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Yet another curious Costa story has cropped up in the marketing and advertising media. It has been widely reported that the brand is to launch an ‘At Home’ product range that will take the name into supermarkets and homes for the first time. The range, it is reported, will be part of Costa's new Enterprise Unit, whose chief is the coffee-house division’s former marketing director Jim Slater, and one report says that Costa has trademarked the At Home name. The curious aspect of the story is that Costa’s owner Whitbread has issued a short statement to Coffee House, saying: “We do not comment on rumour and speculation in the marketplace.”

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A Norwich barista has inadvertently become a TV star and won a lot of support for taking a stand against customers who order from him while speaking on their mobile phones - Darren Groom of Little Red Roaster put up a sign reading: “we are unable to serve you coffee if you are on the phone” and to his surprise, it attracted coverage from regional and national press and television.  Others in the coffee trade have been supportive, saying that customer service etiquette does demand two-way communication.

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An interesting display of firm action has come from Adrian Jones, who runs the Street cafes in south London.  On reading of the possible closure of the local Healthy Ageing Cafés, which operate to support people with dementia and their carers, he has promised to employ all that café’s staff during the month of April, so that they can continue doing their work, and has set up a fund to support their continuing work. “I have faith in those of us who still want the best for our old ones, and for these people with dementia who have been abandoned, and I trust that a permanent solution will be found soon,” he told us. The fundraising campaign is called "re:Generation", and a local pub has already volunteered to get involved.

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We are excited to report that Peter Andre is likely to expand his New York Coffee Club cafes, with the second one likely to be in Brighton – it is reported that plans have been submitted to the council for signs to be erected near the city’s clock tower in North Street. The singer and reality TV star used to live in Hove

3rd April

The Wall St Journal has today appeared to confirm the rumoured purchase of Solo Cups by Dart – the deal, it is said, is worth about $315 million along with $700 million in debt.  Dart has made its name with the foam cup which was traditionally widely used in the States; Solo is a leader in paper takeaway cups. 

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The managing director of Costa Coffee, John Derkach, is to leave at the beginning of August – he will join the Tragus restaurant group, which holds the brands Café Rouge, Bella Italia and Strada..  He has spent 17 years with Whitbread. The new managing director will be Christopher Rogers, currently group finance director.

John Derkach commented to us a couple of years back that he expected to be the last Costa MD not to have begun his career as a barista.  We have asked the obvious question!

*

We are intrigued to see not one, but two curious items from Sea Island Coffee, the importer of rare and exclusive beans.  First, they are to import the coffee grown by Rohan Marley, son of the late reggae music star Bob Marley, on the family estate in Jamaica (you can see our story on it at the Caffe Culture Portal, here:

Second, Sea Island appears to have discovered a new slant on the kopi luwak concept – bat coffee. This (we are assured, in information which came well before April 1^st), involves a bat species found in the forests surrounding the Coffea Diversa coffee garden in Costa Rica. The bats feed on the coffee cherries but, unlike the civet cats, the bats are too small to swallow the coffee cherries… they merely lick them.

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The line-up for the finals of the UK Barista Championship can now be found on our website:

http://www.coffee-house.org.uk/CH2UKBC2012.html

Meanwhile, the host of this year’s final, Allegra, reminds us that its charity walk along the Thames in aid of water for coffee-producing countries will be on April 15.

5th March

29th November:

Mr Ragne Leiderby

27th October

20th October

4th October:

The acquisition of Coffee#1 by Brains is considered a significant step in the growing interest of pubs in business other than alcohol.  The leader in this sector is certainly JD Wetherspoon, with its regular promotions on coffee, which it used to open up a massive early morning breakfast trade.  Other pub chains have followed with varying degrees of enthusiasm and commitment.

Some Brains pubs sell Costa coffee - it is not yet known whether that will continue.

30th September

26 September

19 September:

It seems that we can expect a new wave of activity over the general question of kopi luwak coffee.  Although this coffee has for a long time been regarded as a novelty, it was for many years considered to be a relatively harmless one – however, there is now increasing disquiet about what is effectively factory-farming, or battery-farming, of civet cats that are allegedly force-fed coffee beans to produce the high-priced coffee.  We have now spoken to various people about this, including two who tell us they have actually seen the practice.  See our September issue

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The latest in a series of café-related bike rides is to be the inaugural Northern Coffee Tour set for September 17^th.  The idea is to ride from Leeds to Liverpool, taking in a selection of the best coffee shops along the way, including Laynes Espresso, Opposite, Coffee Fix, North Tea Power, and finally a party at Bold Street Coffee.  (We can’t help thinking there’s a great big coffee-free stretch across the Pennines in the middle of that lot!)    Sam Tawil of Bold St Coffee tells us: “This ride is the first of many we hope.  We will start in Leeds at Laynes Espresso for breakfast, the rest of the route is to be confirmed, but will be about 90 miles in total.”

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The general press has, as always, turned to coffee for its silly-season stories during the traditionally light news month of August.  The Telegraph has suggested that pistachio nuts could provide a caffeine-free alternative to coffee, and turned for support to Masteroast and to the noted barista Danielle Hadley – both were politely unenthusiastic.  Meanwhile, others in the daily press have reported that tea-drinkers are ‘rising in revolt’ against a reformulation of Twinings Earl Grey blend.  If they are, they aren’t being that enthusiastic about it – the new blend appeared a clear five months ago.

The most bizarre silly season story comes from the kitchen equipment company VillaWare, which has reported being ‘shocked’ that ‘the amount the average person is forking out each year on high street coffee is as much as your average yearly electricity bill or annual gym membership.’  We have of course immediately questioned their finding that: ‘we spend £430 million a week on 511 million cups of coffee’, pointing out that this would give an annual out-of-home coffee market of some twenty billion pounds.  Jeffrey Young of Allegra, who always enthusiastically reports the increasing sales of the coffee shop sector, has confirmed to us that: ‘this would mean that coffee makes up half of the entire UK eating-out market, including food at all restaurants, pub restaurants, and contract catering!’

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Although we still have no information at all on any trade support for the proposed Rainforest Alliance awareness week, due in late September, the Miko company has achieved a nice piece of one-upmanship in rainforest conservation matters. It now has an orchid named after its Puro blend – this is a new plant, only recently discovered in the Ecuador rainforest reserve which Miko has purchased for protection. Miko is currently filming a documentary on its work with coffee farmers in Brazil and Peru, and we expect the result to be ready in early 2012

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Marco Beverage Systems, the maker of water boilers and indeed the notable Uber brewer, has doubled the size of its showroom and training facilities in Strixton, Northamptonshire, and has created a workshop and technical training facility for distributors’ engineers.

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Living Ventures, the pub and café chain, will probably open its new casual dining coffee and tea house plus deli format, possibly to be called Marmalade or Peppermint Bay, in Manchester during September.

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Shelter from the Storm, the organisation for the homeless which was set up by people from the coffee trade, and which is actively supported by several trade companies, is holding a summer fete on Islington Green London, on Saturday, 10 September.  Volunteers are invited to help set up and clear away, and to sell raffle tickets in advance (one prize is a helicopter trip over London!)   Details: mail@sfts.org.uk

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The Children's Food Campaign has called for a ban on the marketing of certain soft drinks direct to children.  The organisation claims that for brands to show pictures of fruit on packaging and in marketing material, when the drinks themselves may contain as little as five per cent fruit content, is misleading and counts as misrepresentation. The British Soft Drinks Association has responded: "This report is unfair and mistaken.”

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The Costa inhouse barista championships are being held in the next week.  One of the contenders, from the chain’s Huddersfield branch, has promised to make a speciality signature drink ‘that no other finalist has done before’ – it is, we learn, a salty caramel mocha. The Caffe Ritazza in-house championship takes place in London September 21^st – and, although an internal company affair, will feature contestants from as far away as Thailand.

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Caffe Nero is to begin converting all its UK sites to offer free wi-fi. The chain previously offered a paid-for signal through BT Openzone.

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Masteroast, the large private-label coffee roaster, is about to celebrate thirty years in business. The company is to stage a ‘Bean Bash’ at its Peterborough HQ on 30 September, bang on the anniversary of its formation. The event will also mark the opening of a new roastery and the unveiling of its new Neuhaus-Neotec equipment. 

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In Hockley, Nottingham, retailers have said that plans to establish a café culture area will ‘kill’ other business in the area. Some parking bays have been turned over to space for tables and chairs, but other businesses have complained that their delivery vehicles cannot now get near their shops.

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Yael Rose, whose tea and coffee festival event at the South Bank Centre in spring was well received by the beverage trade, will run another event at the same venue in November, and probably follow with a third at the South Bank in March next year.  The event takes place from Friday 18th to Sunday 20th November 2011, 11am – 8pm daily (6pm on Sunday) at Southbank Centre Square. Admission is free.

18th October

8 October:

Our newsflash the other day about the new advertising work by Costa and McDonalds has drawn a certain amount of comment – sadly, the funniest ones can’t be repeated.  However, several people have wondered if we really are now going to see a serious battle between the top high-street players

Meanwhile, the McDonalds theme of ‘small, dark and handsome’ raised eyebrows at Tudor Tea and Coffee, which had already come out with the first of its latest ad campaign on a slightly similar theme – ‘tall, strong and reliable type…’  (that’s the coffee)  ‘… seeks coffee-lover who appreciates a good-sized portion!’

