The companies featured on Boughton's List to date, in

more-or-less  alpha order, are:

Algerian Coffee

    Stores

James Aimer

Alliance Online

Assoc of Independent Espresso Engineers

Bewley's

Brodies

Beyond the

    Bean

Bunn

Byron Bay

   Cookies

Cafe2U

Cafe du Monde

Caffe Society

Coffee

    Community

Douwe Egberts

DR Wakefield

Drury

European

    Watercare

Fracino

Gala

Huhtamaki

Jura

Lavazza

Marco

Maxabel

D J Miles

Nescafe

Percol

Peros

Rapido

Rombouts

Single Source

Sweetbird

Taylerson's

   Syrups

TeaPigs

Tetley

Watermark

 Xpress

The Association of Independent Espresso Engineers

The Association of Independent Espresso Engineers has been formed as ‘a national network of highly motivated and passionate local espresso engineers’. There are to be about 15 operators in the new body, forming a national network of engineers which will shortly be found through a single portal website. They say: “There has long been an unofficial network of engineers who know each other and help each other out, and we know that all of us feel the same way about customer service. It makes sense to share knowledge. The customer will always get more from an independent operator than from a corporate, and some of the independent engineers we work with really are among the tops in the country. So the idea is to promote our services together, and we will make the point to clients that we are all proud of being independent engineers… but that we are happy to surround ourselves with other companies who have credibility. It has to be in everyone’s best interests.”

The Algerian Coffee Stores

0207 437 2480

Coffee has been traded for 115 years here, in the heart of Soho, London’s most cosmopolitan area – and since 1887, ownership of this site has been in turn Algerian, Belgian. British and Italian.  And it is full of character – the counter and shelves are the originals, and at any time will be packed with a breathtaking stock, maybe up to a hundred coffees and around 160 teas.   Private consumers have known about this Aladdin’s cave of tea and coffee for generations, but what is not generally known is that Paolo Crocetta  (or Paul, he answers to both!)  is just as happy to talk trade with café owners.  He has no outside sales force – but making an appointment to go and see him in his cramped upstairs office, with the almost certain chance of being served one of his ‘specials’, is an hour very well spent for any serious caterer. The depth of stock comes from Crocetta’s deep interest in finding truly interesting things for his customers – and, while it makes stockholding a nightmare, he is prepared to do it because he regularly uncovers the gems his customers are looking for.   “Customers’ tastes have changed,” says Paolo, “they are more choosy, and we’re not surprised to have customers coming in asking for Mexican, Bolivian or Cuban coffees. We have one private customer who comes in every day, generally looking for 125gm of something different – and in the long run, customers like him make up a large, loyal customer base.  I’d rather have dozens of small, loyal, private and trade customers than put up a sign saying I’ll only sell a minimum quantity of anything.”

James Aimer

01382 229733

There was a quite delightful statement of independence when the management of the James Aimer roastery bought their company out from the giant European name which had previously owned it – “in a specialist marketplace, to take yourself away from a multinational means that you aren’t encumbered by them,” explained managing director Eric Duncan.  “Clients like to deal with the people who make the final decision, so the buy-out allowed us to open up new opportunities for ourselves. Becoming independent allowed us to give some of our competitor roasters the fright of their lives!”  It was Eric Duncan who predicted, some years before we heard anyone else say it, that consumers would begin looking for origins and taste profiles instead of brand names, and it was also Duncan who predicted some years ago that organic coffee would establish itself, and in both cases he has been right.  Although James Aimer has been roasting coffee for 125 years, and although it does have brands of its own (the newest is the Alpha espresso blend), the company’s work is largely anonymous – it roasts and blends for a vast number of independent coffee caterers and trade suppliers, and offers particular expertise in ‘matching’ an existing taste profile.  As a result, Eric Duncan calculated for his local newspaper recently, the Aimer company probably produces the base ingredients for 350 million hot drinks a year.

Alliance Online

0844 499 4300

This is certainly one of the UK's best-known suppliers of catering equipment and disposables - and the company says quite confidently that it is the best specialist supplier of such things.  The company has 20,000 non-food product lines available to the hospitality industry, ranging from mugs to machines, but makes a particular point of its interest in handling individual product enquiries.   Of particular note to the cafe trade, we see, is a strong choice of takeaway cups, now with 'green' options, and a rather good selection of latte glasses.   There are now eight depots around the country.

Bewleys

00353 1 816 0600

When a company is big and dominant in its sector, it’s easy to miss the detail of what it may have done for the trade as a whole, and what it can do for the individual beverage operator – and a fine example of this is Bewley’s of Dublin, a coffee roaster of great significance in the Irish Republic, and a café operator in its own right, but also an imaginative supplier to the rest of the trade.  Typically, when Starbucks began to look at the Irish market, Bewley’s ran a sell-out seminar for its trade customers on ‘How to compete with the Green Giant’, bringing in specialist speakers from the States to talk from their own experience.  Bewley's has also been a big player in the rise of speciality coffee in outlets which have gone unrecognised in England and Wales – garage forecourts there sell very high quality coffee, and even Spar corner shops do up to 800 cups a day through extremely sophisticated bean-to-cup machines.  “It is probably fair to say that British caterers could have investigated Bewley’s support well before now!” master roaster Paul O’Toole recently told Coffee House magazine.  “Not everyone appreciates our size, our capacity, and our ability to support… we know what makes a successful coffee bar, and we know that ninety per cent of becoming a great café is in knowing what you want to deliver. Our job is to help them achieve the solution of delivering it!”

