive growth of both United and Miko will result in a confrontation between them before long for certain business in the hospitality sector. Third, other readers have enquired whether the emergence of these growing ‘big boys’ could actually be good news for the ultra-specialist craft-roasting community, who will seek to differentiate themselves even more from the mainstream; against this, however. it has also been suggested that the general catering sector can expect a ‘dog-fight’ between coffee suppliers on pricing, and that the high-craft roasters will simply be unable to compete in such an arena.

Meanwhile, back in Huddersfield, the new partners have made the usual noises about being ‘delighted’. United Coffee has said that taking on the £1.9 million Coopers turnover and 500-strong customer base will now grow United’s market share by three per cent. It has also said that the Coopers name will remain as a standalone brand.

Another recent purchase is that of the Keith Spicer company of Ferndown, Dorset. This has been bought by the Harris Tea Company, part of the big Harris Jayanti group, which has interests from tea to spices, and has processing plants in India and Vietnam. The Harris Tea Company is the largest own label tea supplier in North America with three plants there. The purchaser said that the acquisition of Keith Spicer gives it a stronger foothold for further potential acquisitions in Europe.

We are now allowed to bring you news of our favourite sponsorship for this year - Lavazza is the official coffee of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships. (Those hoping for tickets, please form an orderly queue behind the editor and Trudi!) Lavazza has also confirmed sponsorship for the 2011 Slow Food UK campaign, and the San Pellegrino ‘50 Best Restaurants in the World’ award ceremony.

Taylors of Harrogate has created a curious ‘social-networking’ campaign which will provide the material for a TV ad. The brand has sent a sampling van, which looks pretty much like an ice-cream van, on an American road trip to meet British expats who are, the company says, ‘yearning for a proper cup of tea’. The idea is that in addition to some pre-planned stops with expats, the van will respond to invitations to visit other expats which are received on Twitter and Facebook. The resulting TV ads are to be shown during Coronation Street, within twelve days of filming. (For fans of Morecambe and Wise, we feel compelled to also report that the tea-sampling van is nicknamed 'Little Urn'.)

Thirteen thousand people in Christchurch objected to a planning decision by the local council, which awarded itself planning permission to take over the site occupied by Kelly’s Kitchen and Tea Garden in the local high street, to make space for an extension to the local library. However, they all lost – a High Court review has ended with the judge’s decision that the county had no case to answer. It appears that the council owns the freehold of the property, and the lease on the site expired some years ago. He ordered that the costs, around £10,000, should be paid by the café owner.

At the same time, the The Busy Bees tea shop, near Ashbourne’s bus station, will have to close to make way for a walkway into a supermarket. Sainsbury’s is to buy the bus depot for a supermarket extension, and all tenants will be given notice to quit. The tea room owner, Richard Glover, told his local paper: “My cafe is being knocked down so Sainsbury’s can have some nice yellow paving — and I walk away from here with nothing. Everything I’ve saved since I was 16 can just be trampled on by a giant chain.”

Sainsbury’s has suggested that its first takeaway café, the grab-and-go Fresh Kitchen on Fleet Street, could be the first of ‘hundreds’ across the country. The company has also given us the interesting claim that it is ‘the only grocer in the UK with triple certified coffee’.

Coming hot on the heels of our reports about worldwide reaction to Starbucks changing its logo, we now have worldwide reaction to the news that Starbucks is proposing to bring out a 31oz takeaway drink. It will initially be used for an iced coffee, and will be launched in the US. Of all the worldwide reports we have seen, our favourite is the one which says that the 916ml drink is larger than the capacity of the average human stomach, which apparently is 900ml. Starbucks has claimed that the giant size is the result of customer demand, and a consumer writer in New York has pointed out that Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds already have 32-ounce iced coffees. In keeping with Starbucks’ bizarre policy on size names, this one will be the Trenta, which it helpfully says is Italian for ‘thirty’. But if it is 31oz, then surely it should be ‘trentuno’, but that probably doesn’t have the right sound for Starbucks.

Caffe Nero has completed a funding and restructuring package which has been variously calculated in the financial press at £99 million and £140 million. The chain has also been reported to be planning fifty new stores in the UK each year, and about forty stores internationally each year. On checking this with director Paul Ettinger, he told us: “I did say there might be another year or two of rapid growth but it would then slow down...I stand by that.” Caffè Nero is reported to have declared a net profit for 2009 of around £25.3 million on a turnover of £142.3 million.

18th January

Newsflash

It has been confirmed that arrangements have now been agreed for United Coffee (First Choice, as was) to acquire the business of Coopers Coffee of Huddersfield.

More details later.

7th January

The BSA has advised that its chairman, David Veal, has resigned – he will be taking over the executive director slot at the SCAE, which becomes vacant with the retirement of Mick Wheeler. This leaves a vacancy for a chairman at the BSA, who will put an interim person in place later this month.

The international business press has had a field day with the news that Starbucks, already no stranger to strategic changes, has now decided to drop the words ‘Starbucks’ and ‘coffee’ from its logo, leaving only the mermaid (or ‘siren’). Several commentators from the advertising and marketing industry say the company is following the likes of Apple and Nike, and even McDonalds, taking the view that its symbol alone is recognisable worldwide.

However, the Harvard Business Review says that ‘2010 was the year that proved that logo change is not always for the better. Gap got taken to the cleaners when it updated its branding and Tropicana came a cropper when it removed the iconic orange and straw from its packaging… the company appears to be pulling an Apple, but the result could be a lemon.’ The Belfast telegraph called the move ‘nuts’. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has said that the move indicates Starbucks ‘thinking beyond coffee’

Stories from the regional press around the UK point to some significant expansion for Costa. The stories in local papers are essentially all the same, with the numbers changed to fit the area, but among the interesting proposed openings are Wells, which will mean the 13th coffee shop in the city, or one for every 750 residents. The fourth Plymouth branch is likely to open, Swindon and Warminster are to open this year, which will make half a dozen branches in Wiltshire (Swindon, Chippenham, Marlborough and Trowbridge), and there are even plans for a third branch in the relatively tiny Cornish city of Truro.

Elsewhere, the trend for breweries to open coffee houses continues – following our report at Christmas of one brewery planning a chain in Newcastle, another brewery has submitted an application which will mean the fourth coffee house in a 100-yard stretch at Mexborough.

The Rare Tea Company is launching an ad campaign for its Royal Air Force tea range, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. The tea will be sold in Sainsbury’s and 10 per cent of the retail price will go to the RAF Association Wings Appeal. Golden tickets have been placed in selected tins, offering a range of prizes, including a flight in a Spitfire.