And another coffee item will now appear on TV – Emmi, the Swiss milk company which says its Caffe Latte is ‘currently the only iced coffee in the UK market made from real espresso coffee and fresh milk’  will launch a TV ad very shortly

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A new and very brief photographic exhibition in London, ‘Made in Coorg’ is set up to show what life is like for the coffee growers of southern India, where although the farmers want to build on their industry, big business interests want to turn the land over to tourism. The exhibition ‘Made in Coorg: The Story of Indian Coffee’, will be held at the Outside World Gallery, 44 Redchurch Street, London E2 7DP, only until 11th October.

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Price still puts consumers off organic goods, according to new work from YouGov SixthSense, and 13 per cent of UK consumers will only buy organic foods if they are locally sourced. A quarter of consumers see no benefit in organic produce at all. However, with regard to prices, the research director says that many organic lines are equal to, or cheaper than, standard branded products.’ He added: ‘There is a notable level of consumer disdain directed towards organic and those who engage in the organic lifestyle – one in five consumers believe that organic products are used as status symbols.’

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Greggs, the UK’s largest bakery chain and one which has been seeking to develop its coffee business for a long time, is now working harder to win a bigger portion of the coffee/croissant/rolls breakfast market. As with several other coffee takeaway operators, porridge has been added to its morning menu… but the chain’s biggest-seller is still the bacon roll!  Greggs has recently added 32 new stores, with 60 more due this year and 70 in 2011; the new target markets are transport hubs, airports and train stations.

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Upper Street Events, the organisers of the Caffe Culture show, will not now work on the SCAE’s annual European exhibition (Maastricht, June), as both parties ‘were unable to reach a satisfactory agreement about how the events were to be managed’.  Interestingly, Upper Street Events says that it has had a long term strategy to launch a trade show into the European coffee and café bar market, and will continue with its planned expansion. At the same, the SCAE will probably soon announce that it is going to work with its American equivalent, the SCAA, to form a new World Coffee Events organisation. 

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5 October

There is a lot of TV promotional activity behind coffee this week – Costa and McDonalds are both promoting espresso.

The McDonald’s campaign introduces its new coffee sub-brand called Full Bean and is intended to show that McDonald’s now serves espresso; the commercial is a short and sharp series of pictures of people drinking espresso in various situations, with a bouncy jazz piano track (Dave Brubeck, we think).   McDonalds is using the rather good line ‘small, dark and handsome’ to promote its espresso, and also the less imaginative ‘full of beans’.

Meanwhile, Costa will launch a TV commercial that concentrates on monkeys.  As we understand it, the campaign is based on the idea that an infinite number of monkeys, given an infinite number of typewriters would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare.   Does the same principle apply to coffee?   We believe that Thursday evening is the night when we will first see how this curious message is to be put across.

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We will get into trouble for following directly with this story… but nevertheless, we turn to barista championships.  Britain has its first world champion of the year, with the Caffe Ritazza international in-house championship won by a barista from its branch at East Midlands airport.   Jurate Skarzauskaite won, with a presentation featuring a signature chilled drink using espresso coffee, coconut and bananas, and was presented in coconut shells.

The contest featured an unusual aspect - at the end of the competition, finalists were invited to demonstrate their skill at latte art on top of a flat white. This was, we understand, to preview the appearance of the ‘flattie’ on Ritazza menus this month.  Ritazza has confirmed to us that they expect to put ‘a number of entrants’ into the next UKBC and other championships.

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It is reported that Carlsberg UK are now actively promoting Lavazza coffee to its pub customers. As we understand it, the licensed trade can now order the coffee brand with its weekly beer delivery; the arrangement also allows licensees to rent or buy Lavazza capsule machines.   Lavazza is of course already featured nationwide in J D Wetherspoon pubs.

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Caffe Nero is the subject of likely council action at Woodbridge, in Suffolk, where the brand is alleged to have opened up in a former off-licence, contrary to l;ocal planning regulations.   Suffolk Coastal District Council has said it has a ‘long-established planning policy’ of retaining strict retail shop use in the area.  The town centre manager is reported to have urged the council to be ‘vigilant’, saying that local business people have in the past been refused permission to open cafes in the area.

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With the loss of rural post offices throughout the country, a courageous move in Thorngumbald, near Beverley, has seen a couple investing in a triple-business diversification venture to help their village post office business survive. The plan required them to buy the shop next door to their post office, which will now be turned into the Pillar Box  tea room with an additional hair salon. Grants were also obtained from Business Link and East Riding Council, and the local MP and the chairman of the Commission for Rural Communities have both visited the new tea room to see if it can be promoted as an example of how local post offices can diversify and survive.

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We think we can claim to have been, a year or more ago, the first magazine to publicise an Australian product which has just been named runner-up in the Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation awards for 2010.  It is the Smart Lid, a takeaway cup lid which changes colour according to the temperature of the drink inside the cup.

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Starbucks is to offer its baristas assistance in studying for NVQs in customer service and food hygiene.  Supervisors can begin enrolling for the NVQs from next summer, with juniors following  on in 2012.   Senior managers will also be supported in studying for ‘MBA-style’ training schemes in partnership with a business school.

 27 September

There are about five weeks left to book for the latest Allegra European coffee summit – this one’s in Rome, and we have to confess to a bit of typical Coffee House reporting, when we recently challenged Jeffrey Young on his choice of speakers.  Why, we enquired, should the trade go to Rome to hear Starbucks, Costa, and Caffe Nero all over again, with yet another collection of coffee-shop owners telling us how clever they are?    We enjoyed the response: “The Starbucks speaker is from the design side, and will not give us the corporate-speak – she will be telling us why there is a greater Starbucks attention on understanding the kind of environment people want to be in.“   In a similar vein, he told us that one of the European coffee-house owners speaking is expected to bring a very different dimension to very much the same issue:  “his café has created a different ‘mood environment’ – it is said, and I don’t know if it is true, that you have to provide a photograph before being hired… and it is certainly said that customers are impressed by the good-looking staff.  That might be illegal here!   There is a touch of outrageousness in their approach, and we can see that the big chains are looking at this – they are being inspired by the sense of drama that other coffee-houses have brought, and there is a realisation of a new audience which is tired of humdrum brands.  We are going to see how the status quo is being challenged all over Europe.”

We also asked Jeffrey which speaker, from all the previous summits, had done most to make the trade stop and think. He replied: “John Derkach of Costa, who showed why not to be paranoid about McDonalds doing so well in coffee, and explained the concept of consumers moving up in the marketplace. He showed that we still have to get the new drinkers in at the bottom end.”

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Meanwhile, McDonald’s has reported the effect of that recent concentration on coffee -  it has seen hot beverage sales go up by 39 per cent, and one press report says that its sales of coffee on the high street now outstrip all the big three coffee-house brands.   A McDonalds staffer from Bingley, Katie Holmes, has taken part in a hike through Costa Rica with the charity Earthwatch, doing research into environmentally-friendly farming systems.

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The latest Starbucks case against a smaller competitor is aimed at a Welsh café, Boulders in Borth, Ceredigion.  The Welsh café’s sign was in fact remarkably similar, being round and green, with a cup of coffee where the Starbucks mermaid usually sits – it may well have been a deliberate send-up, and the owner’s comment to the Welsh press certainly does sound a fraction tongue-in-cheek: "we do an excellent cup of coffee at very reasonable prices, with good service, and I hope those who visited us were not too disappointed to find they were not in a Starbucks…”

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A Puccino’s franchisee has successfully achieved a business rate discount after claiming that a massive rent increase would put him out of business.  Alaa Habbooby, who runs the Epsom station franchise, was told by the railway company that his rent would go up from £17,000 to £23,100 per year; 800 commuters signed a petition in support ofhim, and Epsom and Ewell Council has now offered an increased small business rate relief.

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Work has started on the first drive-through Starbucks in Greater Manchester. The site is at Barton Dock Road, by the Trafford Centre and will take 17 weeks to complete.

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The BSA has a visit to the Tregothnan tea estate, Cornwall, on the 13th and 14th October;  £150.00 per person, or £225 for non-members.

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An exhibition of photographs called Tea – From the Land of a Thousand Hills,at the Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate, shows the tea industry’s role in Rwanda’s post-genocide progress. The exhibition runs until January 16.

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14th September

The explosion of an espresso machine in a café on Tuesday was an ‘almost unheard-of’ incident, according to the British coffee industry.  However, the coffee-bar and catering trades have been reminded of their responsibility for diligence in the maintenance and care of espresso machines and other containers of extremely hot water.

The Coffee Council has said that although such incidents are so rare as to be virtually unknown, all caterers using espresso machines must remind themselves that they are using extremely sensitive pieces of equipment, for which servicing schedules and boiler-inspection procedures must be followed.

Details of Tuesday’s incident are still not entirely clear, although it is now generally accepted that at 12.23 pm in the café of Sainsbury’s in the Queensmead shopping centre, Farnborough, an explosion occurred, as a result of which several people were taken to hospital and others treated at the scene. 