Bravilor

Brodies

0131 653 4016

This really is a fascinating company - not least because, to the best of our knowledge, this is the company descended from the guy who invented the concept of English Breakfast tea (even though it's a Scots company!)   The idea was invented by a chap called Drysdale, who it is thought is the third member of Brodie, Melrose and Drysdale, the company which eventually turned into Brodies.   Today, although this Edinburgh company has some very well-regarded big-name clients, it is  (in the editor's humble opinion)  still a secret which has eluded some of the hospitality trade south of the border. This is rather surprising, because Brodies has a lot more to its offering than meets the eye - on the one hand, its tea blends are still packed for retail in the distinctive traditional tartan-banded tins which are a familiar sight in Scottish shops.  On the other, its modern approach to coffee has brought about the delightfully-named Dynamic Volcanic espressos.  These are worth trying - and the name refers to the interesting fact that some very good coffee is grown on the slopes of volcanoes. Not coffees for the cautious, says the company!   And an interesting fact that really should be known wider around the cafe trade is that Brodies produces some quite astonishing hand-made chocolates, usually packed in long thin strips with a see-through acetate lid.  They've won Great Taste awards.   Most recently, Brodies became part of the Segafredo empire, and now also distributes that extremely wide-ranging European coffee brand.

Beyond the Bean

0117 953 3522

Beyond the Bean is, without any doubt, one of the most entertaining of the of the trade’s general suppliers, and in the past few years has risen to be one of immense influence… and, it has to be said, it has done so with a certain wackiness. Although the basis of the company’s business has to be professionalism of supply, that doesn’t stop Beyond the Bean producing its information and literature with a degree of unconventional humour.    The company does not handle coffee as an ingredient, but apart from that it has established a reputation for picking other consumable items it believes in, and sticking with them – typically, its Zuma brand has steadily built up a solid reputation for drinking chocolate and frappes, and most recently has added a chai.  Beyond the Bean has had two more notable brand successes recently – first, the company discarded the big-name flavoured syrup it used to stock in favour of launching its own Sweetbird brand, which has now developed into a known name round the trade.  The second major move was to adopt the Australian cookie brand Byron Bay, and similarly pioneer its distribution to the point where the name is equally familiar right round the café trade.    And Beyond the Bean continues to do so with its own idiosyncratic character – is it really any coincidence that the little bird on the Sweetbird logo reminds us of the one on the great Woodstock festival signs?   And which company promoted its summer drinks by turning the Caffe Culture show into a beach and driving a VW camper into Olympia?  Got it in one…!

Bunn

01908 241222

For the caterer who wants to present good filter coffee, the Bunn corporation really is one of the most interesting technological organisations in the beverage world – it concentrates on machines and equipment intended to make the service of good filter coffee a practical business proposition.  Although Bunn does have some espresso machines,  it is on the filter brew where the company really scores, and Bunn has created equipment which will serve the filter coffee market in a vast number of different places, from the conference market at six gallons of filter coffee at a time, to the pub, small coffee house, restaurant or office sectors. The extremely interesting thing about this is that Bunn is a great fan of respecting the science of filter coffee, and indeed of the Speciality Coffee Association guidelines on correct brewing, and has worked hard to create equipment which makes it convenient for the operator to create and hold a filter brew for the right length of time, in optimum condition.  Modern technology such as ‘pulse brewing’ and ‘soft heat’ means that there really is no need for any pub or restaurant to serve stewed coffee which has been held on a hotplate – and Bunn’s team are able to explain why and how better filter coffee is attainable, in everyday practical language.

Byron Bay Cookies

0117 953 3522

This really is one of the most remarkable product stories to hit the British coffee-house trade for years!  Byron Bay cookies are named after a place in Australia - it’s a resort on the far side of Australia, halfway up the east coast.  Not only are the cookies named after the place, but  they are baked there as well – so, when they were first brought to this country, they came here by a very long sea passage.  They survived the passage well enough for people here to like them, being championed by Beyond the Bean – and then, having established a market here, the brand made the bold step of seeking a bakery here which could make the cookies exactly to the Australian recipe.  This was not as easy as it sounds – we are not allowed to say who the bakery is, but Byron Bay chose one which makes for a very swish retail brand indeed. What happened next was a surprise – the brand made the independent move of creating its own English cookie, the attention-getting strawberries and clotted cream cookie, which featured a quite distinctive new and softer texture.  That was a limited-edition summer offer, but it pointed the way to a new strategy, and more special ‘seasonal’ recipes are expected.  And the English cookie became the subject of a new selling tactic, which succeeded first in Ireland – the linked deal, such as a pot of tea and a strawberry and cream cookie.

Cafe2U

0845 644 4708

The concept of the mobile coffee-cart is not just a modern phenomenon - it is reckoned to be the single fastest-growing sector of the speciality coffee market over the past couple of years. In turn, Cafe2U has pioneered the opportunity of the franchised be-your-own-boss cafe operation, with everything packed into a van.  It is the British version of a successful Australian business, and in the UK it has been sufficiently successful for Cafe2U franchisees to have dominated the trade's Best Beverage Experience award over the past three years. At the same time, Cafe2U operators have used their popularity to run some very effective charitable community fund-raising promotions, which shows how much they are seen as an accepted part of their local communities.  Most Cafe2U franchisees have had a ''previous life' in a different career, and are now willing to say how happy they are to be their own boss as the holder of a Cafe2U franchise.  The company offers potential franchisees the chance to get to know the life with a series of Discovery Days, which give a valuable insight into how the mobile coffee business really works.