Limini Coffee is proposing a series of coffee events at its Doncaster base, saying they are ‘really keen to try and foster a barista community feel in the north of the country’. The first event on January 25th is themed as 'Art Attack' and will include introductory milk training for those new to coffee, and a chance to work on more advanced techniques for others. Tickets are £10. On February 22nd there will be a cupping evening, concentrating on differences in global regions and varietals. Details and booking: www.liminicoffee.co.uk/events

The Cappuccino Girls musical has re-appeared, and is going to be staged in Swansea for a proposed long run in the winter of 2011. The show is a musical based very loosely on the barista championships, and the writer thinks of it as a ‘ladies’ night out’ show. They plan to run it In a Swansea City Centre venue from Sept –Christmas 2011. There is no coffee trade sponsor, so if anyone’s interested, contact the editor and we’ll put you in touch.

Also in Wales, it is reported that the once-famous coffee house chain of National Milk Bars, famously recommended by the Beatles, has now dwindled to its final venue – the Aberystwyth and Welshpool sites have now closed, and the one remaining site is believed to be in Rhyl.

22 December:

In our last news update, we omitted to report a notable honour. Members of the espresso coffee sector will know the name of Angela Maxwell, who was the marketing lady for Fracino up until a few years ago – well, at the end of last month she was presented with her OBE, by the Princess Royal, for services to business. Angela is managing director of Acuwoman, a company which advises SMEs on business strategy, and a board member at Advantage West Midlands and the West Midlands Enterprise Board.

The interest in coffee from pub owners continues – a businessman who owns pubs in Newcastle intends to develop a chain of coffee houses. The Fluid group has the Central Bean coffee houses in the Gallowgate area of Newcastle, Morpeth and Jesmond, expects to open two more shortly, and now says that it will develop the brand further towards the north-west.

The Kenya tea industry has decided it is time it worked to promote its identity, instead of being seen as a producer which just supplies commodity tea for bulking up blends. The national tea association is reported to be displeased with the fact that Sri Lanka earned 76 per cent more from its tea in 2009 than Kenya did, despite selling only three-quarters as much tea. Europe has been identified as a target market for a Kenyan tea promotion.

It is reported that about 6,000 British staff at Starbucks' British outlets will qualify for ‘millions of pounds worth’ of free company shares in January. A report in the financial press says that the handout will replace an option scheme which was reportedly too complicated for workers to get involved in. The ‘restricted stock units’ will begin to be issued in January.

Ian Burgess of Climpsons says that he is organizing an event at Notting Hill Arts Club, London, in which the city’s great independent coffee shops are invited to compete in a ‘soundclash’, or what appears to be an evening of modern-type DJ-ing. Or, we’re told: ‘musically pretty much anything will happen, from cool electro to riotous rockin', from dubwise reggae to nu-folk, funky disco, twisted techno and all-time dancefloor anthems’. All a mystery to our editor, whose thirty-year musical ‘career’ was confined simply to heavy rock bass-playing… anyway, the event is on Sunday January 2^nd, and more details from ian@climpsonandsons.com.

Interesting cautionary tale for those involved in organic produce – a west country chocolatier has been sentenced to a 12-month supervision order for falsely claiming that his ‘organic’ products had Soil Association accreditation. This sentence was better than he might have expected – when convicted of similar offences in 2007, he was fined a total of £2,800.

Two roaster fires in the past fortnight – Kenco had one at the Banbury plant, and a fire crew from Bolton attended an incident at Garraways’ roastery. In response to our enquiry, sales manager Louis Rintoul reported: ‘nothing to worry about – just a couple of darker roasts than usual!’

13 December:

A couple of news reports today suggest that Costa is on the verge of quite considerable expansion. The chain has been the star of Whitbread's performance in recent years, and the new chief executive Andy Harrison is said to be preparing to use a scheduled trading update tomorrow to describe the global potential of the brand. It is suggested that Whitbread is prepared to put a great amount of investment behind its star performer, and a very surprising prediction is that the chain may have plans to double its existing British estate, which currently stands at just over a thousand. It is also reported that the international division of Costa, currently numbering about 500 stores, may triple in size.

The Allegra research house has launched its online guide to coffee shops in London, and reports a thousand visitors in more or less the first week of the venture. Now, you can sometimes hardly move for lists of coffee shops on the internet, and a lot of comments on such sites are largely useless for practical purposes… but it fair to say that this is a comprehensive piece of work, with a very large number of venues described and reviewed in reasonable detail. (You can tell that the entire thing was a homegrown project, because it is written in recognisable Allegra-language throughout!) The written version is due in December, but for the time being, it is very much worth while paying a visit to www.londoncoffeeguide.com

News from another research house alleges that coffee shops are missing out on impulse food sales. According to the findings from Harris International Marketing, which we think a little curious, ‘only 3 per cent of coffee shop customers buy a food or drink item on impulse - lower than any other retail channel looked at in our study’, and ‘one-in-two customers buy just one item in coffee shops; the majority just buy a hot drink’. The company goes on to say that although coffee-house staff are trained to ‘upsell’, their efforts just aren’t working, and questions whether the trade’s displays are just not good enough. We did find this worth questioning, but haven’t managed to achieve a response from the researchers yet.

We have a copy of The State of Sustainability Initiatives Review 2010: Sustainability and Transparency, which has been published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development. This gives a lot of information concerning sustainability initiatives and production (with tonnages up to 2009) for coffee, tea and cocoa. It would be silly to try and encapsulate the report here, because it’s 160-odd pages, but suffice to say that in 2009, sales of ‘sustainable’ coffee were 457,756 tonnes, or eight per cent of global exports. It says that four countries (Colombia, Brazil, Peru and Vietnam) account for 77 per cent of total sustainable coffee production and comments on future developments. The figure of growth for sustainably-produced tea is staggering, if it isn’t a misprint - over the past five years, up by 5,557 per cent. If you’d like a copy, email the editor – it’s a 7Mb file, so we’re not putting it on our website.

A school in Somerset which has established a direct link with a coffee growers’ co-op in Ecuador has raised £1,400 for supplies to the farmers’ local school through sales of its ‘own’ coffee. The coffee from the Podocarpus National Park, where the River Amazon meets the Andes, is roasted by DJ Miles of Porlock, and the British school sends £1 to the co-operative for every pack sold. Paul March of DJ Miles told us: “It was DR Wakefield who actually found the school. I was looking for a region that only produces a very small amount of coffee, maybe fifty bags a year, Wakefields found this right next to the country’s national park, and what appealed to me was that the money really does go to the school, not to the community in general – this is a school which didn’t have desks, and so the students in England are directly relating to the ones in Ecuador. The coffee is a nice smooth central American with a rich chocolatey character – we take it to a medium roast. It’s not a gourmet coffee, but a ‘nice’ one.”

AMT, the rail-station kiosk specialist, has said that it will absorb the upcoming VAT increase due in January, and freeze all hot drink prices ‘well into the new year’. A quite charming seasonal giveaway to customers this Friday will be – a chocolate gold coin.