Various media reports give different numbers of the injured; it has been reported by several media that one lady has been detained in hospital with injuries to eye, face and neck.  The news media reported the event with different degrees of drama, one referring to ‘panic’, and one referring to a coffee machine being ‘hurled across the café’ by the explosion.  An eye-witness said on television that ‘the ground shook’.

Although first reports referred to an ‘industrial coffee machine’, the machine in question later turned out to be a conventional ‘three-group traditional’ espresso machine, typical of the machines used in every high-street speciality coffee-house.

An aspect of the incident which has puzzled the beverage trade is contained in a statement from Sainsbury’s, which said: ‘seven people sustained minor injuries when a pipe in a coffee machine at our Farnborough store ruptured this afternoon’.   A reporter on local television later used very much the same phrasing when he said: ‘it was one of the pipes leading into the machine which ruptured, causing the explosion’.

In reply to questions about this, Sainsbury’s has so far been unable to give any detailed clarification of this diagnosis, or how such damage could have caused an explosion.

This, say several suppliers of main-brand espresso machines, is an extremely rare occurrence.  Suppliers who spoke to the trade magazine Coffee House almost all said they have never ever come across such an incident; one supplier only said that he recalled stories of a possible similar occurrence in America, perhaps ten years ago.

While being careful to stress that the cause of Tuesday’s incident has still not been established, suppliers of espresso machines have been unanimous in saying that the accident illustrates the importance of caterers treating espresso machines with care, and the importance of appreciating that such a machine is a ‘pressure vessel’, with a legal requirement of regular examination and certification by a qualified inspector. 

Although no question has been raised concerning certification of the machine at this particular incident, one supplier of espresso machines has said that he has been campaigning for many years for caterers and café owners to take this matter seriously, and that this incident will serve to remind café owners of the importance of the issue.  Several espresso machine suppliers say they now expect a large number of calls from independent cafes, seeking precautionary inspections of their machines.

Louie Salvoni of the Coffee Council said: “Although a very rare occurrence, this is a serious reminder to every catering operator that it is their responsibility to ensure that they adhere to health and safety directives. This is a directive that has for years been reiterated by suppliers.

"We don't know at this stage what caused the explosion at Sainsbury's and must not assume anything. However the message is clear to caterers - you are dealing with a pressurised vessel with boiling water. Follow the health and safety guidelines to the letter and do all that is necessary to ensure your customers are safe in your environment."

The Coffee Council is an informal collective of senior managers from the coffee trade, formed to comment on matters of importance to the industry.  Contact: Louie Salvoni, Espresso Service, 07970 848457

13th September

United Coffee  (First Choice, as was)  continues to develop  –  the company has now appointed a commercial director to expand its private-label retail work.  The new man is Marcus Swift, formerly with Gillette and Dairy Crest.  United Coffee has also acquired a French coffee roasting business, Cafés Pivard of Valence, which employs 70 people and supplies retail and catering trades.

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Coffee Republic today launches a fund-raising cupcake in support of the Teenage Cancer Trust. The company says that six young people are diagnosed with cancer every day, and the new fund-raising product has been designed by one 17-year-old sufferer. There are only 17 dedicated teenage cancer units in the UK, and the charity involved is looking to expand this service.  Today is also the beginning of National Cupcake Week.  (In which connection, we are reliably informed, the next cake fashion is the Whoopee, a kind of cake-sandwich.  Expect relevant products from the Handmade Cake Company and others).

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The ‘organic’ claim on packaging is no longer trendy, says some new retail research by MMR. The word is now only 27^th in the list of product claims actively looked for by British consumers.  Variations on ‘low in…’ dominate the top of the rankings, and the most popular product claim of all is ‘healthy’. It is also reported that of consumers asked, 25 per cent responded that ‘organic is on the way out’. However, 19 per cent of consumers said they looked for ‘fair trade’ (as a generic claim, not simply the Fairtrade label). 

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The TV programme Sex and the City  certainly does its share for the tea industry – it was actress Kim Cattrall who promoted Tetley a couple of years back, and now another member of the cast, Sarah Jessica Parker, has cropped up in Ireland saying how much she loves Lyons teas. Meanwhile, Typhoo is to support the English Federation of Disability Sport with a donation based on packs sold, and is also to run a ‘find the golden teabag’ contest which ties in with the 50^th anniversary of Coronation Street.

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Nude Espresso, the roastery in Brick Lane, London, has opened its doors to the public, from Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm.  The Nude partners say this is the first time in London that a fully-operational roastery has been opened to the public on a commercial basis, with the opportunity to talk to the roasters as they work.

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The Local Data Company’s latest report, ‘A Gathering Storm’, is its mid-year report on vacant retail premises around the country.  We’ve got it on PDF – ask the editor if you’d like a copy.

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Down here in the far west, the issue of the ‘proper’ cream tea is an important issue - Devon and Cornwall traditionally approach the ‘jam on top of cream?’ puzzle in a different way. For the recent Tavistock food festival, the organisers produced a poster showing a Devon cream tea… but the Cornish way round!

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Nestor Osorio, executive director of the International Coffee Association in London, is leaving the job after 32 years, to work with the United Nations.

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Plans for the 2011 UK barista championship are due in the course of the next week or so, we believe; meanwhile, Costa has done its usual good job of getting coverage in the regional press for its own internal contest, which has its final in London on October 21^st.  The Caffe Ritazza international event has its final on September 23^rd in Rome, and the British contender really is expected to do well.  However, Caffe Society will not be running their barista contest this year.

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An unexpected bit of promotion has cropped up for Blendtec, the blender brand well known in the UK for smoothies and the like. According to Ad Age of New York, Blendtec is the company with most views of its advertising on YouTube – 134.2 million people have watched its ‘Will it blend?’ series of ads.

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The former operations director of Benugo has launched Rex – The Great British Café, intended to be a national chain of food-led cafes, sited in suburbs instead of city centres.  Mark Ashley says that he will ‘combine the best bits of the coffee shop, cafe and restaurant’.

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23rd August

We have yet another contender for the role of British coffee-festival organiser.  The newest proposal is from Yael Rose of Rose Events, who has a track record in such things – she put on the chocolate festival at the South Bank, London, earlier this year.   Her intention is to run ‘the first London coffee consumer show’, probably late spring or early summer next year. 

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Coffee Republic is to sell its coffee at up to 450 Shell forecourts over the next 12 months, having launched in some sites today.  The new Coffee Republic 'To Go' brand uses the same blend as in its coffee houses, and a partner in the enterprise is  MyCoffee, providers of self-serve speciality coffee bars.  Shell has 900 sites in the UK.

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The Australian agricultural authorities say that for the first time, they have become concerned about the amount of coffee consumed by bats.   The creatures are now eating the fruit directly off the plant, and spitting out the beans - the Australian Sub-Tropical Coffee Association president says he lost about seven thousand dollars’ worth of coffee this way in a week. The growers’ problem is that bats are a protected species, and hitherto they have been regarded as a help, in reducing the insect population in coffee plantations.

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Readers will remember that Gwilym Davies, our world barista champ in in 2009,  is notable for wearing a flat cap.  Now we see from the northern press that the title of ‘best coffee ambience in Newcastle’ has been claimed by Joe Meagher with his Flat Caps Coffee café in Ridley Place.    Gwilym tells us that he did not trademark that flat hat image!

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Cadbury will launch its first branded Cadbury Cocoa House at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent in early October. Several openings are already said to be planned for London for 2011, with Cadbury hoping for 50 outlets over the next five years.

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We are sad to say that we still await samples of the aphrodisiac coffee blended by Coopers.  The blend was createdfor de Longhi, as part of a promotion for Rigby and Peller, a luxury lingerie store.  Aphrodisiac coffees are by no means new, but this may well be the first one blended in Britain. It involves a Monsooned Malabar, treated after roasting with an’oyster essence’.

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The Speciality Coffee Association of Europe, having been unable to fine a new executive director, has re-issued its job description, with a new closing date of 30^th September.  We can send a copy to anyone interested – ask the editor.

17th August

Today’s news is largely charity-related – four items at once:

1.  Shelter from the Storm, the refuge for the homeless supported by several trade companies, has successfully moved premises after being hit with a quite unexpected request to vacate the site it had been loaned by a property developer.   Louie Salvoni told us this morning:  “We found a place, got it fitted out and up and running within three weeks of being given notice, and moved into a new building without the guests having to spend nights on the street. That was very tough but we did it.

“On the 29th September no other than Stephen Fry is hosting our annual fund raising event at the Paramount Club (top floor of Centre point). An exclusive evening with only 150 tickets available at £250 per ticket… we need the funds, as we now have rent to pay!”

2.  Allegra’s proposed Coffee Week in September, in support of its project to bring water to coffee-growing parts of Africa, has been postponed until next Spring.

3.  Kenco has become an ‘official partner’ for the annual Macmillan ‘world’s biggest coffee morning’, which this year is 24^th September.

4.  NW Global Vending is doing a sponsored 72-hole golf event at Kettering on Thursday, also in support of Macmillan. http://www.original.justgiving.com/avagolfers  

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The London opening of the New Zealand roastery Allpress is probably going to be mid-September - the company has already begun advertising its vacancies. Tony Papas, a business partner in Allpress, heads the London operation and has a site in Shoreditch (where else, we ask?!) which will feature a café, kitchen and a roastery; the roastery will target the trade/wholesale market as opposed to the retail pack market, we hear. Ben Glazewski is the UK Business Manager and we are intrigued to hear that the fit-out for the roastery and café was actually built in New Zealand, and shipped to London in June.