Cafe du Monde

01322 284804

The trade rather enjoys a supplier it can talk with, and is always re-assured to meet a supplier  who has clearly been there and done the job themselves  -  and conversation with Café du Monde of Dartford is peppered with experience of the practical side of serving beverages.  The company records its 20^th year in business in 2009, having been formed to try and support caterers in achieving ‘the same high level of quality and profit from their beverages as they expect from other parts of their menu’.  In doing so, Café du Monde has demonstrated that it is perfectly capable of bringing in new, creative and practical ideas for that best of all reasons… to solve ‘a known problem’.  A typical example is Service en Chambre, which was born of the company’s worry that the beverage trade was letting hotels down with in-room drinks. The quality of bedroom furnishing and décor was rising steadily, but always the beverage offer was a tray with a cup, a kettle, and some sachets of instant coffee.  Café du Monde set to work creating a cafetiere service in which the consumer could not possibly get the brew wrong, and would not make a mess – and the result was a ‘coffee bag’, which could be slipped into a cafetiere, brewed at exactly the right dosage, and the visitor would be in no danger of spilling coffee grounds anywhere.  Such was the company’s interest that the directors spent a lot of time sitting with needle and thread, experimenting with ‘coffee bags’ which would hold exactly the right dose of coffee.  But they got it – the result was something which allowed hotel visitors to make a good cup of ‘real’ coffee, and allowed chambermaids to easily clean cafetieres in the room, instead of having to cart them away.  And, adds the company extremely realistically, it also got round the problem of spent coffee grounds blocking the drains, as well!

Caffe Society

0845 450 0500

Although Caffe Society has been supplying coffee, machines, and training to the catering trade for ten years, the company has come to prominence with several serious moves in the last couple of years.   First, Caffe Society took over the British distribution for Brasilia, one of the most famous Italian espresso machine brands, and one of the first to enter the UK market. It followed this up with the novel design concept of ‘Café in a Box’, in which the team realised that after having designed, specified and built cafes for clients for so long, they could now identify the ideal components from which to put together a modular yet customised turnkey package.  Then in the summer of 2009, Caffe Society announced that it would resume the Brasilia tradition of a barista championship, looking to encourage the everyday baristas from the café and catering trades, with the intention of finding a champion who could be entered into the UK Barista Championship.

Coffee Community

01484 34 00 33

It is rather re-assuring, at a time when the beverage community has come awash with a whole new wave of 'barista trainers', to realise that the longest-standing specialist consultancy company in the sector is just on its tenth birthday - which means that Coffee Community was in at the very beginning of the modern coffee-bar boom.  But this is not just a training company – the breadth of things that Coffee Community has brought to the café trade makes a quite impressive, if pretty exhausting, list.  It was Coffee Community which produced the first barista-training video on CD, an item which was enthusiastically taken up by several major suppliers who were keen to put their own brands on it.  When the Beverage Service Association succeeded in creating the first nationally-recognised barista qualification in barista work, it was Coffee Community who wrote the courses.  The company has been extremely active in the organisation of the various barista championships (and is game enough to occasionally compete in them, as well - David Olejnik picked up a regional prize this in the last series.)  The company is an 'auditor' for many of the top branded chain businesses, which means making sure staff skills are up to scratch, and what is not widely known is that it also has a notable expertise in the planning and design of hospitality venues, as well… founder Paul Meikle-Janney won an award for it at one time, and will readily join a café operator in discussing the practicalities of traffic-flow through a café, which is a more important art than you might think.  “We have seen the most beautiful coffee bars fail because the customer didn’t know where to stand, or in which way to walk to the till,” he told us. “You can lose a fortune by getting this wrong. Our job is to make sure you don’t!”

Crem International

01282 458 473

This really is an interesting story, with some interesting products appearing as a result. Up until a couple of years ago, Style Café of Lancashire was an independent distributor of various products, including the Jura brand, and then became part of the Crem organisation of Sweden.  Shortly afterwards, the British side split itself into two different companies – one half concentrated on the Jura machines, while the other concentrated on the machines specifically made by Crem, notably the Coffee Queen ones.  The result of this is the launch in Spring 2011 of the Qube machines, with the interesting advertisement strapline: ‘are you ready to think inside the Cube?’   This, says the company, ‘will change how people drink coffee in offices, canteens and board rooms round the world’. One particular feature is the use of a new milk which is the result of two years’ testing – it is a bag-in-box solution that contains regular, semi-skimmed milk that is pasteurized at ultra high temperatures and then packaged aseptically. Forget refrigeration and the constant need to buy small quantities of milk on a regular basis, says the company – this is a 5-litre system which can be stored at room temperature for up to six months, and once opened and installed in the machine, the milk will stay fresh for days.

Douwe Egberts

01753 508 123

This is a fascinating company with quite a heritage, but nonetheless one which still remains directly relevant to the modern-day coffee trade.  It’s a Dutch company, which was started in 1753 by Egbert Douwes (that’s the right way round)  as a grocery shop in Joure, called De Witte Os (‘the White Ox’).   Thirty years later the business was taken over by his son Douwe Egberts (that’s the right way round, too) and by now specialized in coffee, tea and tobacco.  Today it is part of the giant Sara Lee Corporation, and is the world’s largest buyer of Utz Certified coffee, which is a very highly-regarded ethical-purchasing certification, although not one which gets the high profile of the other ethical badges.  It has also been instrumental in several very interesting technologies – it worked with Philips on the development of the Senseo machine, which remains one of the very simplest espresso machines for pod use, and its Cafitesse was (and is) one of the most interesting coffee-concentrate systems. The coffee is brewed in the conventional format by Douwe itself – but it then goes to catering businesses in a kind of ‘bag-in-box’ format.  Douwe Egbert’s trade website is one of the more interesting sites by a trade supplier, and includes some genuinely useful information… the list of brewing tips from its own staff is pretty good.