World Coffees of West Sussex has got to the final of a county business competition – it is in the last stage of the Sussex Food and Drinks Awards. Jackie McGahan points out that they are ‘flying the flag for coffee’, being up against two major regional brewers, Dark Star and Hepworth. The announcement of the winner is, we believe, in January.

There’s something rather Heston Blumenthal-esque about the news that Cappuccinos coffee shop on the Wirral is expanding into ice-cream when it opens its fourth site in New Brighton. Development director Justin Dooley says the company will be developing its own flavours, such as “Mersey Mussel”.

Coffee Republic has launched an admirable if slightly bizarre new competition, ‘Who the Froth Is It’, to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust. Entrants must correctly identify the celebrity whose likeness is etched in coffee froth. Candidly, we don’t recognise any of them, but the chain says that the cause will receive 90p per entry.

In another admirable trade charity effort, Jacqueline Cooper of Cooper’s Coffee in Huddersfield has now raised £4,600 for the Breast Cancer Campaign with her trek through coffee and fruit plantations in the Cuban mountains – as she was aiming for £3,000, that’s well over her target.

And continuing the theme, Ruairi McGuinness of the Coolaboola coffee bar in Newcastle has ‘donated his face’ to the Movember appeal, in which supporters grow moustaches to raise awareness of prostate cancer. You can donate at http://uk.movember.com/donate/your-details/member_id/27107/

We think the café trade did slightly better than before in that most entertaining of all contests, the Loo of the Year awards. Notably, the Malt Barn coffee shop (which is part of the Glenfiddich distillery in Dufftown) scored an award for, if memory serves, the second time. We rather enjoyed a remark from Mike Carnell of the Old Stables Tea Room in Ross on Wye, who responded to our congratulations by saying: “we also picked up a silver award in the ‘eating out’ category of the True Taste of Wales awards last month, and a silver ‘highly commended’ for our cranberry sauce with mulled wine last month from the quality food awards, also a gold one-star from the Great taste awards for our mango cheesecake, chocolate orange marmalade and rum and raisin marmalade. And we got listed in the ‘good food’ guide published by Which?, which means we are now the 2nd top tearoom/cafe/coffee shop in the whole of Wales!” We can’t help wondering which one topped that lot to come first…

The latest development with pubs and coffee is a full coffee bar as part of a licensed venue – the SA Brain pub company of Wales has created a full Costa bar in one of its pubs in Cardiff. Both pub and coffee shop are sited in the same building, but trade separately. Brains’ retail director Philip Lay has remarked that the move illustrates how pubs are reacting to meet changes in customer demand.

5 December:

The Caffe Culture exhibition, the most important trade event in the British hot-beverage industry, has planned a notable new development. The 2011 event will feature an emphasis on tea, in association with the main trade association, the Tea Council.

The Caffe Culture show has always featured some tea, just as it also includes cold drinks, snacks, and various other items which form the stock-in-trade of the average café or coffee house. However, there has been a tendency for some in the beverage trade to think of the show as ‘a coffee event’, whereas it is really ‘a café event’.

The show did have an extreme coffee emphasis in 2010, when it hosted the World Barista Championships, the competition for speciality coffee-making. That dominated the show to such a degree that the organisers, Upper Street Events, have promised ever since to restore a balance of subjects for 2011, and they will now offer tea as ‘a new dimension’ to the show.

This new emphasis on tea may come as a surprise to some coffee enthusiasts, but will be seen by most in the catering and hospitality trades as a recognition that the two beverages both offer great potential.

There is certainly a need for high-quality tea to be promoted in the out-of-home situation. Bill Gorman, chairman of the Tea Council, has pointed out that while tea is the most popular hot drink in the UK, the vast majority of it is still drunk at home, and this is widely believed to be due to the poor reputation of tea served in cafes, hotels and restaurants – in too many cases, the customer is simply served a cheap teabag at an inflated price. By contrast, tea tasters and blenders say that tea is every bit as complex and specialist a subject as coffee, and maybe more so… and quite possibly a more profitable one when the best teas are presented properly.

Several suppliers say they welcome a new recognition of the importance of tea.

Nick Kilby of the Teapigs brand responded to the news by saying: “We’re delighted that an event like Caffe Culture is waking up to the opportunities to really make tea happen out-of-home. We’ve been saying for years that a range of quality teas is an excellent way to satisfy consumers who want more than just coffee, and is a way to attract non-coffee drinkers to venture inside a coffee bar!”

Marco Olmi of Drury Tea and Coffee is both a long-standing supplier of coffee (Drury created the first British espresso used in the Soho coffee bars of the 1950s) and a tea blender.

“This is a very valid move,” he said. “I drink coffee all day, but the potential of tea still excites me, and it should excite the coffee-house trade as well. It will be good to have more talk about how the catering trade can put it across more profitably, because there is so much more that can be done with tea.”

The Caffe Culture show organiser says that his new move reflects the catering trade’s need to handle all beverages professionally and profitably.

“The event is set to deliver several new features in line with the key issues affecting the industry today,” says event director Elliot Gard. “The new additions are designed to meet business owners’ need to survive in the toughest economic conditions in living memory. The UK Tea Council will deliver a programme of presentations and workshops to provide an insight into the potential growth available to businesses looking to attract a greater number of tea drinkers.”

Caffè Culture 2011 will run over two days (18 & 19 May) at the National Hall, Olympia, London. Information: www.caffeculture.co.uk or 0207 288 6191

26 November:

The Coffee Boys, the coffee-shop consultants from Ireland, will be presenting a ‘webinar’ on Tuesday 30^thNovember, on the important subject of attracting new customers. A webinar is a kind of internet-based seminar – it is sometimes ‘interactive’, but essentially it is a business session which requires no more than that the attendee sits in front of a computer at the right time.

Coffee Boy Johnny Richardson tells us: “We're going to go through the seven ways to get new customers for your business. These are the exact techniques that I used in all my food and beverage businesses, and the principles that we teach to our coaching and consulting clients. We are currently booked well into next year for consulting, so the only way you can get this information is by signing up for the free webinar.”

To do so, visit either of these links:

Tue, Nov 30, 2010 8:00 PM - 9:15 PM GMT

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/43604189

Nothing specialist is needed, other than a computer which plays sound.

A new initiative to follow the Sainsburys explosion is a deal between the Association of Independent Espresso Engineers and Bureau Veritas, a specialist inspection and certification organisation which works across many kinds of industry. It is generally alleged that a vast number of commercial espresso machine users in the catering trade simply do not comply with the appropriate legislation – the new agreement means that a catering manager can cut out all the administrative problems of getting an engineer and an inspector onsite at the same time, and pay for it on one invoice.