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Even with all our stories about the problems that cafes have with their external seating, we didn’t expect this one – the Utopia in Brighton had to evacuate its outdoor seating area, which was taken over by a swarm of bees.  A professional bee-keeper said: “bees swarm in this way to breed and form a new colony. It is a natural process that has been happening for millions of years. It's just that where there were once trees and bushes and things, there are now tables and chairs.”

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We expect this will be the favourite story of the day for many people. The AFP press agency reports that a customer was thrown out of a Starbucks in Manhattan for refusing to order the way that Starbucks wants – being a professor of English, she refuses to say ‘tall’ or ‘venti’, and on this occasion had a row with a member of staff over ordering a bagel.  The barista asked ‘do you want butter or cheese?’ and refused to accept that the customer wanted just a bagel, which appears to be a request she had not been trained for. The barista allegedly then said: ‘you're not going to get anything unless you say butter or cheese!'… and called the police. 

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Cravendale, the milk brand which has been very active in coffee-trade exhibitions, is investing a reported million pounds in ‘the first-ever customer loyalty programme for milk’.  It’s a collect-for-prizes project, the consumers can get a teapot, three mugs, a bowl, a milk jug, three spoons and a tea towel. Cravendale hopes 150,000 consumers will respond.

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Lavazza is to invest $250 million in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, it has been reported, and it is also said that the companies are also working to develop single-serve espresso machines and single-serve espresso capsules. 

30th July

At 4pm today, the retail experiment of Penny University in East London will close.  The business, which was begun by barista champion James Hoffmann as a coffee-house which would allow drinkers to explore the delicacies and nuances of fine coffees through various filter-based brewing processes, has come to the end of the three-month period for which Square Mile Coffee had been given use of the premises.  During that time, coffee enthusiasts gave the venture generous praise. 

James has told Coffee House: “We're a little sad to end it, but it has been a great success - far beyond our expectations in terms of business and response.  I have been  quite amused to look back at the 2009 Allegra UK summit where I thought I was aiming high talking about a £3 cup - and almost exactly a year later we opened a place where the most popular drink has been a coffee from Kenya at £4 a cup!  So one lesson from Penny University has been…  aim higher!”

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We can expect (and we’re already seeing)  interest around the country in an initiative by the London Assembly, which is designed to encourage Mayor Boris to ‘given more powers under the planning system to protect small shops’.  The Assembly’s planning and housing committee suggests ‘corner shops’ should get protected status in local, regional and national planning policies, and recommends a change in planning rules to distinguish more between ‘essential’ retail shop uses such as grocers, bakers, butchers, greengrocers and newsagents, and ‘service’ based uses.   We see today that regional papers have taken up the idea and promoted it locally; meanwhile, we have asked the lady who chairs the committee to clarify the position regarding cafes, coffee shops and tea-rooms, and hope to have a response soon. 

Another local example comes up this morning from Tewkesbury, where the town’s independent traders launched a ‘Keep Tewkesbury Local’ campaign to keep Costa out of the town, and one business alone raised 291 signatures in support in 48 hours.   However, councillors approved the opening in a former off-licence, on the grounds that it would create 15 jobs.  A local café operator said: "the council needs to have a planning policy in order to be able to turn down applications like this from large companies. Otherwise, we're not going to be able to keep the charm of having local businesses.”

(Actually, the council said they backed it because ‘it would create between 15 and 17 jobs’. That, presumably, is 16… )

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Coffee Republic’s first ‘new look’  re-launched coffee bar is in Hove. The new interiors and identity is by Conran & Partners, who (and we quote)  ‘have drawn influence from continental European cafés combined with US style diners – old world comfort meets new world vibrancy. Features include a clean, fresh kerbside appeal; introduction of window bar seating areas; stainless steel service stations; mix of warm wood and black and white checkerboard for the flooring and warmer, more human photography on the walls.’ 

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Coffee#1, the  independent coffee chain with branches in Wales and the south-west, is moving eastwards – property consultants have been retained to find sites in Malmesbury and Marlborough. At the same time, the business is expanding in the Bristol area – a new opening at Thornbury, one under offer in Keynsham, and the consultants are seeking another outlet in the area at Gloucester Road, Whiteladies Road, Clifton Triangle, Clifton Village or College Green.

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Mixed news for the Big Two in York - Costa has had an application for outdoor seating turned down on the grounds of pavement safety; they wanted three tables and ten chairs outside a shop in Lendal, but planners rejected said it would not leave pedestrians with enough space.  Officers also said the pavement café would create unwanted street clutter and “fail to preserve the setting of the adjacent listed buildings”.

However, Starbucks has won approval from the authority to continue operating a pavement café at its shop in one of the city’s busiest shopping zones, New Street, with  eight tables and 32 chairs.  Starbucks was told earlier this month that it must remove its kiosk at York Station, following a planning inspector’s ruling that it spoiled the character of the historic building.

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Two familiar trade suppliers have cropped up in the nominations for the Vegetarian Society’s awards – both Byron Bay Cookies and Deans, the shortbread maker, are shortlisted in the ‘The Best VegSoc Approved Sweet Treat’ category. Byron Bay won it last year.

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Vegware of Edinburgh has launched the world’s first compostable double-wall coffee cup. The manufacturer claims it is  ‘the greenest insulated hot cup on the market’, and the first insulated cup ever to be made entirely from low-carbon compostable materials. Vegware has prepared a UK-wide composting collection service in readiness for the time when organic recycling will become a financially preferable alternative to landfill.

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A very unusual seaside coffee house has come on the market - the Warren Cafe, in Dawlish Warren (that’s the part in the south-west where the main railway line actually runs along the edge of the beach).  The resort has a nature reserve with sand dunes, a golf course, salt marsh and a spectacular beach which stretches for miles. The business currently trades with a turnover under the VAT threshold, and is on offer by Bettesworths at an asking price of £29,950. Further information -www.bettesworths.co.uk

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The new barista trainer at Coffee United (First Choice, as was)  is Lynsey Harley – she was with Drury until quite recently, and distinguished herself by being one of the first to attempt molecular gastronomy in the UK barista championships. Meanwhile, Drury has taken on Christelle Langer who has been a barista in Belgium, Italy, and London’s Hackney.

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Indonesia's highest Islamic body has abandoned a proposal to ban Muslims from drinking Kopi Luwak coffee, the one using beans digested by a cat-like creature – there had been a call for the coffee to be rated ‘unclean’, but the church leaders took the pragmatic decision that if the beans were washed, they are no longer unclean.

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19th July

9th July

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The visitor figure for the Caffe Culture show was a quite immense 11,363 – however, the really important story of the show runs far deeper, and is one which will certainly be debated for several months to come.  While the official line is that ‘the event saw a huge increase in international visitors. undoubtedly attracted by the world barista championships’,  there has been a great deal of post-show debate which has shown quite clearly that not all exhibitors were prepared for the different kind of audience which the championships attracted.  Those who predicted the likely kind of visitor and planned accordingly have reported a successful show – others, however, questioned the value of a big international audience who were not practical target customers, and also complained about the noise levels from the competition arena.   (We shall be reporting further in our next issue)

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In yet another case of old advertising themes returning… Tetley is re-introducing the Tea Folk !  The marketing press predicts a TV campaign which involves a ‘teaser’ followed by a ‘nostalgic, emotional, tearjerker of a TV ad’.   One of the marketing papers appears to suggest that this may have something to do with the brand, ‘once the biggest tea brand in the UK’, having been overtaken by PG Tips (according to Nielsen figures).

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Starbucks has indicated evidence of new marketing methods – it is looking to recruit its first ‘digital and social media marketing manager’.

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The 49p Lavazza coffee has re-appeared through the JD Wetherspoon pub chain - available at 730 pubs from 7am to 9am, seven days a week.  The chief executive has said “this is the best value on the high street – a similar sized cup of coffee in either Starbucks or Costa Coffee costs substantially more, with some of their coffees costing more than four times the price of one of ours.”   Wetherspoon used a similar tactic in 2006; Lavazza has remarked that the current campaign is a temporary measure to promote Wetherspoon’s earlier opening hours.

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Although we always sympathise with cafes who have council problems over external seating, we smiled at this one - the Lounge in Blackpool has been ordered to remove its outdoor chairs, which have been in place for a year, for not conforming with local rules about standards of furniture and marking out of areas with barriers.  The unusual thing about this café’s chairs is… they’re inflatable sofas!

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Simply Coffee, the Exeter-based hot drinks business which entered administration recently, has been bought by the 2N's, based in Dorset.  The new owner has said that the deal with the administrator was put together quickly to try and preserve as much of the customer base as possible.

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We have observed recently that several people in the trade have been involved with charity bike rides and the like – however, sympathies to Simon Law of the Handmade Cake Company, who was unable to finish his charity ride due to losing an argument with a tractor.  We’re glad to report that he is ‘healing nicely’ and will have another go in September.

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Peros, the largest supplier of Fairtrade drinks and snacks to the trade, has notched up its tenth year in business.

