Newsflash Sunday
22nd June.
The new
world barista champion is Irish – Stephen Morrissey, already an
extremely well-regarded and internationally known barista before the
contest, took the world prize in Copenhagen this afternoon against
contestants from fifty other countries.The
English hope, Hugo Hercod from Wadebridge, took what seems to have
been a very respectable 10th place – his score of 672 in
the first round was actually one more than the sixth-placed
contestant got in the final round. Stephen Morrissey,
who has worked a great deal in London with last year’s world champ,
Jim Hoffman, and Square Mile roasters, also won a
La Marzocco GS/3 espresso machine
and a Compak K-10 WBC grinder. (We were intrigued to
hear from Espresso Warehouse that they had actually signed Morrissey
up to work on their new catalogue before he became world champ; they
managed the same trick with Hoffmann last year! And we also recall
the new champ once telling us that many people at parties were
disappointed to see him because when they heard ‘Morrissey’s
coming’, they assumed it was the pop star… nobody in the coffee
trade will make that mistake now.)
*
The entire
contents of a café are up on Ebay, with a closing date of Monday
23rd – Simon Bower of Pollards is to move out of his
Meadowhall site in Sheffield (doubtless to be replaced by yet
another clothes shop, he told us) and all the stock is at
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item= The
current highest bid, we see, is £4,000, below the reserve.
Another of the
grand old men of coffee has gone – the funeral of
Dr. Alberto Hesse will be held this
Wednesday in Trieste. Dr Hesse,
who was 90, was a former coffee trade
advisor to the Italian government and was one of the earliest
members of the International Coffee Council in 1963.
The founder
of the Beanscene chain, recently bought by Tinderbox, has confirmed
his plans to open up again on a very similar business strategy -
Gordon Richardson, is proposing a new coffee chain, Pico, which will
repeat his coffee-and-live-music concept.
Esquires,
the first high-street chain to move entirely to Fairtrade coffee, is
now introducing a reusable, recyclable takeaway coffee cup sleeve.
The item was devised by an Esquires customer, and will double as a
loyalty card – when reused nine times, the next drink is free.
Drury Tea
and Coffee Company, is to develop the idea of delivering roasted
beans in 12kg biodegradable hessian sacks rather than one-kilo foil
bags (reported in Coffee House magazine last year). The company
says that environmentally-friendly packaging will also reduce the
cost of the coffee by about twenty per cent – the savings made on
packaging costs mean that 10 kilos of its Reale espresso coffee now
cost £92, a saving of £18.40, or equivalent to the cost of two kilos
packed in conventional foil bags.
Andrea Illy,
head of the Italian coffee giant, was in London on Friday for the
opening of his latest school of coffee, and confirmed that the UK
was part of his thinking for Espressamente, the Illy chain of
coffee bars which has grown rapidly to perhaps 200 around the world.
However, he told Coffee House, he had ‘ideas’ for the UK, rather
than ‘plans’ as yet
13th June
Espresso
Warehouse, the ‘everything but the coffee’ wholesaler, has
called for the café trade to take an interest in the big event
of next week – it is the World Barista Championship from
Copenhagen, in which the UK is going for its second successive
world title. And for café owners who want to see what the
profitable state-of-the-art in coffee can be, there will be a
live video feed at
http://www.worldbaristachampionship.com
on which we can all watch the progress of the UK hope, Hugo
Hercod of Wadebridge.
The World Barista
Championship is not a widely-publicised event in the UK - as
such, it is unlikely that the streets of Britain will be hung
with St George flags in support of Hugo, as they would be for a
football final. However, Espresso Warehouse has stressed that
it makes very good sense for every café owner to take an
interest in what is going on, and ideally, to involve their
staff – because what they will pick up from watching this will
lead to better and more profitable sales. (Ideally, every
trade supplier in Britain should think to start their sales
calls next week with a reminder of the event... is that a good
enough hint?!)
“This event really
does shape the industry,” says McGann. “Watching this tells you
what will evolve through the coffee trade. The development of
temperature stability, which is now a standard requirement in
choosing an espresso machine, is a direct result of things seen
and done at a world barista final; the move towards better
grinder blades has evolved from the barista championships.
Manufacturers catch up with what is being done and said here,
and the results evolve into what is being used and done on the
high street.”