The next generation of coffee-house is not going to happen… that was the gist of one presentation at the recent Allegra summit in Rome. However, there was rather more to that deliberately-provocative statement than meets the eye, and you can find it on our online summary of the conference, which is at http://www.coffee-house.org.uk/CH2FullstoryAllegraRome.html . You can also find out there why champion barista Tim Wendelboe suggests that everyone can learn by watching other companies, and the current problems of serving the travelling consumer, as seen by Autogrill, SSP and Wild Bean. There’ll be a printed report in our next paper magazine, of course – that’s due mid-December.

The rock star Dave Stewart, once of the Eurythmics, is to write a musical based on Bar Italia, the café in Soho which is one of the UK’s most famous traditional Italian coffee bars. The musician is a Bar Italia customer, and is reported to be working on the project with Ian le Frenais, the co-writer of Porridge and The Likely Lads.

Cosy Tea, the brand launched by Beyond the Bean, has won two design awards in the Cream event, which is for creative work in the packaging and advertising field. Cosy won gold in the packaging category, and was also given the additional Chairman’s Award. Something we thought delightful was that the citation included a credit to the two ladies who knitted the patterns which appear on the packs!

The Bath Coffee Festival will be bigger in 2011 – the organisers have increased the marquee size by 800 sq.m. It is likely that there will be visitors from farther afield this year, following interest from coach companies who are interested in running trips to the event; the Festival will also be promoted by the First Great Western train company, and the Bath city centre manager is working on providing links for shoppers from the retail areas to the event site. An early look at the exhibitor list (six months ahead!) shows that Taylor’s of Harrogate are again main supporters, with coffee represented by Sea Island (the company which sources from unusual and exotic locations), Carwardine, Lavazza, Lazy Jose and several others. Tea is strongly involved, with Cup of Tea (that’s the Ronnefeldt brand, which is the one which created the gold Tea Master badge seen on staff in some of the world’s classist hotels), Teapigs, and Tregothnan (the only UK tea plantation). Taylerson’s Malmesbury Syrups, the flavour brand which has just produced its latest market survey on coffee flavourings, will be there again.

Twinings has come under attack from, of all people, the leader of the British National Party. Nick Griffin has accused the brand of ‘a mad insult’ to its British workforce, who are reportedly required to train the Polish workers who will effectively take their jobs when the brand moves to a new Eastern Europe home. The BNP has also demanded that a £10 million grant be withdrawn from Twinings, on the grounds that it is against EU rules to use such funding to move production to another country.

The Innocent brand has lost its claim that VAT charges should not apply to smoothies. The company had claimed that smoothies are ‘a liquefied fruit salad’ rather than a ‘beverage’, and that a bowl of the raw ingredients, before being liquefied, are not subject to VAT. The brand’s founder Richard Reed said it is ‘absurd’ that smoothies, generally seen as a healthy item, should be subject to VAT when junk food is not.

Espresso Adecco, the Scots coffee wholesaler, has become part of the Miko organisation.

Charles Dale and his team at Flatcap Coffee on Strutton Ground Market, London, have won the Market Trader of the Year award from Westminster council. The award is based on votes by customers, and the winner receives three months of free trading from the council, worth more than £2,000.

Today’s update for the barista championships is that, as we had rather hoped, the contract caterer business sector will be represented again – Baxter Storey have confirmed today that they will be putting a couple of entrants in. We also know that the first of the pre-event ‘jams’ and get-togethers for those who want to enter, or those who simply care to take part in a barista gathering and learn about the contest, are to be held at Union Hand Roasted in London – not entirely sure of the dates yet, but we believe there’s one in December and one in January.

15th November:

We are entering the barista championship season again, and this year’s event appears to be throwing up some interesting possibilities. We are always interested in whether chains and big names in either coffee or general catering will go in for it, and this year we already know that Caffe Ritazza proposes to enter four of its baristas, the Esquires chain intends to be represented, although its own in-house contest will not have been completed until the new year, and we have been told to expect entries from the Cafe2U mobile franchise. Individually, we know that one of the most regular former contestants, Ed Buston of Clifton Coffee in Bristol, intends to return to the competition after a gap of a couple of years, to see if he can improve on his best placing of third in the country (he has of course won our very favourite contest, the Coffee in Good Spirits one, a couple of times!) However, a notable non-entrant will be Costa – we put the question face-to-face to their MD, John Derkach, who told us that he prefers to concentrate on his internal company competition, which itself is a quite massive affair. (“Anyway,” he added with his usual blunt honesty and good humour, “not winning it might be too much to bear..!”) We really do hope for a considerable entry from provincial street-level this year. Entries are open through December; regional events are late January to February, and the final is mid-March at the IFE show.

A report from Shanghai says that Starbucks is developing its own coffee farm in south-western China; the report says Starbucks will hire coffee growers in the province of Yunnan to plant Arabica seeds in the first quarter of next year for harvest by 2014. Yunnan has borders with Burma, Vietnam and Laos, and it is the home of the very specialist pu-erh tea. Starbucks is reported to have said that it hopes to produce a coffee good enough to work as a single-origin. The Yunnan provincial government plans to increase the amount of coffee-growing land almost four-fold, to 100,000 hectares.

Starbucks, says another report in the middle-eastern press, can be expected to enter the single-serve coffee market - it will sell single-cup coffee makers and coffee pods as an extension of its Via instant range, but we do not know when this is planned to begin.

Multinationals such as Starbucks, Kraft and Nestlé do more for coffee farmers than the Fairtrade Foundation, according to a new report from the Institute of Economic Affairs. The body says that that Fairtrade’s methods represent the whims of western consumers more than the realities of farmers’ needs. The report, Fair Trade Without the Froth, repeats accusations heard before, such as that any benefits of Fairtrade come at too great a cost, and benefits are experienced by middle-income farmers rather than the poorest. However, the IEA take a slightly more sympathetic line than most reports, acknowledging that Fairtrade ‘does bring certain benefits’, and that ‘it is likely to do little harm’. The report says that Fairtrade is not a long-term development strategy, that the model is not appropriate for all producers and is also unable to address structural problems within trading systems. The IEA suggests: ‘Fairtrade’s proponents need to show some humility and accept that it is a niche market designed to benefit some producers; it does achieve that limited objective’.

Meanwhile the Fairtrade Foundation has picked 'show off your label' as its theme for the 2011 Fortnight, which starts at the end of February. The idea is to ‘encourage Fairtrade-loyal shoppers to show off their loyalty to Fairtrade products and extend support for Fairtrade beyond core supporters’, says the director of marketing.