Drury Tea and Coffee

0207 740 1100

Interesting London-based company which spans several useful sectors - coffee roasting, tea blending, and also espresso machines. This company has an Italian family heritage, and is currently run by the third generation. The brand started in London in the 1930s, but in the 50s, at the very beginning of what was then the frothy-coffee coffee-bar boom,  the first specifically British espresso blends were almost certainly roasted by Drury.  The coffee roastery today is of an appreciable size, using a 150-kilo Probat.  The roasted coffee produced here is used by an interesting selection of cafe and restaurant names - among them is no less than Gordon Ramsay.  The tea-blending and sourcing operation is housed in the same building,  so if you're lucky you get a coffee tasting and a tea tasting under the same roof.  The machine operation runs under the name of The Coffee Machine Company, and is the sole UK distributor for Rancilio, the Italian brand of espresso machines. Certainly a good company for chewing over ideas with.

DR Wakefield

020 7202 2620

As speciality coffee has become more important to the everyday British beverage trade, the sourcing of the best coffee beans has become absolutely critical.  DR Wakefield has been in this for forty years, and has established itself as an extremely reliable source of not just beans, but a vastly knowledgeable source of information and advice on the issues which surround today's coffee trade.  The company's directors have formed lasting relationships with growers and their representatives in all the major coffee-growing areas of the world  (Africa, Indonesia, Africa, India and central and south America)   which allows them to put in place absolutely reliable audit trails for the 'traceability' which is such an important part of today's ethical business. The company has also formed strong links with every one of the ethical-sourcing accreditation organisations, and can give authoritative help and advice on the issues surrounding Fairtrade, the Rainforest Alliance, Utz Kapeh, and the general organic and decaffeinated options.

European WaterCare

01279 780250

One major problem is faced by virtually every single café operator in Britain, and it is the single biggest hazard in the serving of correctly-tasting beverages, whether tea or coffee. It isn’t the obvious ingredients, and it isn’t the brewing equipment – it’s the water.  European WaterCare, in agreement with other specialists in the sector, says that ‘the majority of equipment faults experienced by caterers are related to water - this is a strong statement, but it’s true!’   The main problems are with what is called ‘hard water’, which is water with a high mineral content (usually calcium and magnesium) and, although we are privileged in the UK to have very safe and drinkable water, it is also the case that drinking water in England is rated by the appropriate Inspectorate as 'very hard', except for some parts of Wales, the south-west and north-west. This has an effect on the taste of beverages, plays absolute hell with scale build-up in brewing equipment, and even, astonishing as it sounds, can corrode stainless steel.  European WaterCare is a specialist, privately-owned company which manufactures in the UK, and quite unusually is willing to guarantee against scale build-up when its products are used.

Fracino

Coming shortly...

Gala

01322 272411

It’s always nice to find a giant company which has some imagination, and while Gala is certainly a very influential business – it holds the Lyons brand, no less -  it is a company which has come up with some quite fascinating and helpful concepts. It was Gala who devised the easy-to-serve Lyons one-cup coffee bags (all five varieties of which are now Rainforest Alliance certified) and in mid-2009, Gala made a definite move into the espresso pod market by taking a financial interest in its own pod-making machine. “The whole catering potential of the pod waits to be tapped into,” said the company. “Typically, restaurants and hotels where they don’t have time to train baristas. Any member of staff can produce an acceptable espresso with a pod.  Variety is where the pod also scores, because it eliminates the danger of a hopper full of beans going stale because of low demand – so you may use roast-and-ground for your house espresso, but pods for your Fairtrade, decaf, Rainforest Alliance, and so on".  It was also Gala who recently began to roast under licence a most unusual coffee – this is Templo, described as the ‘first-ever premium Spanish coffee in the UK’.  It is described as "a very nice well-rounded coffee which gets the middle ground for a full-bodied espresso… a bit of robusta ‘bite’, but not too dark, and slow-roasted. It has achieved a following without any promotion, and Spanish restaurants like it".   Gala’s most recent move is to launch a website for its trade customers. The aim for Gala Coffee Direct, says the company, has been to create a website with straightforward navigation and simple ordering system, but also featuring constantly evolving and new products, with offers changing in response to customers’ needs.

Huhtamaki

02392 512434

As the takeaway market became more and more an important part of the speciality beverage industry, so did caterers' demands on the packaging get more and more complex.  In cups alone, the requirements are baffling - the construction of the container has to cope with everything from a 30ml espresso to the new 20oz 'venti' size, which in itself places remarkable stresses on a takeaway container. A cup for hot beverages has to cope with the joint puzzle of both keeping the beverage hot for an acceptable length of time, and yet being comfortable enough for the consumer to hold from the moment the hot liquid is poured into it. And then, for the caterer, there is the desirable option of the cup bearing a promotional design, as well. And then there is the ecological question, in the making of the cup, and the environmental question in the disposal of it.   And that is only in cups for hot beverages - the complexities for takeaway food packaging and cold-drink packaging are just as complex. Huhtamaki is a world leader in finding the answers to all these puzzles, and as the company has a British manufacturing base, the answers can be discussed on the British operator's doorstep.

Java Republic

00353 1 8809300

In a trade full of opinionated people, Java Republic stands out - there is no shortage of suppliers in the trade willing to tell you what's what with regard to coffee, but Java Republic has distinguished itself by standing up for its beliefs in everything it does, to a degree which is quite exhausting, and always entertaining.   Founder David McKernan began his own roastery after serving his time in the Dublin coffee business, which is widely acknowledged to be a market of extremely high quality products and best-practice work - having formed his ideas about how coffee should be roasted, he then began his own roastery to do it the way he considered it should best be done.  (Did he succeed? He has won 94 Great Taste awards to date).   Then he established his own set of ethical principles about the sourcing of his coffee, much of it inspired by the shock he felt when he first visited impoverished farmers.  After turning his attention to a high-quality tea range, he then demanded that the world should know about the conditions that cocoa workers are expected to live in, and created his concept of 'the other bean', his ethically-sourced drinking chocolate range (you can read about this on our linked page).  Turning his attention to questions of environmental sustainability, he set out to create 'the first carbon-neutral coffee roastery on the planet' just outside Dublin, which now offers an open invitation to any interested operator in the beverage trade.   The company has just won an environmental award for it.  This is indeed a company which is not shy about making its opinions felt - but it welcomes interested trade customers, and any meeting with Java Republic is always full of exhilarating and challenging conversation about the way our market works.