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It has been a big fortnight for people-moves, including the re-appearance of former Gala chief Murray Leslie in a new role at Lincoln and York.  An unexpected move is that of Dale Harris, who just missed out on top place in this year’s UK barista championship, and who becomes a director at Has Bean, the craft roaster of Stafford.  He moves from First Choice, where MD Elaine Higginson told us, philosophically:  “Dale has a deep passion for coffee – we exposed him to the coffee world and developed him. He wouldn’t have become number two in the UK without us, and we wouldn’t have done many of the things we did without him. I’m glad to have been a part of his growing reputation… but sometimes, if people want to fly, you have to let them!”

21st June

The ability to find, hire, motivate and retain good staff continues to be the biggest general frustration for operators in the coffee trade.  And the second biggest general problem in the trade is… the performance of café owners themselves!

According to a snapshot survey of 200 coffee-bar operators by the Coffee Boys, the extremely experienced café consultants from Northern Ireland, hiring and keeping staff continues to be a major puzzle.  Eleven per cent of operators say they have trouble finding the right staff in the first place, and a very worrying fifteen per cent say they can’t get their staff to perform the way they want.   

That of course is a management issue, as are café operators’ other major current worries -  ten per cent of operators have trouble understanding the financial side of their own business, and exactly the same figure worry that their own management is not good enough to be sure  that their business will function properly if they are away from the premises.

These aside, the biggest single worry for café owners is the problem of attracting new customers.  Just over ten per cent of café operators are worried about not being able to get their prices higher, or increase their existing customers’ average spend.

By contrast, few respondents are worried about their suppliers in general, and a remarkably small figure, a fraction of one per cent, are worried about suppliers’ inability to provide them with ‘great coffee’  -  that figure is going to stir some debate among the new breed of roasters and brewers who believe that the sector’s biggest current challenge is to raise the public’s level of expectation in coffee quality!

The survey is being run in preparation for the Coffee Boys’ presentations to this week’s Caffe Culture show, where the consultants John Richardson and Hugh Gilmartin will be speaking on each of the three days.   They have promised that rather than give a conventional speech, they will focus specifically on café owners’ known current problems, as highlighted by responses to the survey.

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Next Monday (28^th) Java Republic of Dublin will launch to the trade a very unusual fund-raising coffee – it’s in support of the Haiti recovery appeal following the earthquake.  We didn’t report this immediately we heard about it, because we thought we had got the name appallingly wrong… but the coffee actually is called Zombi.   Bearing in mind Haitian culture, we checked this with the roastery, who told us that ‘zombie’, and indeed ‘voodoo’, were two of the names actually suggested by the Haiti farmers’ co-operative which produces the coffee.  We confess that at the moment we don’t know anything about the coffee, except that it is being made available in a limited-edition format to coffee-houses, caterers and foodservice, and we believe that Java Republic has already agreed ‘tens of thousands’ in commercial aid to the region’s farmers.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a warning against an instant coffee market as an aphrodisiac. The Magic Power Coffee contains a chemical similar to sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, which is available by prescription.  The administration has actually said that the coffee ‘can cause serious harm’.

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Leeds-based mobile coffee operator Cafe2U has won a prize for ‘Best Newcomer’ at the TheBusinessDesk.com Yorkshire awards.

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The planned drive-in Starbucks coffee shop in Preston is to go to appeal. The planners rejected the proposal after complaints by residents, but the developer says the decision goes against the opinion of the council’s own highways department

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We reported recently on the Betacup Challenge, a worldwide contest sponsored by Starbucks among others, and intended to find answers to the problem of landfill waste from disposable coffee-cups.  Everyone expected the winner to be a new kind of cup – and it wasn’t a cup at all.  It was Karma Cup, which is a kind of loyalty deal, in which a chalkboard at the coffee shop will chart each person who uses a reusable mug. The tenth person to order a drink with a reusable cup will receive his or her drink free. That, says the winning entrant, will encourage people to more use of their own re-usable cups, thus making redundant the need to design a better takeaway one.   They won ten thousand dollars for that.

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This Friday (25^th)  the London chain Abokado will be giving the revenue from its drinks to St Mungo’s the homelessness organisation. And on Wednesday the Expresso café in Taunton is giving 50p from each cup sold to the Help for Heroes charity.

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The authorities in Gloucester seem to have gone against all their fellow councils around the country in the matter of rules for outside seating – they have made it free of charge to put tables and chairs outside cafes and pubs.  The traders’ association say it has been a great benefit.  Until 2006, the council charged £10 per item of furniture. Council leader Paul James has said the scheme will be reviewed in 2012, adding : “we want to support businesses in the economic downturn and to encourage the emerging cafe culture in the city."

16th June:

8th June

For World Barista Championship enthusiasts, we’re glad to say that the running order of the semi-finals is now available – you can find it on this site - click the countdown link, top right.   In which connection, we see that the British hope, John Gordon, makes his appearance at 11.20 am on the first day.    We are delighted to know that we really can now say ‘British’, as Aussie-born John has been telling us that he is Welsh/Scots on his father’s side, and holds a British passport.  As his mother is Italian, that all seems fairly impeccable lineage for a modern day espresso champ!  (There is an idea of running a sweep on the WBC, in aid of Shelter from the Storm… once the legalities get sorted out, we’ll let you know, but if you care to be involved, please drop the editor a line).

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As you know, we enjoy seeing the kopi luwak story re-appearing, regular as clockwork, in the international media.  Here’s a new variation – Simon Wakefield, the green-bean importer, has discovered a Peruvian version.   The animals involved are civet cats, but these ones are tame, kept as pets by coffee farmers – they wander around the plantations eating coffee cherries, and even have names.  Wakefields have the coffee on offer now  (0207 202 2620)  but point out that continuity of supply ‘rather depends on mother nature and the mood of the cats’!

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Marketing magazine has reported that a Corporate Social Responsibility analyst company claims our big three coffee chains ‘are failing to achieve even a basic standard of corporate social responsibility’.  However, this ‘finding’ does appear to be founded on Costa and Caffe Nero declining to provide it with their corporate-responsibility information, and then on the opinions of a survey of 102 consumers as to which chain they thought used most ‘sustainable’ practice. The Clean Analysis company said: "our report makes some clear recommendation of ways that the coffee industry can benchmark and report on its sustainability efforts.”  We’re trying to get a copy.

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Pumphreys in Newcastle has arranged a series of barista training sessions -  introductory courses on 18^th June, 29/30^th June (evening sessions), 13^th and 23^rd July, and 27^th/28^th July (evening sessions).  The three days 29^th-1^st have a course for the City and Guilds level 2 VRQ.   The introductory sessions are £70 plus vat, the C&G is £350 plus vat.   Bookings - 0191 414 4510

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A Russian student has been invited to Britain by the Ringtons tea company to discuss brand strategy – he apparently took redesigning the brand as his subject for an art degree, although so far as we can see he didn’t actually ask them.  When Ringtons found his dissertation on a website, they decided to invite him to Newcastle for a meeting as to how its speciality tea brand can appeal to a younger audience.  It is, said the company, a valuable lesson in monitoring social media sites.

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MAY 2010

18^th May

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Watch out for something unusual at the Taste of London food festival in Regent’s Park (17-20 June).  Union Hand Roasted are part of the exhibitor list, alongside the likes of Rick Stein and Heston Blumenthal.  But the really unusual thing is probably a ‘first’ – Union’s Jeremy Torz and Steven Macatonia are proposing to roast coffee in the open air, in front of the visitors.

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This coming Saturday (22^nd) will be opening day for the Penny University, James Hoffman’s new retail venture. As we reported recently, this involves a former world barista champion in an entirely non-espresso service, concentrating instead on promoting the qualities of great coffees through a variety of filter brewing methods.  The venue is 5 Redchurch Street, London
E2 7DJ

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In a similar filter vein, we hear that the World Aeropress Championships are to be held in London at the time of the world barista contest. The event highlights the skill of preparing a perfect filter coffee.

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Another barista opening up in London next week is Tristan Stephenson, once of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, who reached the national barista finals a couple of years back. He is opening Purl, a wine bar in Marylebone.  A ‘purl’ was a hot alcoholic beverage sold on the streets in the 1800s.

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Costa is the subject of several petitions in the midlands. Although planning officers in Leek have recommended approval of a local branch to the applications committee which meets tomorrow (Thursday)  536 residents have objected.  In what has become a familiar situation, objectors argued against the town becoming ‘just charity shops and coffee shops’, whereas the council has pointed out that the venture will bring activity to premises which have been empty for a year. Costa was also the subject of a petition objecting against it replacing the WRVS café at Sandwell hospital, where it opens next week. The WVRS business had an admirable record of contributing to the hospital – in one year alone, it raised £20,000 for medical equipment.

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The Bath Coffee Festival visitor figure was 7,350 over two days, more on the Saturday than the Sunday. Quite a lot of older visitors, we are told, and not as many students and teenagers as expected. Organiser Linda Donaldson says:  “I anticipated that we would have mainly local people and some Londoners – however, some people travelled more than 380 miles to get to the festival and two guys from Kuwait came for Daisy Rollo’s latte art masterclass, and one tourist came from Vancouver Island. Perhaps we will get the Aussies coming next year!”  Local charities shared around £1,000 in donations as a result.