There is a lot of activity in pub-related coffee. The Scottish and Newcastle chain, which was challenged by its chairman on the opportunities for coffee in pubs (we reported it on our front page in June) has now produced the Grounds for Success strategy, which involves the Bazar coffee brand, which is owned by parent company Heineken, and which is probably going to be the most significant launch of Utz-certified coffee into the UK pub market. The machines will be Schaerer and CMA, and S&N’s food development man, Ben Bartlett, has put together what really is an extremely comprehensive 21-page guide for pub managers on how to work with coffee. (We’re not entirely sure if we’re supposed to share it with you – but we’ve got it on PDF!)

Also in pubs, the operator Barracuda is to promote Costa coffee across its entire estate of 217 managed pubs. This will also involve 9am opening, and the launch of a new breakfast menu. The JD Wetherspoon pub chain, which managed to hit half a million coffees a week in energetic promotion of early-morning breakfast trade, has now decided to open later for breakfast at around 70 per cent of its sites. About 40 per cent of its estate will open at 7am, 30 per cent at going to 8am, and 30 per cent at 9am.

We have been awaiting news of new chocolate for some weeks, knowing that we can expect something from Java Republic in Dublin… but what we didn’t expect was a chocolate project from Peter James Gourmet Coffee of Ross-on-Wye. Details are sketchy, but it seems that chocolatier Barry Collenso, who has made cakes for the royal family and was also involved in developing the Thorntons range, has helped create a drinking chocolate to be available through the winter. No product details yet.

We enjoyed an American report of the latest ‘biggest cup of coffee’ to be entered as a Guinness world record. It was 2,010 gallons, made in an eight-foot tall cup, and then the organisers added 3,500lb of ice to make the world’s biggest iced coffee as well. For a ‘photo-opportunity’, they had a couple of girls climb into the cup. One said: “hopping into a frigid cup of iced coffee was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." Not one we would wait a lifetime for…

Caffe Society of Yorkshire has divided itself by creating a new section called The Brew Group. This will act as a trade-only arm, handling Brasilia, Bunn, Solis and the new HLF range of bean-to-cup machines.

The Italian Beverage Company is the latest to move for vegetarian status – its entire Simply range, which covers syrups, sauces, hot chocolate, smoothies, frappes and milkshakes, now has the vegetarian Society’s approval mark.

It has been reported in the food press that Twinings has become involved in a row over EU grants. The company will close its North Shields operation next year, and cut its workforce in Andover by half, as it opens up a new site in Poland. The financial press have reported that there may now be a review of grants worth €12m (£10.4m) from a development fund that aims to promote new investment. The fund’s rules dictate that its cash should not be spent on relocating facilities between EU member states.

Following the recent explosion of an espresso machine in a public café, Abbeychart has introduced a hand-operated pressure pump and gauge, saying that ‘it is sensible to ensure that during routine service and maintenance all pressure relief and control devices fitted to coffee machine pressure vessels are operating within in their correct tolerances’. Technical details are available from the company’s Peter Parry-Williams (tel 01367 711900).

Andrew Tucker, formerly of the Jika Jika coffee shop in Bath, has launched a new coffee brand from his company The Perfect Palate. The new Raw brand is produced in conjunction with a local wine business – the new espresso coffee is a blend of Ethiopian Harrar (natural processed) and Sidamo, described as ‘a full-bodied chocolatey espresso with a hint of citrus and blackcurrant’. Contact: 07970 015462

The Urban Coffee Co of Birmingham tells us that it thinks it has beaten everyone else to the idea of an iPhone ‘app’ that allows customers to order coffee, then come in to the store and pick it up, reducing queues. “We are pretty sure we are the first in the UK to do this, beating all the major high street chains,” they tell us. You can see it at http://www.urbancoffee.co.uk/download-phone-app/ Meanwhile barista trainer Youri Vlag, now working under the name of Limini Coffee, has created a ‘loyalty app’ for the iPhone. “You simply scan the barcode and it registers as a coffee, then you get a free drink once you have a certain number of drinks, exactly like a normal loyalty card only on your iphone,” he tells us.

Coffee Nation has been shortlisted for a Technology and Innovation prize at the 2010 Growing Business Awards, for the development of its Express concession, which offers a selection of fresh gourmet coffees that are fully customisable through size, strength of coffee and addition of flavoured syrups, and can be paid for by cash or card.

Bewley’s, the giant Dublin tea and coffee business, has reported profit after tax of €1.6 million on a turnover of €72 million for its annual figures to December 2009. The notable aspect of this is that profit was slightly up (from 1.5m euros) on a turnover which was down by 13 per cent on the previous year. The company’s famous Grafton Street store did particularly well, even on a reduced footfall – this, MD Jim Corbett tells us, is due to a renewed focus on the day-time trade, which led to growth of coffee and tea sales with a very positive impact on margin. He also told us that he had put more focus on baristas training and development, with active participation in competitions to benchmark them, and notably, all baristas now roast the coffee. Grafton Street remains a roaster-retailer site, and those coffees are sold on the premises, in-cup and by the pack.

Yorkshire Tea is supporting children's hospitals with its third annual Wallace & Gromit campaign. Over a million themed packs will go out inviting consumers to hold their own charity tea parties on 21 December. Meanwhile, it turns out that Clipper Tea’s chance to work with Disney on the Alice in Wonderland's world premiere in London came too late for the company to do on-pack promotion, but Clipper reports that it still managed to do well out of the tie-up.

Pret a Manger is to test KeepCup, the product promoted as ‘the world’s first barista-standard reusable cup’. The trial will take place between 22 November – 25 December and coffees purchased in the KeepCup will cost £6.20. Pret will be then offer offer 10p off every coffee for which a customer presents their own KeepCup.

29th October:

It’s not a coincidence to be celebrated, but at exactly the same time as the Coffee Council brings out its discussion document One More Scalded Customer is One Too Many, the importance of the subject has been confirmed by yet another case… and, unfortunately, yet another toddler was the victim. This time it’s on the east coast of Scotland, and if the report in the local paper is accurate (they are of course not interested in quite the same details as the catering trade is) , then the incident occurred when a customer was allowed to leave the counter, backwards, carrying a cup and saucer in one hand and a teapot balanced on a saucer in the other. A three-year-old boy received the contents of the teapot in his face. If this account is correct, then a number of basic safety precautions appear to have been missed, which confirms, yet again, just why this matter needs to be addressed by the trade.

The full Coffee Council document is available at http://www.coffee-house.org.uk/CH8CoffeeCouncilScald.pdf

The 2011 Lavazza calendar has been launched, and this time the star photographer is Mark Seliger, an American who has photographed a vast number of celebrities and musicians. This year’s theme is Falling in Love in Italy. You can see it here: http://www.2011.lavazza.com/

Meanwhile, the latest Lavazza Espression café opens in December, in Harrods. (We have also discovered a quite remarkable new product at Lavazza – but you’ll have to wait for our next printed magazine!)

