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"Coffee House is the trade magazine that doesn't go straight in the bin!" - Coffee shop owner, east Anglia, November 2011
30th January It is a big week for contests…
It might be reckoned that things are already going according to the form book after the first heat of the UK barista championship. In the London regional event, Sang Ho Park of Tapped and Packed came out top, and also took the best espresso, best cappuccinso, and best signature drink prizes as well (we regret we have no information on his signature drink). Matthew Robley-Siemonsma, also of Tapped and Packed, was second and Rummy Keshet, barista trainer at Darlington’s, was third. The next heat will be the south-western one at Exeter on 8/9 February, and although we didn’t get the entry lists in time for our usual form-book predictions, we can see at least three names in the Exeter line-up on which we would risk a fiver. Although the organisers of the northern regional events will argue, we think the south-western contest will be a tight one and will produce someone to watch in the final…
We are, as you know, always fans of alternative barista contests, and we enjoyed the one which has been run for the Loungers chain by the people at Clifton Coffee. The challenges included cupping, grind calibration, manual filter-coffee brewing, drinks preparation, blindfold deep-cleaning (!), and a written test. Clifton’s Ed Buston has told us that any tie-break situation might be decided by a game of table football!
Cafes with the appropriate food might care to go in for a specialist contest sponsored by Magnet, the builders’ merchant people. Entries are now open for the Best Builder’s Breakfast, and only one-site independents or chains of less than five sites are eligible - entries close on February 14.
What we expect to be the most entertaining contest of all is about to appear from the Local Data Company, the research organisation which specialises in the state of Britain’s high street business. For several years one of their entertaining sidelines has been a collection of retail businesses with funny or quirky names – now they’re holding a vote for the favourite one of the lot. Voting starts in February.
Oh, and while we’re at it, the BSA begins the second series of its new-style ‘beverage standards’ awards in February.
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It is also the season of café guides – the latest Allegra one to coffee-houses in London is, we understand, currently being printed, and we also know that an event is being planned for 15th March in support of their appeal for fresh water supplies to African coffee-growing regions. This will involve a sponsored walk along the Thames, but it’s not just as easy as that… entrants will be required to carry containers of water, to simulate the situation of the African villagers being helped. (Readers may recall that Peros have occasionally used a similar water-carrying theme).
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Readers may recall that just before Christmas, the Times included its usual coffee supplement. It had some interesting aspects, although we have to say that we did question some aspects of it with the publisher. They have now developed an i-pad app to go alongside this which is free for download from the app store. http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/raconteur/id441248065?mt=8
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The Crumbling Cookie café bar in Leicester has a new sign – a giant mosaic made from more than 55,000 coffee beans. It took 150 hours to glue the beans individually to two giant wooden boards, features different colours by the use of raw, medium-roast and high-roast beans, and promotes a forthcoming comedy festival.
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There has been a rather unusual compliment for the Urban Coffee business in Birmingham, which has received an approving review in, of all places, the New York Times – which called the bar ‘eclectically stylish, with spacious rooms, clean-lined décor and beanbags’.
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Teknomat, has opened ‘Room 71’, its new training and presentation facility at its head offices in Buckinghamshire. The company is to push its recently launched Synchro espresso machine range from Treviso.
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The Paper Cup Company has moved to a larger site in Clitheroe, opened by the mayor. Seven years after opening in Mark Woodward’s front room, the company now distributes to many other countries, has taken on four more staff in the last month or two, and expects to take on eight more this year.
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We have omitted to mention an interesting CD released a few weeks back – Paul Ettinger, a director of Caffe Nero, won a day in a recording studio in some kind of contest, and turned it over to his daughter Sophie. The result is a rather good and slightly-jazzy album, Through the Looking Glass, available through www.justgiving.com/throughthelookingglass , in support of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. As a result of someone hearing it, she is singing one of the tracks off a forthcoming British film City Slicker, starring Tom Conti, out later this year.
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Also in charitable mode, it is now possible to sky-dive in aid of Shelter from the Storm, the London homeless centre supported by many in the coffee trade. There are 40 places available for a group dive tentatively planned for the second weekend in July. The request is that participants raise £400 for Shelter from the Storm. An email to comms@sfts.org.uk will bring details. For some suppliers to the trade, parachutes will be optional.
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Costa have confirmed to us that they are now stocking their sites according to a grading system – not all cafes now carry the same food. Following an enquiry as to why customers could no longer buy certain items they liked, Costa told us: “At the beginning of the month we introduced a banding system. This system splits stores into three different bands, bronze, silver and gold, according to each stores average weekly food sales. The band the store falls into will determine which products are stocked. This system has been put in place to make sure we have the right products in the right stores and help to prevent food wastage.”