Jura

01282 857479

This is a very familiar product name, but with a new company identity and a new story to tell. From the first day of 2011, the importers of the Jura range of Swiss-made fully-automatic coffee machines decided to give their brand name star billing, and concentrate its entire activities on that one single range.   "We have been selling the Jura commercial range since the year dot, and the household range for two years, but under different company names," remarks Roger Shuttleworth, the head of marketing. "Now we concentrate solely on Jura - simple, easy, nothing complicated, just all Jura machines, accessories and service.  This is an opportunity to restate the suitability of Jura and Macchiavalley machines for many applications - the range sees us right through from small ( Jura XF50 ) to high ( Macchiavalley Tasman ) usage together with top quality manufacture for both brands."

Lavazza

01895 209750

Even in a coffee trade where it is generally reckoned that ‘Italian’ means ‘authentic’, the Lavazza name can claim to have a rather special standing – for the trade, the interest is not just the tag line of ‘Italy’s favourite coffee’, or the fact that the Lavazza brand can now be seen outside a whole variety of hospitality venues in Britain. No, the appealing thing for the trade is that this Italian brand has the ability to carry itself with a touch of humour, even when talking business about its most serious subject, coffee.  Where many Italian brands can get a bit pompous about their espresso, Lavazza always seems to be able to talk about coffee with a twinkle in its eye.  And yet, it has been a pioneer in much serious work on coffee – one recent project has been its Tierra blend, a new and successful ‘sustainable’ coffee developed in work with the Rainforest Alliance, supporting growers in Honduras, Colombia and Peru.  At the same time, Lavazza has been deeply involved with the ‘capsule’ concept, the espresso which is made by inserting something that looks like a milk jigger into a specially-designed automatic machine – some of the brands which first attempted the concept had varying results, but Lavazza says that it has overcome these problems, mainly by concentrating on quality espresso first, not engineering convenience.  The result has now reached Britain as the A Modo Mio system. Lavazza is also famous for its work with El Bulli, the only place to hold the title of ‘the best restaurant in the world’, four times, in the development of coffee-based menu items such as its coffee foam, and its Espresso ‘solid cappucino’.  It is of course, equally famous for its annual pin-up calendar, which always features famous models in ‘coffee-fantasy’ themes.  “We are always on a new voyage, discovering a new language in coffee,” says Giuseppe Lavazza with a characteristic broad grin. “But we still speak it with an Italian accent!”

Marco Beverage Systems

01933 666488

It is a very unfair thing indeed, but up until very recently, the trade suffered from a problem called ‘espresso-ism’ – that is, espresso-based coffees were the fashionable drinks which got all the glory, and things like tea and filter coffee were regarded as something slightly less ‘cool’.  Certainly, the art of boiling water for such things was not seen as needing any kind of skill. Suddenly, we all know better, and the beverage gurus are falling over themselves to show that good filter coffees and great teas are very wonderful beverages indeed, and very profitable for the café and tea-room. And beside this has come the appreciation that certain companies who specialise in the heating of water have actually been doing some terrific technical work in recent years, even if they didn’t get the praise for it. At Marco Beverage Systems, the Dublin-based manufacturer, there is keen and questioning attitude to the treatment of water, which has led to a great deal of practical support for café and tea-room operators, who require absolute precision in the heating of their water – green teas, white teas, oolongs and the like all need different brewing temperatures, and are too delicate to be left to a Saturday part-time waitress and a kitchen kettle.  And at the same time, there has come a new appreciation that filter coffees, too, have their own ‘sweet spot’ brewing temperatures and need just as much care.  Having watched all this develop for years, Marco unveiled a surprising product which drew the attention of the entire beverage trade – the ‘uber-boiler’, which promises a delicacy of temperature-control previously unknown in the preparation of top-quality teas and filter coffees.

Maxabel

01344 876588

It really is remarkable that probably the most important single strategic product for most coffee-house operators does not get the discussion, debate and information it warrants. It's not coffee, nor indeed is it tea, or snacks - it's the takeaway packaging.   About ten years ago, Allert Elema saw this and decided to create a 'brand awareness solutions provider' - which means getting together the two major features of takeaway packaging needed to do the beverage operator a complete job.  Those two major features are the overprinting and the cup - to have a cup without an overprinted message is one of the great missed opportunities in the trade (and people still do it!), but even if you have a wonderful message to impart, putting it on a low-quality cup will make your promotion a waste of time.  Maxabel devises its own products, and is particularly proud of its triple-layer ribbed-paper cup - and then, the company likes nothing better than to start discussing what message to put on it!   Maxabel has also become an enthusiastic member of the trade's Paper Cup Recycling Group - it is a vastly important subject for takeaway packaging, says the company, and apart from the environmental considerations, all operators in the trade now value being regarded as conscientious companies.  "We are viewed as a caring and conscientious company," says Maxabel. "Not just by our customers, but also by colleagues and suppliers alike. We work hard for our customers, an approach that seems to work as we have a repeat rate of over 85%... and we are striving to improve on that!"