While we’re on a Lavazza theme, we believe they have also been added to the speakers for the Allegra symposium in Rome next week; so has former world barista champ Tim Wendelboe, who tells us that he will probably comment on how big companies should look to the barista movement for innovation ideas! (You can see who’s up for an Allegra award at www.europeancoffeesymposium.com/European-Coffee-Shop-Awards---Nominees.aspx )

Starbucks’ store interiors are to be decorated with a new kind of covering called ‘WoJo’ , which in marketing-speak is described as ‘a revolutionary upcycled fabric’. From what we can gather, this was created by British and New Zealand designers and weavers, blending old coffee sacks with New Zealand strong wool. It was first shown in UK Wool Week, which has just passed, and we are told that The Campaign for Wool, in which HRH the Prince of Wales is involved, has recognised Starbucks and the fabric designer with an award for Sustainable Product Innovation. Uncharacteristically, Starbucks hasn’t said a word about it.

The Indulgence coffee lounge in Uttoxeter has won Most Promising New Start-up Business at the Burton Mail Business Awards, and also took runner-up in the Business Performance section of the same awards.

The public is being asked to nominate their favourite Scottish tearoom/cafe, as part of Scotland's Year of Food and Drink, 2011. The nominated venues will form part of VisitScotland's Spring/Summer promotions and will be publicised to visitors across the UK. It is said that sixty per cent of tourists visit a café, coffee-house or tearoom when on holiday in the country, while £1 in every £5 spent by Scotland's visitors is on food and drink. Meanwhile, in Cambridge, the owner of the By Jove! tea room in Burwell is to stage a ‘protest’ outside her own premises, and raise a petition to send to the Visit Britain organisation, aimed at reinstating the traditional habit of sitting down at 4pm, come what may, for a cup of tea.

Great improvements have been made in the salt content of coffee-shop foods, according to the CASH organisation (Consensus Action on Salt and Health). The average salt content of muffins and pastries has been reduced by a quarter. However, when the group surveyed items from six high-street business, all the big names, it concluded that a hot drink and a piece of cake can still contain nearly as much salt as five packets of crisps, and amount to more than a third of the maximum recommended daily salt intake. The organisation criticises coffee shops for a lack of nutritional information on-pack and in-store, which they say makes it difficult for consumers to choose healthier options.

Soho Coffee of Cheltenham has found a new outlet for its branded cafes – it is going to open inside a Butlins holiday centre at Minehead. Soho now has 21 sites, nine company-run and a dozen franchised, including a couple in Spanish airports. It opens inside Next in Manchester during the first week of November.

Ethical Addictions of Gloucester, which has been working with coffee farmers in Africa for six years, has its first shipment of coffee bought direct from farmers in Brazil. The company already supplies both catering and home-user customers, and says it continues to look for trade customers who ‘want to partner with us to aid smaller producers and have a connection to the real story behind every cup their customers drink’. Details: www.eacoffee.co.uk

Another attempt is being made to launch a chain of tea-shops; the latest is by Matt Fletcher of SpecialiTea, who already sells more than 100 varieties of loose-leaf tea through his online business, and has now opened his first tea bar in Exeter. The intention is for this to be the first of a chain in the south-west and then the rest of the UK.

A nice little curiosity occurred in Birmingham recently – a Jamaican senator, Washington Grant, who is the top man of the Mavis Bank Coffee Factory, dropped in for a tour of the Fracino espresso machine factory. It is of course strange to think of Jamaica Blue Mountain in espresso surroundings, but we see that Senator Grant does produce an espresso roast; his green coffee comes into the UK through Blue Mountain Coffee (Europe) but his roasted product reaches here by a different route under the Jablum brand… and, even more unexpectedly, there turns out to be an instant version of JBM under that brand. Senator Grant was here after visiting the SIAL food and drink show in Paris, because the Jamaican Olympic team will be staying in Birmingham… but we do hear he has plans for more coffee business in the midlands.

USA Today tells us that ‘the Starbucks of the future arrives today’ - the prototype for the next generation of stores, in Seattle. (What, another ‘next generation’?!) The American paper points out that 70 per cent of Starbucks’ business in America is done before 2pm, and that the brand has missed the evening business. It is now aiming at the food-and-wine trade. There’s a video here:

http://www.usatoday.com/video/index.htm#/Starbucks+of+the+future/637805269001

One item which will not be featured, says USA Today, is a Starbucks-brand ice-cream – apparently the chain tried it, and it flopped.

The American press has also reported that Starbucks has told its baristas to slow down – the Wall St Journal, no less, claims to have seen an internal report saying that ‘amid customer complaints that the Seattle-based coffee chain has reduced the fine art of coffee making to a mechanized process with all the romance of an assembly line, Starbucks baristas are being told to stop making multiple drinks at the same time’. The report says that baristas are also to steam milk for each drink individually, not for several, and to rinse milk pitchers after each use. It is reported that baristas have complained the rules ‘don’t make sense’.

Tomorrow is launch day for the new Cadbury’s Cocoa Houses – the first one opens at the Bluewater shopping area. Founder David Morris used to be an operations director for Starbucks. By coincidence, another Morris, Paul, has just won a ‘best family-friendly venue’ award for the Chocolate Café in Ramsbottom, Lancs.

Meanwhile, the Greene King pub group in Britain has defended the traditional pub with a series of statistics, which include the curious finding that ‘only 7 per cent wanted coffee and a range of tea in a proper pub’.

Halton Council, which is in the Runcorn/Widnes area, has taken a bold move with regard to the fraught issue of pavement tables and seating. The council has cut its licence fee by half, in an effort to encourage the ‘café culture’ theme. The licence requires that tables and chairs ‘are beneficial for customers’ and do not pose an obstacle for pedestrians on the street.

The charity Computer Aid, which refurbishes computers for use in less-developed countries, has completed its first solar-powered cyber café. It was built inside a shipping container, for use in Zambia.

Starbucks to take up ‘ping marketing’, by which customers who choose to do so can receive a text message they pass every Starbucks. The 02 system claims to have signed up a million customers to receive message from various retailers; in theory, Starbucks could text a user with a discount offer when the consumer passes through what is called a ‘geo-fence’.

We are told that the next Allegra international seminar event, in Rome at the beginning of November, is almost full – the awards dinner is over-subscribed, the supply and innovation day and coffee shop tour are booked, and the symposium has a dozen or so places left. There is a change to the programme, with Sara Carter, marketing director now speaking for Nero – we are told ‘to expect something very different’.

We have another contender for highest coffee-house in the land - Portsmouth’s Spinnaker Tower is launching the Cafe in the Clouds coffee shop, 105 metres above street level.

The coffee-house trade did not entirely distinguish itself with the number of entries in last year’s Restaurant and Bar Design Awards, but we are invited again to nominate ‘the coolest cafes that have opened in the past 10 months’. If anyone cares to offer opinions, we’ll send in a batch of entries!