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Starbucks in America has introduced a range of flavoured coffees packed for retail - Starbucks Natural Fusions feature cinnamon, vanilla and nutmeg.   

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The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has become involved in the One Pot Pledge, a campaign which encourages coffee drinkers to pledge to re-use disposable cups for simple foods – the charity Garden Organic says, optimistically, that growing cress in an old coffee cup ‘could prevent some of the 88,218 disposable cups which are used every 15 minutes, ending up in landfill’. Mayor Boris, observing that takeaway cups do offer good planting situations for seedlings, called them ‘one-cup allotments’.

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This wins our award for ‘best missed marketing opportunity of the month’ - the Illy Art Collection of decorated espresso cups is to go on tour  between 16^th June and 17^th September, and will travel to Strada restaurants in London, Brighton, Cardiff, Birmingham and Manchester. The Collection includes cup designs from names in film and music, such as Francis Ford Coppola, and Federico Fellini. Illy cups are collectors’ items, and some rare ones have fetched up to £25,000.  We did ask why they weren’t tying it in with Caffe Culture, but reach London the week after the world barista championship – of course, it didn’t occur to them! 

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Jim Harding and Hannah Darby, both formerly of La Cimbali, have won an award for their new café, Café Black in Stamford. They won a ‘best new start-up’ prize from the local paper.

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7th May

Nescafe has launched its new Milano machine for out-of-home catering – the aspect of this which is going to arouse some reaction is Nescafe’s comment that the product is ‘a high-end soluble system, which has been inspired by the true Italian espresso and stands proud against roast and ground competitors’ and that it is ‘a soluble system that holds its own against roast and ground in terms of taste, appearance and quality’. At the Allegra Summit in London a couple of weeks ago, the subject was again raised, of whether a drink produced using soluble coffee can actually be sold as ‘espresso’ or ‘cappuccino’.

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Starbucks has now opened a New York store which is expected to receive a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification in July. The store incorporates various sustainable features - water-based paints, low-energy light bulbs, and water-conservation systems. The countertops are made of ‘re-purposed’ white oak recovered from barns. The magnetic community board is made of metal panels from ‘retired’ espresso machines, and the ‘wallpaper’  has been made of re-used coffee sacks.

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There are two more scalding cases in the course of a few days – in the UK, a Lancashire family has criticised chain café staff for an ‘amateurish’ response to an accident in which another customer dropped coffee on to a 10-month-old boy; in the US, a woman is suing Starbucks for 'unreasonably hot' tea which she claims caused second-degree burns.

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In Liverpool, a new mobile coffee operation has started – the coffee shop and caterer Bean has converted an ice-cream van.  However, mobile traders all round the UK will not be impressed by the report in the local paper, which calls it ‘the UK’s only mobile coffee machine’.

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The latest row about the number of coffee houses in high streets comes from Chippenham, where the former Woolworth’s site will be divided into halves, one becoming a Costa coffee shop and the other a Poundland. The local chamber of commerce has said that a street which is full of phone shops, charity shops and coffee shops now needs ‘some serious retail’ in it, but the owner of the former Woolworth building says that no such traders are interested in the site

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4th May

April 2010 :

20th April

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The Tea Guild’s award for Top Tea Place 2010 has gone to the Black Swan Tearoom, Helmsley, on the edge of the North York Moors.   A rather curious report ion one of the papers says:  “Judges said it was 'one of the best' visited for condition and service”.  Well, if it was given the national champion title, it would have been one of the best, wouldn’t it?   It is pricing we find interesting, having had a look at the menu – the cheapest pot of tea is £2.95, and some are priced as high as £3.95.  Same with coffee – an espresso is £3.50, and a cappuccino is £3.75, and a mocha, would you believe, £3.95. And there are still some people in this trade who don’t believe that the four quid speciality coffee exists! And we do like to see that the venue puts on such events as talks on tea, and themes afternoon tea events – including the fascinating ‘rhubarb tea’.

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At the other end of the pricing scale, the pub chain JD Wetherspoon is looking to take even more of the morning coffee market by opening up across its estate at 7am, from Wednesday 28 April.  There are several deals at 99p, including bacon roll and coffee and teacakes and coffee.   An unnecessarily challenging remark in a JD Wetherspoon publication quotes one of their senior managers as saying:  “We felt sorry for those who were having to pay double for coffee and food at the likes of Costa and Starbucks… we think that one of the real bonuses will be all of the comfy chair and space, so much more relaxed that the oh-so-rushed coffee shops; there are also lots of quiet corners for people to use the free Wi-fi.”

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Starbucks is reported to have submitted plans to build a drive-thru on the site of a petrol service station housing a former Little Chef just off the M50 at Ross-on-Wye.

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Cafédirect has split its senior sales team into specific divisions  – Harriet Gething has taken on the trade marketing manager role, Paul Carleton becomes national account manager, and Chris Haddy is foodservice controller.  Elsewhere, a curious story in Market Research World quotes Mintel as saying ‘Fairtrade is becoming the norm in the coffee market’, which will rouse half of the roasting trade to apoplexy…

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Pukka Herbs, the organic herbal beverage company, has won a Soil Association Organic Award for its After Dinner Organic Herbal Tea, made from organic fennel, chicory and cardamom.

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Paddy & Scott’s coffee company, of Suffolk, has secured a regional listing with Tesco for its gourmet “When to you drink your coffee?” range. The coffee is marketed on the basis of research which said that 72 per cent of coffee drinkers are more aware of the occasion when they drink their coffee, than the characteristics of coffees from different origins – so the products are Morning Coffee (which is an all South American blend), All-Day (Colombian), and the Great With Friends, is a dark roasted blend from Indonesia and Africa.

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Just when you thought that the row between the Cheltenham Council and Chris Crichton of the Green Coffee Machine couldn’t carry on any further… it does. The latest round in this long-standing argument over whether an operator should be allowed to trade from a Piaggio van has come with the advent of better weather – the borough licensing committee have said that he can extend his licence to include cold drinks, but that they would levy an extra charge of £3,000 on him, on the basis that his first licence was rated low because of his limited product range.  When we asked Chris if he had to pay up, he replied: “Never! I'll battle on again with this one”  One councillor has supported him, and a 60-signature petition in his favour has been presented.

9th April:

March 2010 :

11th March

 Meanwhile, in the States, the ‘trenta’ has arrived – a 31oz Starbucks iced drink, if you please.  Also in the US, a petition of 28,000 signatures has been raised, demanding that Starbucks change its policy of allowing customers to openly carry guns in states where it is legal to do so.  Starbucks has made the interesting point that asking gun-carrying customers to leave its stores could actually be potentially more dangerous for its staff.  We’re even more intrigued by the additional statement that ‘Starbucks has security measures in place for any threatening situation that might occur in its stores’.

27th January:

Well, we told you Costa was going to launch a flat white… it appears today (27^th) in their Piccadilly branch. What we didn’t realize was that they are going to hire Peter Andre to be there and launch it.  They too have promoted the drink as ‘a new coffee’, which has already drawn the expected response on one marketing magazine’s website from those who already serve it.  Our favourite aspect of this launch, which actually came from Costa, was the information that ‘the coffee will be served in a 30ml volume with 21grams of coffee’.  Yes, that’s what we thought, too… we think it’s 340ml.  

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Coopers Coffee is to launch a ‘cheaper’ coffee range, the Telegraph reports.  It comes in a Telegraph Business Club update, which said that last year, they criticised David Cooper’s decision to take over sales himself, instead of hiring a sales manager – but, he has told them, he did achieve an increase of 16 per cent.  Now, it is reported, he aims for 25 per cent growth or more, which means that either he has to convert more enquiries to sales than he actually does (a quarter of the thirty or so received a month)  or increase the enquiries he receives.  Part of the strategy to achieve this, says the Telegraph, is his new coffee, reported to be priced 30 per cent below his premium brands.

21st January

7th January

The owner of the Spar franchise in Northern Ireland has taken over the cafe chain The Streat, which has 37 cafes in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Republic.  The buyer is the Henderson Group, which owns the Spar and Vivo franchises in Northern Ireland, has a turnover in excess of £500million and employs over 2,000 people. It supplies 400 independent retailers and also operates 70 convenience and petrol forecourt retail outlets

The financial press has observed that the move is ‘something of a departure’ for Hendersons. The retail group already has two Streat franchises within its existing Spar stores, and managing director Damien Barrett has suggested that he will ‘continue to explore this as a collective opportunity’.

The Streat was started in 1999 by Michael and Nikki McQuillan; the business employs around 350 people and its turnover was over £8 million in the last year. Hendersons said it will keep The Streat brand name and Mr McQuillan will continue to run the café business.

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Entries so far for the UK barista championship have shown a curious reversal to the position in recent years – the London regional event, which has in the past been cancelled for lack of entries, is now full and some contenders have had to be moved to other regional heats.  The North and Midlands event is also full, and places only remain in Scotland and the south-west. Strangely, however, the Northern Ireland event has been cancelled for lack of entries – this is the region from which the toughest competitors have come in some recent years. Only four people applied, and they will now compete in Scotland.

In the other competitions being held soon, the cupping and latte art contests are almost full, but places remain in the Coffee in Good Spirits event.