D J Miles

01643 703993

Over 120 years, this fascinating company has built itself an almost-legendary position in the west of England – it roasts its coffee and blends its teas from a converted stable right on the coastline in the north of Somerset, its managers are noted for their ‘nose’ and their tasting and blending skills, and its products are found in gift shops and hotel bedrooms right across the south-west of the country, and as far north as Wales and Nottingham. But although this is a company with a history, it is also one which quite stubbornly insists on supporting its trade customers in the difficulties of modern-day business – “There is no question that some cafes are having a tough time – to put it in perspective, the quietest Starbucks in London probably does more in a day than a high-street café in the south-west does in a week.  So there is a special kind of customer service which our independent customers need, and we know that if we appreciate this and treat them the right way, we create a very special trust and loyalty.”  The company is also progressive enough to know that while it has a vast number of hotels and B&Bs who take its instant coffee, that there are many cases in which the hotelier can ‘upgrade’ a customer. “We see a big move towards cafetiere and good coffee of after-dinner quality in the bedroom – it gives the justification of ‘a better product’ for the room rate. You cannot compromise on coffee quality, or people will talk – but you cannot ignore the fact that the mass market are instant-coffee drinkers, so you cannot surprise them, either. We have found that the ideal coffee for hotel use is a medium-roast hundred-per-cent Arabica filter coffee, and we offer pre-portioned packs for a three-cup cafetiere. We find that when instant drinkers like the smoothness of this coffee, there can be a fairly quick transition to having the courage to go out and buy roast-and-ground for themselves - the stepping-stone is not a big culture shock!”

Nescafe (Nestle Professional)

0800 742 842

What is remarkable about this company is that while it is probably the single biggest giant corporation in the entire world of coffee, it retains a surprisingly human face. The 'real coffee' side of the trade hurls all kinds of abuse at the instant coffee sector, but at Nescafe, certainly in the UK office, they respond in a delightfully civil way.  No, they don't argue the case of instant coffee against roast-and-ground - indeed, they operate in both sectors, and this is why they will very readily sit down and argue their main proposition, which runs like this: there is an appropriate coffee solution for each location at which coffee is drunk, and while it might be a roast-and-ground solution, and it might be an instant/soluble one, the important thing is to establish which.  After that, the company is then prepared to roll up its sleeves and discuss coffee sourcing, ethics (there has been criticism of the time it took, but Nestle does now work with Fairtrade and the Rainforest Alliance), roasting techniques, and taste.  Nescafe is even readily willing to argue the case of its 'speciality' drinks made with soluble coffee, a concept which is alien to many in the coffee-bar trade... but as Nescafe points out, there are some locations in which the barista and espresso machine simply is not possible.  Discussion of the qualities of instant/soluble coffees can be remarkably detailed, and brand rivalries are every bit as hard-fought as they are in the roast-and-ground sector, to the degree that one of Nescafe's best-known soluble coffees, Gold blend, actually has different taste profiles to suit the various parts of the world in which it is sold.  Of course, the 'real-coffee lobby never invites the soluble makers to discuss these subtleties... but they exist, all the same.

Percol

020 7978 5300

There is a school of thought, which we once put forward to Brian Chapman, the founder of Percol, that the entire 'ethical' invasion of the catering trade was effectively kick-started by the appearance of his coffee in retail.  Brian thought for a moment, and then disagreed... but we still think he's wrong, because Percol was, if not the very first, certainly an early prime mover in promoting the Coffee Kids cause, which was itself one of the very first causes to be put directly in front of the coffee-drinking public.  Since then, of course, Percol has become notable for its additional support of Fairtrade, of organic products, and recently created its own cause, Children of Africa. It also contributes to Amitigra, which is a rainforest conservation cause in Honduras. Although it was instant coffee which first drew a lot of attention on supermarket shelves (and Percol is very unusual in having picked up a Great Taste Awards commendation for a soluble product), by far the greater number of Percol's awards have come from its roast-and-ground coffee - around two dozen awards in the last seven years.  It is also a pioneer of the concept of 'single origin' coffees - because, says Brian Chapman, when his brand started, by far the majority of the market was in blends.   One day, we will get to write all the stories of his various unusual single-origins, such as the Kogi Indian coffee... he had to be airlifted in to the plantation, because the tribe are forbidden to travel to what we think of as 'civilisation'!

Peros

01494 436426

You will find no end of suppliers looking to impress you with their ethical credentials, but there is something extremely unusual about Peros – in many ways this company was a trailblazer in the supplying of fairly-traded products, and even now is the leading supplier of Fairtrade, ethically-sourced, and organic products to the catering trade. Before the company was even launched, the partners were caterers serving Cafedirect to offices in London, and Peros is still the dominant supplier of Cafedirect to the catering sector. Very recently, Peros has been the company which drove the progress of One Water, the drinking water which funds clean and fresh water for impoverished communities in Africa. Most recently, it has introduced another ‘first’ - the world’s first certified organic, 100 per cent natural, biodegradable chewing gum.  And with all this going on, the two partners remain cheerfully unassuming but happily proud of bringing so many new ideas to the trade.  “We were both caterers, and now, caterers see that our experience kicks in when we start speaking their language – so they know we aren’t going to bring them anything tacky!”