This year’s winning coffees and teas in the Great Taste Awards will be announced this morning. Two remarkably different coffees have taken top spots – the only three-star gold prizes in the filter coffee sector have gone to a Organic Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Harfusa submitted by Glenfinlas, of Edinburgh, and to a blend based on Indian Monsooned Malabar, by Ponair of Limerick. The top espresso was a ‘lively coffee with a hint of spices and orange chocolate’ from Bewley’s. A story on the one-star, two-star and three-star winners can be found on our newsfeed site, http://boughtonscoffeehouse.wordpress.com/ and a full report on the judging of this year’s awards will be in our next printed magazine, early August.

AMT, the coffee company which made its name with railway station kiosks, has now put contactless payment systems into all its sites after a trial period in which a thousand customers tested the system with relatively low-value purchases. The company now uses the first handheld terminal of its kind in Europe, and says that it is satisfied that the costs saved on manually handling small transactions now outweighs the fees charged by Barclaycard. In a contactless transaction,the money is automatically deducted from the customer’s debit or credit card. John Hassall, chief operating offer at AMT, says that although all banks are issuing cards with the contactless chip over the next 18 months, most customers still don’t know their card has it, so AMT has trained its baristas to demonstrate and explain the system.

A celebrity website reports the latest story to raise worries about unguarded ‘tweeting’ – in New York, the actress ‘tweeted’ a message complaining about the attitude of a barista at a branch of Starbucks. She has now received a message back from suggesting the barista may have been fired as a result… and is apparently now extremely upset about it.

Tetley is launching a new tea designed to work well with soya milk, for consumers who have non-dairy dietary needs. The Tetley for Soya blend has been devised, the company says, “because the proteins in soya work differently from the proteins in cows’ milk, and can make normal everyday tea taste quite different.”

Whitbread says it is spending £7 million on a major sustainability programme to improve the environmental performance of its hotels, restaurants and coffee shops and achieve a 26 per cent reduction in energy consumption and a 20 per cent reduction in water use by 2020. After development work with Astoria, Costa’s new espresso machine is said to be thirty per cent more energy-efficient than the chain’s previous one; a variation introduced for its contract catering clients will apparently be even more so. Costa has also reported its discovery that Marco water boilers are 40 per cent more efficient than its current ones.

The Gaggia brand will probably open its new English base, under the control of Watermark of Ireland, in Beaconsfield at the beginning of August. This is the latest move in the rescue work which was put in hand after the former British importing operation closed, leaving Gaggia users with the worry of having no service or spares back-up.

Starbucks is reported to have filed figures showing a loss of £9.9 million for the 12 months to September 2009, up from £1.9 million a year earlier. A Starbucks spokesman said: “These figures from last year reflect an undeniably tough period at the height of the recession and the substantial investment we made to alter the course of the business at that time. That’s paying off with a record number of customers and a return to solid sales growth in the last year. We did a lot to offer better value, like offering free Wi-Fi, moving to Fairtrade espresso, redesigning stores, introducing a new food range and drinks like the new Flat White. We looked at every aspect of the business and we have a clear path to profitability in the UK.”

A Norwich chocolate company opens its second Cocoa Café in the city today. Caley's is opening a branch in White Lion Street as the beginning of ‘a huge company expansion’ which could involve five more cafes opening in historic towns and cities across the country over the next 12 months. (Caley's chocolate has actually not been made in the city since the 1960s, but the current owners maintain a loyalty to the city).

Barista Youri Vlag, who has already set up courses and a website on the ‘how to start a coffee shop’ theme, is to launch a forum on the subject - http://howtostartacoffeeshop.freeforums.org

The Advertising Standards Authority will this morning rule for Costa, and against Starbucks, in the ‘seven out of ten people prefer…’ case. Starbucks had alleged that Costa’s advertising headlines ‘Starbucks Drinkers Prefer Costa’ and “7 Out of 10 Coffee Lovers Prefer Costa” were misleading and that the research that led to Costa’s claims was flawed. Starbucks had complained, among other things, that the claims implied a preference for all Costa products over those of their competitors, and that the survey size was not large enough to give a reliable result.

The ASA ruling says that Costa’s advertising contained qualifying text that made the claims clear. With regard to the size and methodology of the surveys, Costa provided full details of a test survey consisting of 334 participants, 174 of whom identified themselves as ‘coffee lovers’, and of 166 head-to-head taste tests carried out between Costa products and Starbucks products. Starbucks had claimed that the sample size was not sufficiently large to give a reliable result, but the ASA ruling is that ‘the results were statistically significant and the sample size was adequate’.

Curiously, Costa has made no significant comment on the ruling; by contrast, and rather more curiously, Starbucks departed from its usual bland PR-speak for once to give a fairly emotional response – the head of communications told Coffee House that : “It’s puzzling that the ASA has changed its mind since its initial findings in our favour – especially as OFCOM ruled the campaign was misleading as long ago as September. However, our coffee is Fairtrade, and the fact we have a record number of customers says more about it than a paid-for survey based on just 57 people.”

Further to our recent report concerning the launch of Sara Lee’s coffee capsule, manufactured to be compatible with the Nespresso system, Nestle has now filed a lawsuit against the Sara Lee Corporation for patent infringement. The Nespresso system is protected by more than 1,700 patents, and Nescafe has said that it is defending its intellectual property rights. Sara Lee has responded that its product complies with all legal and regulatory requirements, and that it is confident about the outcome of the case. The Sara Lee capsule was launched in France in April and has sold about 12 million pieces. Meanwhile, the European press observes that another product compatible with Nespresso, and founded by a former senior member of the Nespresso team, continues to sell its lower-priced capsules without interference from the giant.

Starbucks has decided to turn to free wi-fi in all its American stores from July – the American press say that the chain has been forced to respond to offers of free wi-fi by competitors such as McDonalds. Starbucks in the UK tell us they have no plans to change their current system, which is free only to registered cardholders, O2 iPhone users, and customers from iPass, Boingo and other BT Openzone roaming partners. The British SpeedyFi wi-fi organisation, who we were interviewing for a licensed-trade publication when the news came through, said: “£50 says that Starbucks revert back to a voucher/members system pretty quick - once people go in and sit around for five hours without buying more than one cup of coffee they will soon change their mind… free and unlimited access is a bad idea.”

The barista Neil le Bihan has, we hear, completed his Land’s End to John o’Groats cycle ride in aid of Coffee Kids - 1077 miles in 15 days. He says: “I am hopeful of clearing the £1000 target in the next couple of weeks. Please see my page www.justgiving.com/Neil-Le_Bihan.” (On July 3, Neil will become the latest to try some open-air coffee roasting, which he will be demonstrating on his Lewisham market stall).

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).