The British
representative this year is Hugo Hercod, of the Relish coffee
shop and deli in Wadebridge, Cornwall. Earlier this year Hugo
won the UK title at the Hotelympia exhibition, where he
impressed the judges with his ‘signature drink’, a kind of
Turkish Delight with an espresso base. His signature drink this
week in Copenhagen will be an adapted version of that.
“Hugo will be a
strong competitor,” confirms Gary McGann, general manager of
world-final sponsor Espresso Warehouse. “The great challenge he
faces is that the other international baristas are employees of
companies which have put resources behind them, and have paid
for them to train all the time, night and noon. Hugo runs his
own business, and so is at a disadvantage in terms of the time
he has had to practice – but he will compete well.”
The World Barista
Championship is held at the Wonderful Coffee expo in Copenhagen;
the early rounds begin on Thursday this coming week (19th),
and the top six world contestants will compete the final on
Sunday. The reigning world champion barista is Jim Hoffman, of
Square Mile Coffee in London, the first Briton to take the
title.
*
Mulmar, representing La
Marzocco in the UK, has today announced a limited edition
espresso machine to tie in with the WBC finals.
La Marzocco machines are used
in the world finals, so the company asked Royal Copenhagen, the
top-class Royal Danish Porcelain Manufacturer, to hand-paint a
number of FB80 machines in their own unique design. Some of
these are now on sale as collectors’ items – details at
http://www.lamarzocco.it/collectors_sale/index.html
*
There is a call for entries in
another national contest this week. The BSA’s bev-e awards,
which recognise good work by cafes, have racked up a hundred
nominations for cafes around the UK to be judged for this year’s
title – but London is described as a ‘dead spot’, and will
probably not feature in the contest at all unless somebody
nominates some entries there.
“I just cannot believe that
individuals cannot get a decent tea or coffee, made by people
who are proud of it, in London!” the head judge, Ranald
Paterson, has told us. Judging of the awards will take four
weeks, and should be finished by the end of July.
*
Costa has nominated this
Saturday, 14th June, as its first Foundation Day, in
which all profits made from its 700 UK stores on that day will
be donated to the Costa Foundation to invest back into coffee
growing communities.
Costa cites
some research which it recently commissioned to show that
80 per cent of people in
the UK now want the option of purchasing ethical coffee from
their regular high street outlets - and that they are also
willing to pay an average of 14p more per cup to ensure their
coffee is an ethical choice.
According to David Hutchinson,
Costa’s marketing director, the money raised will help the Costa
Foundation build five schools across Costa Rica, Colombia,
Guatemala and Ethiopia.
Costa’s research found that 56 per
cent of consumers would choose a high street café based on
whether or not it sold an ethically-sourced product, and that 39
per cent of consumers would prefer cafes to have an
ethically-sourced product as their main or ‘default’ coffee.
*
Starbucks and SSP (operator
of Caffe Ritazza) have announced a partnership agreement to open
more than 150 Starbucks stores in prime travel channels in key
European markets within the next three years.
The agreement involves co-operation across the European travel
market,
covering both airport and
railway station locations. Starbucks will give SSP licensing
rights to the
Starbucks brand in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The
appeal for Starbucks is that SSP has the experience of operating
in travel locations in Europe for over 60 years. The European
deal is Starbucks' largest licensing agreement outside the U.S.
10th
June
It is a big time for
barista training centres – just a week after Illy announced
their new centre, Cooper’s Coffee has said it will build the UK’s
largest barista training resource outside London. This will be a
1,000 sq.ft. site, part of the company’s expansion which will also
involve an extra 2,500 sq.ft. of warehouse space.
The new training centre will
feature a 360-degree training bar and video facilities. David
Cooper has said that he has spent three years buying the land around
his existing office, to allow for the expansion; he will also be
landscaping the area, and providing a new car park and picnic area.
Work will begin this month, and completion is expected in September.
An additional piece of information
from Cooper’s involves their Dalla Corte UK operation – the new Pro
machine features what is thought to be the first control system to
allow a barista to change the temperature of the water flow halfway
through an espresso shot.
It is reported that Dalla Corte UK
has now reached 200 sales of Dalla Corte espresso machines, at an
average price of over £5,000.