Rapido Coffee Servcies

01785 851348

There are many novel angles to the coffee trade, and although Capuccino Rapido of Cannock is a coffee supplier, its special niche is in what top man David Wiggins describes as ‘a short-term decent-quality coffee facility’.  That means he supplies machines and a beverage service on hire for those who run trade shows, business exhibitions and the like.  For these people, he points out, offering visitors and important clients a really super and top-notch coffee is a hospitality touch which lifts them above the norm and gets them remembered – it is serving it which causes them the problem, and this is where Rapido steps in ‘to help them achieve greatness’!  David Wiggins has been in delis and speciality coffee for almost thirty years – he was a very early example of the ‘roaster-retailer’, preparing a Mysore/Mocha/Costa Rica blend on the premises over a live gas flame. Pioneering stuff at the time, Wiggins recalls – then, he was asked to put on a ‘coffee shop’ for a corporate event. “Nobody does short-term hire at the level we do – it’s a very difficult thing for an organiser to put on, because the equipment, running water, and power is all a problem. But we show that with our careful management, that they can appear to be running a very tidy ship!”  Rapido still supplies coffee houses with that original blend, although it has been slightly adapted with a Java,  and in this, David Wiggins was again a pioneer – he was one of the very first to put a date of roasting on his packs.  “I love long conversations with coffee-houses, because I like to learn about their businesses. I find that they dislike being dictated to by suppliers, so we maintain that our coffee service for them, against the big brands, is what Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream is to Haagen-Dazs - rather more fun!”

Rombouts Coffee GB

0845 604 0188

One of the most eye-catching news items in the last year was when the Rombouts name made its re-appearance in the British trade – this really was one of the most famous high-street coffee brands before the espresso boom, and although its traditional strength was always in filter coffee, the brand bounced back into the trade’s attention with a novel line in espresso pods, and a new machine - Rombouts developed the 1,2,3 Spresso Pod system and then collaborated with a number of manufacturers including La Spaziale and La Cimbali to adapt their traditional machines to take the pods.  The brand is back under the ownership of the Belgian family which founded it, and the British side is back under the control of three people who have 30 years’ experience of working with the company. The aim, firmly stated, is to ‘regain the position we once held in the UK’, and two big moves have already been put in place towards this – one is the 1-2-3- Spresso pod espresso machine, (which features the use of some interesting coffees not normally seen in espresso) and a bold attitude towards supporting the catering trade with training – a complete support from beginner-barista right up to the three-day City & Guilds Level 2 VRQ in Barista Skills.  “It is very often the barista who is first to meet the customer, so this training is vital,” says Rombouts’ Rob Briggs. “When it comes to espresso, a good barista can make a good bean great… but a poor barista can make a great bean bad!”

Sea Island

020 7584 7545
 

There are very few companies which can justify the description 'unique', but in coffee supply, this is certainly one.  Essentially, coffee is widely described in terms of 'origins' - in broad general usage, that means the country it comes from, and the major origins are well known, such as Brazil, Central America, and Indonesia. What is really interesting is that there are a whole collection of other places in the general tropical regions which grow coffee, much of it of remarkably good quality, but equally much of it in very small quantities, far too small for the usual distributors to cope with. This is what Sea Island specialise in - the supply of the most exotic coffees in the world from unexpected locations. Here, you can buy the King of Tonga's royal coffee from his own country's plantations, or the Lake Tana Monastery coffee from Ethiopia, which may possibly be from the true birthplace of coffee, or even coffee from St Helena, where Napoleon was exiled. The company is an authorised importer of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee (an important distinction when this expensive coffee is so frequently the subject of counterfeiting) and in mid-June, Sea Island supplied Blue Mountain for the king and queen of Norway.  Moving down the social scale a bit, Sea Island has recently been extremely active in taking exotic coffees to consumer fairs and coffee festivals, bringing the concept and tastes of 'exotic' coffees to the general public.

Single Source

01952 234134

It is always good to come across a trade supplier which genuinely comes up with new ideas worth looking at – and what Single Source did in the autumn of 2010 was gloriously unexpected, and yet eminently practical.  The theory behind the company is the single-portion packaging of essential items  -  first, this involved sugar portions and sticks, and then the brand has developed into the creation of entirely-new packaging ideas.  What surprised the entire coffee house trade was when Single Source then proposed a revolution in the matter of 'saucer items' - that is, the little giveaway biscuits and sweets which are supposed to accompany a coffee drink.  There is an easy way of doing thins, as practised by many cafes - the standard giveaway is the speculoo, the little caramelised biscuit.  Some in the hospitality trade go farther, and offer a little chocolate, perhaps with a personalised wrapper.  Single Source challenged the coffee trade to turn the entire idea upside down, and put something attention-getting on the saucer - it would still make economic sense, said the company, and it would make the cafe experience memorable. Customers would remember a venue because of the individuality of the saucer giveaway.

The most recent development is some extremely expensive in-house printing equipment - the creation of highly-detailed illustration on such items as sugar sachets is now far higher than was ever possible before.

Sweetbird flavours

0117 953 3522

The story of Sweetbird syrups is quite a defiant one.  Flavoured syrups are a big business in Britain – not as immense as in the States, where flavoured coffees are ingrained in the national psyche, but still a significant product sector.  It has been reckoned that about a million bottles are sold in the UK each year, and some distributors in the café trade report increases of forty per cent year-on-year.   However, for many years the choice of flavours was slightly limited – a couple of European brands, but generally the market has been dominated by a couple of giant brands, essentially from the same American conglomerate.  A couple of years ago, Jeremy Rogers of Beyond the Bean decided to defy the big brands and launch his own.  “The request for ‘a better syrup’ was definitely raised by the trade,” he said. “Many syrup manufacturers use low-quality sugars, processed in ways we do not approve of, and low-quality artificial flavours.”  Those processes are alleged to involve something called ‘animal charcoal’, which we won’t describe.  “We are not going to enter into any negative campaign against it, but the point is that whatever the technical issues may be, animal matter is not something I want in my syrup. I want something clear, natural, with no preservatives and no additives.”  The result was the European-made Sweetbird, the first flavoured syrup to be approved by the Vegetarian Society and by Viva! for vegans. The really unusual thing, said the MD, was the taste -  “we had a blind-tasting event against one of the big American brands, and the general response was that with Sweetbird you could tell the flavour – with the other, you just got ‘sweet coffee’.  To see the difference, just try making a Margarita with a proprietary lime syrup – it would taste awful. But we’ve experimented with a staff cocktail night, and we proved the quality of our flavours.”  The brand has since developed into a range of bottled smoothies, created on the same principle.   The theory is summed up by the man who created the brand -  “I was never excited about selling a syrup before… I just had them in stock. I’m very excited about this one!”