(We are entertained by a query from Marco Olmi of Drury, who enquired this week about the collective name for a quantity of baristas… the best suggestions so far have been ‘an exasperation of baristi’ and ‘an overparticulation of baristi’.)

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Peros, the leading foodservice distributor of Fairtrade products, is to re-brand its own coffee range. The company has simply knocked the ‘P’ off the front of its name to produce the brand name Eros, which is says fits nicely with well-known phrases ‘love coffee’ and ‘passionate about coffee’.  Notably, however, all the twenty blends in the range are now Fairtrade-certified.

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9th December

In the past few days, barista champ James Hoffmann has raised the possibility of the big chain coffee bars beginning to sell the ‘flat white’  -  and indeed, Starbucks called us yesterday to confirm that the beverage is now available in the re-designed Conduit St store, in their other Soho stores from Thursday, and will go nationwide next year.  The formal announcement, which arrived later, carries some interesting phrasing, which we attempt to reproduce without comment:

 “At Starbucks, we noticed that some customers in the West End of London, in particular in our Soho district, were asking for a new drink.”  (‘Our’ Soho, if you please !!! – editor).   “Our highly trained baristas rose to the challenge and taught themselves how to make it…

“Starbucks Flat White is a small strong coffee made with two shots of Fairtrade certified espresso in an 8 fl oz cup topped with creamy, steamed whole-milk.  The milk is given a velvety texture by being ‘stretched and spun’, which allows the espresso shot to rise through the milk.  Patterns or ‘foam art’ can be made in the top of the cup with the contrasting colours of the coffee and milk.

“Darcy Willson-Rymer, managing director, Starbucks UK and Ireland, said: “This is much more than just a new drink for Starbucks.  It’s about us listening and responding to our customers at the same time as highlighting the superior quality of Starbucks Fairtrade espresso and the skill and artistry of our baristas.  We’re proud to bring the Flat White, first and foremost, to our customers in Soho who have led the demand for this intense and creamy coffee.”

(Costa has failed to reply to queries about doing the same, although James did say he had had it confirmed that they will do so).

*

According to the above story, Soho may now belong to Starbucks, but in the 40s and 50s it largely belonged to the Italians.   And in 1949, a notable opening was of Bar Italia, which celebrates its 60^th birthday this month – nobody knows exactly which date.    We’re delighted to say we have a feature on the bar in our next printed issue.

*

Instant coffee will save the planet, reports a Scots newspaper today.  Dr Dave Reay, quoted as a world-renowned expert on carbon emissions, has calculated that the average cup of black filter coffee creates 125 grams of carbon emissions, against around 80gm for a cup of instant

He has had a go at the coffeebar chains, too: "Coffee vendors are in the vanguard of those promoting more 'sustainable' products, with organic and fair trade options now widely available.  Starbucks even boasts a programme it calls Shared Planet which has the declared aim of minimising the company's environmental impact and increasing involvement with local communities. The irony of that trademark appears to be lost on them.”

The scientist also reckons that adding milk to coffee puts emissions up by more than a third:  "The environmental group WWF has calculated it takes 200 litres of water to produce the coffee, milk, sugar and cup for just one regular takeout latte. If everyone ditched their pre-work coffee that would do wonders for the planet."

*

We were intrigued by the last sentence – and have now confirmed with Alice that she does indeed have ambitions to start in-house roasting as soon as she can.  “I have known for a couple of years that I need to reinforce the company’s stated aim of being an ‘expert solutions provider’ in the speciality coffee market,” she told us. “A small coffee roaster will help to reinforce that fact, although I will keep the main bulk of my roasting with my current roasters.”

*

Coffee houses have again not distinguished themselves in the Loo of the Year awards – very few entries from the café sector, but we can report a prize taken by the Blue Pool Tea Rooms of  Wareham in Dorset. Two other cafes, the Malt Barn Coffee Shop in Dufftownand  Harrisons of Newcastle Emlyn (Cardigan) won awards for what we think is their second year running.

*

Let nobody think that the coffee-house scene down here in Cornwall is not as exciting as it is in Soho (Starbucks permitting).  A staff member of the Gyllyngvase Beach Cafe in Falmouth (we walk the dog past it every day)  chased a knife-wielding robber who grabbed £19,000 from the till, pushed the robber off his motorbike, and reclaimed the money. At Truro Crown Court on Friday, he was awarded £500 from public funds for his courage. The robber, who got three years, made the bizarre claim in his defence that ‘he was given the motorbike to do the robbery, so he had no choice.’

Barely half a mile down the cliff path from that café is the Swanpool beach café, which has also made the news. Pete Lochrie and his staff are handing out free ponchos and hot water bottles to customers on his beachfront decking area – the idea has apparently gone down very well.

3rd December

*

The conference programme at this year’s Caffe Culture show will be split into three parts – one day will concentrate on the management of change, a second day will look at changing retail concepts, and the third will offer an insight into the evolution of the café-bar concept.

*

After an appeal and a review, the Advertising Standards Authority has upheld its original decision against a television advertisement for Tetley, after complaints about implied health benefits. In what might seem a harsh decision, the ASA ordered Tetley to cease broadcasting a commercial in which a woman was shown warming up for an exercise run, but when she discovered it was raining, went back inside and had a cup of green tea instead. Four viewers complained that Tetley was trying to suggest that its green tea had the same health benefits as physical exercise.  Bizarre though the complaint may sound, the ASA ruled against the tea company.

*

Twinings, one of the great names of British tea with a history which goes back to the 1700s, is the subject of a workforce revolt after suggesting that it might ‘consolidate its manufacturing operations’, in China and Poland.  The result of this could be around 380 British job losses at two sites, Andover and North Shields.  Twinings says that the majority of its sales are overseas, and that it is unnecessarily bringing tea into Britain simply to re-export it; the shopworkers' union Usdaw has said: ''Twinings are moving abroad to seek cheap labour. If we allow this to happen, no manufacturing jobs will have a future in the UK.''  It is also reported that John McDonnell MP has tabled an early-day early day motion in the Commons, and has said: “There is absolutely no reason to close the factory in North Shields. The company’s biggest market is France, so what is the sense of moving most of its European operations over to Poland?”

*

*

Atkinsons, the north-western coffee roaster, has managed to be included in a guide to the nation’s top 50 best food and drink shops, as published in the Independent.  "We set ourselves a marketing goal of getting some national press coverage this year and this inclusion is a fantastic result," roaster Ian Steel told us.

*

There is another incidence of the Cup of Excellence programme bringing a new record price from a coffee-growing country not usually regarded as one of the classic origins – the latest auction has produced a record price of $35 per pound for coffee from Bolivia.  The highest price paid in the country last year was $12.   A certain amount of this year’s coffee is coming to the UK – Mercanta reports buying lots for Andronicas, Has Bean, Origin of Cornwall and  Bolling of Yorkshire. Other buyers included Bewleys and Gala.  “Bolivian coffee can be fine,” Mercanta’s Stephen Hurst told us, “although a great many are not owing to poor husbandry and fieldcraft. The country’s total exports are less than some single estates in Brazil – but the growing conditions are superb, and there is superb potential for the production of boutique micro lots of outstanding quality. We are now finding some excellent ‘’micro lots’’ from small farms, with each lot being maybe only 15 bags."

*

Despite following up press reports elsehere, we have so far failed to obtain samples of the new Nescafe instant coffee which is said to help protect the body against ageing.  The editor, with Peter Pan ambitions, is still trying and will report on its effectiveness as soon as possible…

26th November

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Peros, the fair-trade supplier, has been short listed for the Caterer’s Website of the Year award.  You can vote for them at http://www.caterersearchwebawards.com/caterersearchwebawards09/p/3823

*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcLt_zKds_I

The new video was, we hear, received with silence and then tears… it shows, quite clearly, that even the educated business classes can end up on the street.  (But the funniest line in the video is from the shelter caretaker, who says: ‘I used to be a bank robber… obviously, not a very good one!’)

After a series of contradictory claims about exactly who is the current rising star of the Fairtrade coffee market, the Fairtrade Foundation has now advised us that Starbucks is the company with the most shining halo. 

We were puzzled when Sainsbury’s made the dramatic statement that its move to all-Fairtrade ‘will more than double the size of the roast-and-ground market in the UK from 2,248 tonnes to 4,600 tonnes’, because Fairtrade's own figures say that the roast-and-ground market is already 8,046 tonnes, At the same time, Starbucks had said that its move to all-Fairtrade will increase the amount of Fairtrade coffee sold in the UK by 18 per cent. Starbucks announced that it would be buying 17.000 tonnes of Fairtrade coffee this year - but strangely, couldn’t say how much of that would be for the UK market.

Finding a path through the various statistics is made difficult by the fact that all the various parties measure in different ways – some give their statistics in kilos, some in pounds, some in retail packs and some in cups and some in trade-supple quantities, some in raw coffee and some in roast, and across different geographical areas.

However, the Fairtrade Foundation has now said that Sainsbury’s figures were incorrect, that Starbucks’ claim of increasing the market by 18 per cent does seem reasonable, and confirms that Starbucks is now the biggest foodservice provider of its certified coffee.