First Choice Coffee and Gala Coffee are to be brought together under the name United Coffee UK, run by a single management team to be led by Elaine Higginson. This ties in with the name of the parent group, United Coffee, which was formerly Drie Mollen. The group has said that it proposes to increase its size by ‘organic growth and targeted acquisition’, in six European countries – one of those is the UK.

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 London. It is reported that the chain is to be managed by David Morris, a former director of food, beverages and restaurants with Harrod’s, and retail entrepreneur Marilyn Newman acting as chair.

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 10.30am, to Wednesday 14^TH at 3.30 pm, at the Geography Dept of Sheffield University, volunteers are invited to taste two coffees and write down their experiences. There is an important link between the two coffees that will not be explained (yet) but which will further both areas of research. The invitation and details can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=111041672251350&ref=mf

We expect there to be an unexpected addition to the next Allegra coffee summit, to be held at Vinopolis in London on 21^st-22^nd April. The research house has completed some work for Starbucks, which includes reported figures of coffee-shop footfall which, to be honest, we found surprising enough to have questioned. We shall report briefly on the findings in the next few days on our newsfeed (details of where to subscribe are below) , and there will also be a major feature on the subject in our next printed issue – but meanwhile, for those who wish to attend the event, details are at

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 Dublin yesterday. We are toying with the idea of a charity sweep on it.

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 Britain are to re-open as part of a new chain. The new Love Coffee brand is being launched by a very active former BB’s franchisee, Shashi Patel of DJ & C Foods, who operated a dozen franchises for many years. He says that he has already acquired some sites from the administrators, and in all expects to have 25 coffee-houses open by the end of the year.

Glenfinlas of Edinburgh, already a distributor of Green Mountain coffee, is now the UK distributors for the George Howell coffee company based in Boston. We confess to not knowing a lot about them, but certainly the company makes a great thing of the high scores awarded to them by Ken Davids, the noted American coffee taster. Glenfinlas say the coffees will be entered for this year’s Great Taste Awards and should be available for trade sales in the summer.

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 Bradford for forty years. One of his sons has said the secret of the coffee-house is in keeping a ‘retro frothy coffee shop’ style.

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 Japan – they’re going to be served at the British embassy to celebrate the Queen’s birthday. This led us to word of a fascinating development in tea promotion, which will probably be unique in western civilisation. Tregothnan, the stately home and estate which has become the base for the first commercially-grown tea in the UK, has taken over the operation of a well-known riverside tea-room on its land. We’ve known for some time that the estate had ambitions to create a ‘centre for tea’, which could be both a tourist site and an educational resource, and garden manager Jonathan Jones has now confirmed to us that the plan is to have tea growing on a south-facing bank of the estate, right next to the tea room. As a result, he told us, Tregothnan may develop a tea centre in which they can show tea ‘from bush to cup’.

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 North Wales - a Snowdonia community is developing a village shop into a deli and coffee house. The village has the lovely coffee-related name of Llanfrothen.

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:

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2010/03/26/heatswell-grows-a-sleeve-on-your-coffee-cup/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ohgizmo+%28OhGizmo%21%29

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!

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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 Peru, where forty thousand people in the coffee-growing areas have been badly hit by floods and landslides. Emergency aid is desperately required, but the disaster has not been widely publicised in the news. “This region of Peru has supplied coffee to Cafedirect for more than ten years,” Peros tells us. “We were lucky enough to visit the region in the summer of 2008 with Cafedirect and saw then how lives had been rebuilt following a devastating mud slide. It is difficult to measure exactly how many people have been directly and indirectly affected by the recent disaster. It has been quoted in local news that up to 10,000 people have lost their homes.” Peros has launched its appeal with a five-figure donation, and has set up the Peros Cusco Emergency Appeal (http://www.justgiving.com/PerosCuscoAppeal) to receive donations directly.

(A report elsewhere this month noted that Starbucks has slowed coffee buying in Costa Rica and Guatemala, but had increased its purchasing from Peru).

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 UK. The contributions are to be collected at a project called UK Coffee Week, in September, and the target in the first year, is to raise more than £1m to provide safe drinking water for up to 100,000 growers who do not currently have access to it.

Allegra also has ambitions for a London Coffee Festival in 2011. Meanwhile, the Bath Coffee Festival retains its place as the first such British consumer event, and we now hear that Taylors of Harrogate has become a major sponsor for the event this May. Other names who have cropped up in support include Illy, Ginsters, Espresso Service, Lavazza, Metropolitan, Suki, Taylerson’s, Gold Top Milk, and Martin Carwardine.

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 Mexico and bought through a UK-based solidarity group called Kiptik (the name means "strength") which works directly with the Zapatista communities of Chiapas. “The Zapatistas are a group of autonomous indigenous people who have reclaimed 50,000 hectares of land in eastern Chiapas, which is farmed by around 200,000 people from 1,000 villages. Hundreds of new Zapatista communities have been set up on these lands, providing a means of survival for families that would otherwise be forced to become slum-dwelling city labourers,” we’re told. “This coffee is quite unique in that it comes to market directly from a marginalised community who are directly under threat from the government, the army and state sponsored paramilitaries. The coffee provides a means by which some of the poorest and most oppressed people within the global community can survive financially.”

The highest-level café job in Wales is on offer – the Snowdon Mountain Railway Company is looking for a manager for Hafod Eryri, the rebuilt café on the summit. (It replaced a building which Prince Charles called ‘the highest slum in the land’). The daily commute takes an hour, and involves a 3,560ft railway climb. At peak periods, there are a thousand customers a day.

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 24^th, 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 Yorkshire tea is better than sex – a reader responded online: ‘I'm sure it shows that Yorkshire sex is better than tea’!

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 Britain. You can find the whole thing in PDF form on the Coffee House website.

Elsewhere, the latest of Starbucks’ redesigned stores is going to be at 19 Old Brompton Road in South Kensington. The property press reckons it is to be paying around £100,000 a year for the store. Starbucks has also signed up a site near Brixton tube station, reportedly at about £110,000.

When Starbucks top man Howard Schultz was in London recently, he met some press (not us, although we did apply!) and we see that one reporter did think to challenge him on the company’s use of size terminology – ‘tall’, ‘grande’, and so on. He replied: “There were times when we felt we wanted our own language - the words ‘small' and ‘large' felt, at the time, pedestrian. It seems to have worked. “At times people think we are a little too arrogant - but we didn't want to take ourselves too seriously.”

Starbucks have just launched the first official Starbucks App for iPhone and iPod touch customers in the UK.

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.

28^th 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.

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 29^th 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 -

http://www.litmanlive.co.uk/2010/01/brilliant-mcdonalds-ad-your-free-coffee-is-ready/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+co%2FfMFN+%28LitmanLive%29

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 10^th 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.”

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 18^th 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,