Taylerson's Malmesbury Syrups

01666 577 379

It came as quite a shock when a new, all-British, flavour company arrived on the scene in 2008 – for the coffee-bar market, the flavoured latte section had been dominated by a few big names for years. Then a new company from Wiltshire, practising a slow-pasteurisation method and using pure water from a natural spring on its own land, popped up out of nowhere to win a Great Taste award, and even had its amaretto flavour featured on TV’s Ready, Steady Cook.  And more recently, the company produced its own independent research to show how the development of flavours through the coffee-shop trade has progressed – and consumer interviews around the country showed that flavoured coffees have been tried by far more of the market than was expected, and a far older age-group as well.   The product was the idea of John Taylerson - “what got me really wound up was that people think all flavours and syrups are the same, and the misunderstanding of ‘natural’.  I’m a country boy who has been through agricultural college and the dairy and grain industries, and I always thought that the food and drink of this country needed to encapsulate the personality of the place it is made.  Our syrup is made in the rolling English countryside, amid fresh air and trees, with no artificial colourings.  We did not deliver the flavours that people expected, because people are used to a synthetic, faceless, smack-in-the-face vanilla, not the distinctive natural one. Our almond syrup is not from chemicals, it is natural, and we have ad audit trail of documents which will always lead you back to a nut!  And we have recently found that our ginger, in coffee, is seriously fab – we sold out of it on its first weekend!”

Teapigs

0208 568 2345

This is supposed to be the 'year of good tea', and if any company was going to pioneer it, it would have to be Teapigs.  It is quite possible that the catering trade has never seen a company quite like this - it steamed into the industry a few years back on a crusade to rid the world of second-rate tea, and gained instant attention with not just its attitude, but its quite bizarre packaging.  There is no retail packaging quite like it, and sometimes you have to think hard to find the relevance of the design - one pack has a bathtub motif on it!   However, when you dig deeper, you find a small company which is intensely proud of its tea, with a perfectly well-defined aim which is quite in accordance with the targets of the cafe industry.   The theory is this - if you strip away all the pomp and pretentiousness which has surrounded tea for so long, and show both catering staff and the consumers that there can be great fun in discovering interesting new teas, then everybody benefits.  With this in mind, Teapigs introduces some quite super greens, whites, and oolongs, and some interesting other items such as popcorn tea (which actually was a genuine oriental tea in which the peasants used bits of corn to eke out their meagre rations of real tea), a chocolate tea, and a chilli tea.  You can guess what the pack illustration is for that - it's a fire extinguisher!

Tetley

0208 338 4000
 

Here is a very interesting thing - where do you go to get your detailed knowledge of the tea you serve? The commercial tea world, for foodservice operators, is split between the giant suppliers and the small artisan suppliers, and one would think the two would not have a great deal in common... but they do.  Although the giant brands work on a far bigger scale, and are concerned with the driving forward of the tea business in a far more overall, global, manner, the knowledge which the independent caterer can call upon can be provided every bit s as enthusiastically as a small artisan supplier. In the case of Tetley, which is one of the world's biggest brands owned in turn by one of the world's biggest tea corporates, the knowledge base covers every aspect of what crops up in the modern tea-menu - if you are proposing to serve rooibos, and need guidance on how to do it, Tetley will give practical advice on how to select it and serve it.  If your interest is in the growing modern trend of fruit and herbal infusions, you will find the same enthusiastic support - 'this is what this herb does, this is what that one does, and this is why they are blended together... and this is how you can serve them hot, and this is how you can adapt the same tea-bag contents to form a chilled drink'.  There is an 'Ask us, tell us' section of the Tetley caterers' website so that beverage operators can give feedback, or ask specific questions.  For the caterer who wants to make a good profitable job of serving tea, there is a lot to be gained from digging into the knowledge base of a large and experienced supplier!

Watermark

Tel 0208 757 8650

This company shot to prominence quite surprisingly in late 2009, when the sudden collapse of Gaggia UK left users of the machines without, apparently, any service or spares back-up.  In the Republic of Ireland, Watermark had been specialist importers of the machines and spares for some considerable time, and had risen over ten years to be a company of some repute... and then, to everyone's surprise, suddenly became significant in the UK as well when Philips, who had bought Gaggia, approached the company with the suggestion that it replicate its work in England.  "This," managing director David Lawlor told Coffee House, "is the beginning of a huge adventure for us!"   He was reported in the Irish press as estimating that his turnover would triple - but his first move was to increase his staff, and open a dedicated UK customer service base in Slough.  “The commercial coffee market is led by service," he said. "Gaggia see us as a very progressive team of people who are really committed to delivering best-in-class service to our customers, and we have drawn up a strategy and business plan which they agreed with and support.”

Xpress Coffee Commercial

0845 8802 393

This is one of the prime movers of the Association of Independent Espresso Engineers, which means that the company appears at both the beginning and end of this list!

Xpress Coffee Commercial has worked combined the technology of the Internet with old-style customer service (it may have been the first to create a servicing podcast). . Xpress can provide coffee, machines, and servicing.  Xpress Service is the inhouse service operation that can provide installation, seven-day back-up, and bespoke service and maintenance contracts.