16th January Coffee house operators are going to be quite justified in expecting more from their suppliers in difficult trading times, has come the remark from Specialist Beverages of Northern Ireland. This is the company run by Hugh Gilmartin, who is also known as one of the Coffee Boys, the extremely entertaining consultancy to the café trade. In announcing the recruitment of James Shepherd, who was formerly the region’s general manager for Matthew Algie, Hugh Gilmartin told Coffee House magazine that any supplier’s qualification for winning business from any coffee house now has to be founded on an imaginative attitude to business support, not simply a good price per kilo of coffee. The continuing recession has made everybody consider their strategic positions for the future, said Hugh Gilmartin. When there is always another 200 salesmen queuing up to offer a price on coffee, the coffee house owner can now make their decision based on the supplier that is going to give them most help. * There has been a bizarre turn in one of the longest-running battles between a café chain and a local council – Bristol City Council has issued enforcement notices for two franchised Costa premises in the city, and is investigating complaints about a third Costa site in nearby Westbury-on-Trym. The authority refused permission for one branch in September, but a planning committee meeting has now been told that the site cannot be ordered to stop trading, despite having been found to be against local planning regulations, because it is ‘not doing enough harm’. Another hearing will be held in February, but councillors have heard that until then, the council can do nothing, because serving notice to stop trading would leave the council open to a claim for compensation. One councillor said: ‘the public will simply think we have no teeth’. * The bakery chain Greggs has confirmed that it proposes to move further towards the coffee-house business after its first Greggs Moment coffee shop in Newcastle did well during the festive season. There will be two or three more test outlets before plans for a national chain are decided. The chief executive has pointed out that although Greggs is already a chain of over 700 sites, less than a tenth of them have any seating, which makes the new concept a considerable change in tactics. * Following the launch of Peter Andre’s coffee shop, the latest move by a television personality to open a coffee hosue comes from Mick Norcross, who has been in The Only Way Is Essex and Big Brother. He proposes to open coffee shops in Brentwood to help promote his existing Sugar Hut nightclub business. Two other cast members have already opened salons and boutiques in Brentwood. * There is yet another move by a pub company towards the coffee business – the Spirit Pub Company, which has about 800 managed pubs and around 500 leased sites, has decided to promote Costa branded coffee across its Chef & Brewer, Fayre & Square and Flaming Grill brands. Costa, it is said, is now looking at more avenues for brand diversity, including further openings at universities after what is reportedly a successful trial. * Entries are still being invited for the coffee section of the Young British Foodies awards. The organisers have told us that with the awards only six weeks away, they will welcome late entries. The awards seek to ‘embrace the new culinary personalities breaking boundaries in the food and drink world’. There are sections for chefs, mixologists and the like, but there is also the curiously-titled Coffee King or Queen section, which will be judged by Gwilym Davies, Tim Styles and Marco Arrigo. There is no entry fee - the entrant simply needs to write a 150-word summary of their skill, their product or their business idea. Further details from http://the-ybfs.com 10th January: Coffee Kids, the main trade charity in support of farming families, has closed its UK office. The trustees have created a new charity. See our latest issue.
9th December
With impressively
good timing, Alex Evans’ guide to independent coffee shops in
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An extremely
unusual initiative has come up from one of the sponsors of the
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Caterer and Hotelkeeper magazine has given the Blog of Year award to Chris Brown for his Great Cafes blog (http://greatcafes.blogspot.com/), commenting: ‘the author of this blog understands that a picture speaks a thousand words’. It’s also rather impressive that they looked beyond the obvious catering blogs and picked a coffee one.
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Boston Tea Party,
the south-western coffee-house chain, has made its first move into
Hampshire. It has opened up in the Frampton’s Mill part of the
Furlong Centre in Ringwood. Local businesses were invited along
with the mayor and mayoress, and town crier – notably, and rather
unusually, the mayor said he ‘recommended’ the venue. Boston Tea
Party is now in
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The café trade has
not distinguished itself in ‘
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We should perhaps not have been so cheeky about the charitable fund-raising effort of the barista calendar being sold by Square Mile coffee roasters – this may well now be topped for unusual seasonal effort by Greggs, the bakery-café chain with a high number of high-street outlets, which is proposing to enter the annual race for the Christmas no.1 record. The unusual project involves ‘crowd-sourcing’, which is a method of asking the general public for ideas, in this case for lyrics for a seasonal song. There were 500 responses, and the result, to be called Not The Christmas Number One, will be released on 19th December. Proceeds go to Help for Heroes.
A chiel's amang ye takin' notes... and faith, he'll print it! - Robert Burns.
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Dec 2011
The most
distinctive, individual, and independent suppliers' list to the
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New on the List - SEA
ISLAND
The London Coffee
Guide 2011 has been published.
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