The Rancilio espresso machine
company of Italy
has completed its acquisition of the Egro Coffee Systems
manufacturing operation in Switzerland, and members of the Rancilio
family have now assumed control of their new subsidiary. The
British distributor of Rancilio, Drury / Coffee Machine Company,
says that since it began distributing Egro, customers have reported
satisfaction with both operation and reliability. What is expected
now is some cross-fertilisation of ideas between Rancilio, a
dedicated espresso-machine maker, and Egro, a total bean-to-cup
operation. (Drury’s Anglo-Italian chief, Marco Olmi, has offered us
the wry observation that this will be a rare instance of the
Italians improving on Swiss efficiency!)
(Meanwhile, expect some
developments following Drury’s recent introduction of
environmentally-friendly packaging of roasted beans in hessian
sacks).
Café Sienna, the
Yorkshire supplier run by the top man in the Beverage Service
Association, David Veal, has increased its customer base by about a
fifth with one acquisition – the company has bought Janines of
Mexborough. Janines is a general supplier of beverages and coffee
machines to cafes, pubs, council offices, restaurants and the like,
with half of its customers in Yorkshire and the rest spread around
the UK. The former managing director, Mike Ritchie, has moved to
Style Café of Lancashire.
The coffee shop at
Gloucester
cathedral has been broken into. What did the thieves
take? They took the CCTV security system!
The latest and most bizarre
story of café planning regulations combines both a
change-of-use aspect and a reverse twist on the chairs-outside-cafes
story. In this case, a couple in Northumberland have been ordered by
the local council to erect tables and chairs at their home, and put
up signs advertising beverages for sale… because, the council says,
the building they live in was formerly a café, and nobody applied
for permission to change the use of the building into a
dwelling-house. To avoid being prosecuted by the council, they have
been forced to offer tea and coffee, even though one day’s takings
has been as low as £3.60.
Ringtons, the tea company
which has a unique selling point of home delivery in small
quantities, has begun another stage of its expansion plan –
it launched a horse-and-cart delivery service in East Devon this
month. And if the delivery service is successful, the firm will
introduce domestic tea delivery throughout the west country.
Ringtons already delivers to 280,000 domestic customers from 28
depots elsewhere across the UK. Meanwhile, a Newcastle IT company
has already said that it intends to make Ringtons 'the number one
resource for all things to do with tea on the web'.
The Beverage Service
Association is promoting a conference on the theme of
‘Turbocharge your Business’, to be held near Coventry on 24th
September (followed by a golf day on the 25th). The
subjects are finance, marketing, time-management and human
resources. (With regard to time-management, Speciality Food
Retailer magazine, for whom we occasionally write, tell us today of
research that says food retailers waste at least 7.5 per cent of
their wage bill through inefficient time planning).
Barry Mortlock,
who used to run Badgers café in Llandudno and now has other café
interests both in that town and in south Wales, will begin his
annual charity cycle run tomorrow. He cycles from Llandudno to his
Swansea site, and the four-day run aims to raise £10,000 for
children’s hospice work.
To donate online
please visit
www.justgiving.com/coffeeculturecyclechallenge
Joachim Herz, one of the
owners of German retailer Tchibo and one of the world's 500 richest
people, has died in a swimming accident in Atlanta, USA.
According to Forbes, Herz's fortune was about $3 billion, closely
followed by his mother Ingeburg Herz and two brothers.
Beyond the Bean
has named the winner of its recent contest to win a trip to support
the British entrant at the World Barista Championships in
Copenhagen. The winner wasTony Harris of Fig & Olive in Solihull.
(Elsewhere, expect Beyond the Bean to make some noise about
Starbucks' recent introduction of the Stix-to-Go and Stir Stix
products, the plastic things that go in takeaway lids. BtB can
claim to have been the first UK distributor of this product, and
will probably be reminding its customers that they can react very
quickly if the product gains popularity through Starbucks' use).
The Rainforest Alliance has
presented Lavazza with its Green Globe status
for the work that the Italian company has put in to build
partnerships for sustainable development with three coffee-growing
projects that it supports in Columbia, Honduras and Peru. The coffee
from these farms goes into the Tierra blend.
Colonel Grumpy, the retired
military man and diplomat who now trades coffee from a refurbished
Guatemalan bus at county fairs and the like, tells us that
he has opened his first static site – in an army garrison. Colonel
Grumpy’s Bus Stop café will open as part of the
Army Welfare Services
operation on 18th June. The idea of introducing a
speciality coffee bar in a garrison was supported by no less than
the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannat.