*

23 Sept.

Yesterday, the Fairtrade Foundation told its latest Commercial Conference that the theme for the next Fairtrade Fortnight ( 22 February – 7 March) is to be ‘The Big Swap’, in which the Foundation wants to encourage consumers to move over to fair-trade versions of their usual products.

 According to Foundation marketing director Cheryl Sloan, “we need everybody in the UK swapping for Fairtrade - your usual bananas for Fairtrade bananas, your usual cuppa for a Fairtrade cuppa, your usual T-shirt for a Fairtrade cotton T-shirt.”

Bearing in mind the perpetual question of how much quality Fairtrade-certified coffee is on the market, it will be interesting to see how many coffee companies (and which!) prepare a like-for-like swap campaign.

*

There is a follow-up to our recent reports concerning the failure of Gaggia UK. The brand’s retail outlets are to continue under the control of Gaggia’s former managing director, Raj Beadle.

“The decision by Philips UK, who acquired Saeco, the owners of Gaggia, to provide their own services left Gaggia UK without any viable way of continuing the distribution, helpline and after-sales services and therefore a decision was made to put the company into administration,” he told us. “I have however been able to set up a new company called Caffe Shop Limited to purchase some of the assets from the administrator so that we could continue the four outlet shops, two high street shops and two department store concessions. I feel that retailing of coffee machines, coffee and accessories within a specialized shop/area is the way forward and am looking forward to developing this business further. The shops will continue to sell Gaggia, Caffitaly and other coffee brands.”

 www.caffeshop.co.uk

8th Sept:

A barista trainer from Sheffield has devised what may be a unique barista-training and support system.  It is a one-to-one system in which the participants are not in the same room – it is all done across the internet, using a webcam and the Skype system, by which live motion pictures can be transferred at the same time as a spoken-voice call.  The idea comes from Youri Vlag of Absolute Coffee, who says that the new idea offers a remarkable combination of benefits in both cost and practicality.   He told us :  “I was brainstorming about barista training and how to offer something unique, and this was the result.  We are going to be, to my knowledge, the first company in the world to offer a one-to-one online barista training course.  For those who think this is crazy and can’t be done, we would like to prove them wrong - it can be done and we are going to do it!

http://www.absolutecoffee.co.uk/online_barista_training_course.html

We now have the dates for the UK barista championships, courtesy of Paul Meikle-Janney. The opening date for entries is 1^st November, and the regional contests begin on 22^nd January in Belfast.  The 26^th is the Scottish event, and the south-west is 2^nd-4^th February at the Expowest show,  (This also features the finals of the UK Latte Art championship, UK Coffee in Good Spirits competition, and the UK Cup Tasting championship).  The midlands event is 16-17 February, and London is 20^th February.   The semi-finals are 2-4 March at Hotelympia, after which of course there’s a bit of a gap for the champion to get their breath back before the world final at the back end of June.

Sainsbury’s has re-designed the packaging for its entire range of coffees, which is also going Fairtrade.  The agency behind the redesign has used imagery of brewing gear, such as moka pots and cafetieres, on the packs to make it abundantly clear what the consumer should do with the contents.   Those who always compare the coffee market with the wine market will be interested to see that Sainsbury’s has followed the same style as it did for its wine, in giving guidelines to strength, taste, and the foods which might accompany each coffee.   The back of the pack is also used for promoting other coffees in the range.

Costa has given its recent poster campaign the credit for an 18 per cent increase in sales over the last six months.  The chief executive said that the ‘7 out of 10 coffee lovers prefer Costa’ campaign, a tactic which quite clearly took a swing at its major opponents, was “the primary reason that Costa has out-performed them on the high street.”

5th Sept:

Starbucks announced at the beginning of September that all espresso-based drinks in its British and Irish coffee-houses will be made from Fairtrade coffee, and announced to the marketing press that it would be embarking on a ‘multi-million pound’ billboard, poster and press campaign to reinforce its ethical values. Curiously, at exactly the same time as Starbucks made its move, the Fairtrade Foundation came under criticism from British coffee roasters for increasing its administrative demands on them.    The Starbucks move is not a surprise – ever since Costa scored a great deal of attention with its poster campaign claiming that surveys had proved consumers enjoyed its coffee more than Starbucks, the trade has been waiting to see what the ‘green giant’ would do to fight back.   Word had already leaked out through the beverage trade that the Fairtrade move was coming.   Starbucks will now become the biggest buyer of Fairtrade coffee in the world, doubling the amount of certified coffee it bought in 2008 to a new total of 40 million pounds.

For the first time, coffee is being commercially roasted in Cornwall.  In an area where so many players in the hospitality industry are fiercely proud of showing that they can source all menu items from within their own county, this is a very significant move.  The company which has taken the bold step is Origin Coffee, from Constantine, a tiny village near Falmouth. The company has already made its name in supplying many of the region’s best-known restaurants, such as Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen in Watergate bay, and many of the area’s best-known baristas – the 2008 British champion, Hugo Hercod of the Relish Deli in Wadebridge, used an Origin blend in his winning campaign.  Origin has now invested in its own small roastery and has begun to create speciality and gourmet coffees on what is known as the  ‘seasonal’ basis. In the ‘seasonal’ theory, a roaster will actively seek out the best current crops from anywhere in the world at any time – if it is a rare coffee, it may only be available to caterers for a month or two, but that allows hoteliers and restaurateurs to promote it as a high-priced ‘special’.

The beverage industry has been unimpressed by an announcement from the World Cancer Research Fund, alleging that iced coffee drinks are a danger to health.   The WCRF claims that it has used the drinks as an indicator of calorie content, saying that second to giving up smoking, attention to a healthy weight is the best protection against cancer.   The organisation says that 19,000 cancers a year in the UK could be prevented if people lost their excess weight, and Dr Rachel Thompson, Science Programme Manager for WCRF, said: "The fact that there is an iced coffee on the market with over a quarter of a woman's daily calorie allowance is alarming. This is the amount of calories you might expect to have in an evening meal, not in a drink. The WCRF undertook a survey of such drinks available on the high street, and reports that its’ ‘chief offender’  had 561 calories, others contained more than 450, and the majority had in excess of 200.   The highest calorie count came from Starbucks' Dark Berry Mocha Frappuccino, the one which the WCRF rates as equivalent to a quarter of a woman’s daily calorie intake.

28th August 2009

We are now permitted to report  (at last!)  the imminent launch of what is said to be the world’s greenest coffee roaster,  with a claimed 80 per cent energy savings over conventional roasters, and a virtually smokeless and emission-free operation.   The roaster is the Loring Smart Roast from California, being launched in the UK by Chris Glossop and Steve Penk, the guys behind the La Spaziale UK business.   The theory behind the machine which ‘will change drum roasting forever’ is that the drum does not rotate – the drum stays static and a paddle system agitates the beans. In addition, heat and energy is not allowed out of an exhaust – it is recirculated and re-used.  Tests by Pacific Gas and Electric in the US have confirmed that the Smart Roaster uses just under 20 per cent of the energy of a traditional roasting machine.  The launch is on 2-4 October at the James’ Gourmet Coffee roastery in Ross-on-Wye.   Attendance is by invitation – call 01246 454400.

The latest solo charity effort from the trade is by Nick Kilby, the ‘tea evangelist’ of the unconventional tea supplier Teapigs.   He’s doing ‘a bit of a bike ride’ next week, from his office in West London to Cardigan in South Wales, covering 250 miles in two days, to raise funds for the orphanage that Teapigs supports in Rwanda, adjacent to one its suppier tea estates.  “The Noel orphanage is adjacent to and closely linked with a tea estate that we buy tea from for our English Breakfast blend. It is home to over 600 children who live in very poor conditions and need every help that they can get,” Nick told us.   “If I can raise £490 that will mean one child can be supported for nearly 3 years so it’s clear that a little can go a very long way to improving someone’s life. And worth getting a little saddle sore for.”  Details and donations - www.justgiving.com/teapigsnoelorphanage

Waitrose claims to have noticed a distinct trend towards better coffee and tea in the home – sales of beans are up 34 per cent, and ‘fresh espresso’ (probably roast-and-ground) is up 26 per cent.  Sales of what the chain describes as ‘posh teas’, an undetailed description, are up 48 per cent. At the same time, sales of teapots and cafetieres are up 56 per cent.  The chain is suggesting that this is the result of consumer cutbacks in purchases from coffee-shops and cafes

We’re rather surprised that nobody in the chocolate sector seems to have noticed, but there’s a promotional period coming up for this sector – Chocolate Week runs from 12-18 October.  The Chocolate Unwrapped show is at the Mayfair hotel, London, on 10-11 October.   So far as we can see, no supplier is using the event to promote hot chocolate at all… if any supplier is putting any trade support in, please tell us!

21st August

We have news of another promotional event set up in good time for the ‘year of promotion of speciality coffee’,  in 2010  -  this time it’s the Krispy Kreme doughnut chain, which has planned its own internal barista contest for autumn, with the intention of putting its champ and maybe its runner-up into the UK championship.   The chain’s Lee Leadbetter tells us that the wider promotional value of the contest will be to demonstrate to the public that the doughnut company is equally serious about the standard of its coffee.    Krispy Kreme is supplied by Drury and Rancilio, whose Marco Olmi told us that he is encouraged by the idea of more surrounding contests feeding into the national one… so are we.