The coffee culture is still on the rise

Reaction to last month’s London Coffee Festival has sparked more debate over whether speciality coffee has yet reached the crest of its wave, or whether the public’s enthusiasm still has some way to go – and if so, how the hospitality trade should be prepared to respond to even greater consumer interest in coffee. The public response to the event surprised even many of the exhibitors, when they heard that the attendance was 16,209, of which 10,127 were consumers and 6,082 were trade visitors.

These figures were indeed surprising – even the number of ‘trade’ visitors, members of the leisure industry who turned up to see what is happening in the coffee world, were claimed to be higher than the coffee trade’s own specialist business-to-business shows.

The public attendance figure was quite astonishing, even in an industry which has been often reported to be dominating the high street.

The trade press which serves the beverage industry has been suspicious of some of the more wilder and over-enthusiastic figures which have plagued the coffee trade in recent years – three years ago, a survey commissioned by one of the biggest coffee chains attempted to show that 35 per cent of the British population go into coffee shops once a week, and just last month a daily paper reported that ‘eight in ten of the population drink coffee every day… spending an average of £2.88 per cup’.

These figures, which simply do not relate in practical terms to the ‘economically active’ population, are a combination of exaggerated ‘research’ and loose reporting, but it is certainly true that the public enthusiasm for coffee does continue to soar – and it is true that at the London Coffee Festival, crowds really did stretch round the block for each of the three sessions held over four days.

What drew these crowds is still unclear. Enthusiasm for coffee in the ‘gourmet’ or ‘connoisseur’ sense was probably behind many of them, as it is correctly said that the general public is these days more knowledgeable and demanding of its coffee than ever before. Equally, the social aspect may be responsible for having drawn many of them – the community role of the coffee shop continues to be higher than ever before. Putting the two together, the demand for truly good coffee in a truly desirable social space, is something which certain parts of the hospitality trade have yet to catch up with.

There was been much to learn from interaction between trade and consumers at the London event, organiser Jeffrey Young told Coffee House magazine. One clear observation was that many trade suppliers felt a sense of coming together with the public in a common enthusiasm for a ‘movement’ surrounding the concept of great coffee and the coffee-house culture.

“The increase in standards of quality coffee and café environments has made the cafe culture appealing to the British consumer lifestyles,” remarked Jeffery Young. “There is an important social aspect to the café culture – people go to coffee venues not just for coffee and food, but also to be around other human beings, and this is a compelling factor as to why this sector has been so robust, even in recessions.

“At the same time, consumers are curious and interested about coffee, which is a fascinating product, as part of the overall growth in ‘food culture’.”

At the London Coffee Festival, several exhibitors agreed that the hospitality trade must now respond even more to the enthusiasm being shown by consumers.

At La Cimbali, a maker of Italian espresso machines, marketing manager Matt Tuffee reported that the general public displayed a genuine interest in both coffee and equipment.

“We had wanted to avoid a pointless queue of people just wanting free coffee. We got around this by engaging in conversation with every person that asked for coffee, in demonstrating what we were showing… and this seemed to get a really good response.

“For the trade to capitalise on this interest, we need to keep the momentum up.”

Union Hand-Roasted, a pioneer of speciality coffee whose festival appearance involved a continuously well-attended series of live coffee-roasting demonstrations, roaster Jeremy Torz suggested that the London festival demonstrated the coffee trade and the public getting together in a way which embodies the spirit of the modern coffee culture. This, he acknowledged, is something which the wider hospitality trade could do well to recognise and react to.

“From the public profile, most of the people we spoke to had a genuine interest in coffee, and probably represent the emerging trends of the ‘early adopters’. Both the trade and public visitors reflected a true emergence of the coffee sub-culture.

“It seems that all we feel about the ‘boutique’ and ‘third wave’ coffee is now slowly coming true, and that the tipping point we hope for in creating a new sense about coffee, and new standards for coffee in the UK, now has a real chance of breaking through.”

This is not, he suggested, simply a minority interest. It was that ‘sub-culture’ interest in gourmet coffee, popularly known as the ‘third wave’ of the modern coffee market, which recently inspired the big high street coffee chains to raise their game significantly. Now, the hospitality trade in general could do well to look closely and seriously at what is really happening in coffee, and to realise that coffee is no longer something they can regard as a commodity product… the general consumer now expects something truly special in return for their two or three pounds a cup.

If the hospitality trade clicks to this, the standard of coffee in the UK could be in for another quantum leap.

“Let’s not forget that the big coffee players looked very closely at what was happening around the edges, and reacted accordingly,” agreed Torz.

“There are exciting times ahead!”

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Suspended coffee – a charitable row begins, and inspires a new trade version

Angus McKenzie (left) and Louie Salvoni

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A remarkable row has cropped up over the recent craze for ‘coffee in suspense’, the practice which originated in Italy and which has now been taken up by several British coffee shops after becoming widely-spread over the internet. At the same time, an imaginative variant of the idea has been created to benefit Shelter from the Storm, a charity supported by many in the coffee trade.

The ‘suspense’ practice, which was first reported in the UK by Coffee House magazine last year, is rather similar to the ‘paying it forward’ practice already familiar in the USA, but probably originates from Italy. The ‘suspense’ coffee is made available when a customer tells a café that he will buy one for himself and another to be ‘put up on the board’. It remains there ‘in suspense’ until a needy person comes into the café, and asks if there are any free items available – some coffee houses promote the fact that they offer such pre-paid items.

In recent days, there has been quite a rush of cafes taking the idea up – Suspended Coffee Sheffield has become a movement, set up on a Facebook page, and a couple of local coffee shops and tea-rooms have already become involved. The same has happened in Scotland. In Bedford, Frescoes has begun its own project, and in Coventry, a community café has taken the idea up.

And then it was reported by one of the daily papers that Starbucks had followed the trend.

However, not everyone is in favour of the idea. Doubts began to be raised when it was pointed out that the purchase price paid by a generous donor does not actually go entirely to the needy recipient – the vast majority of the price of a coffee goes to a café’s costs, and to their profit. Thus, it is argued, a café offering the ‘suspense’ facility makes a profit from any coffee put up on the board, and therefore is not being entirely charitable.

There has been a deal of support for a blog written by Karen Mercer of the My Coffee Stop café at Enfield Chase station, who has come out against the idea.

My Coffee Stop is known in its area for supporting both local community projects and local business projects, and highlighted a different aspect of the scheme. On her blog ‘My Coffee Stop Stories’, Karen wrote:

“The idea has gone viral all over Facebook and people are loving the concept, it really pulls at their heart strings and you’d think that coffee shop owners and large chains would be rushing to support, it wouldn’t you?

“They do NOT! But why not, when it seems like such a brilliant idea, an idea that pumps money into the coffee shop, makes people that pay for the coffee feel good, and gives a little help to a homeless soul?

“I am completely against it. We have spent hours discussing how our coffee shop can be of benefit to the community, but when we heard about the suspended coffee scheme, we had a bitter taste in our mouth and a sadness in our hearts… although this idea seems like a good one on the surface, we would never ever do it.

“Part of the spirit of owning a coffee shop is that you can pass support onto others when you can. I believe most people in coffee shops will give a coffee and a bite to eat to a homeless person, without such a scheme being in place. Plenty of independents and chains do the same. There doesn’t need to be a scheme, as most people running coffee shops have a really big heart and sense of community.

“Do you really think that if a homeless person walks into a coffee shop, they get turned away, if there is no ‘suspended coffee’? I see it as part of the pleasure of owning a coffee shop that if someone can’t afford a coffee, they’re homeless, destitute, depressed, we can offer them coffee, water, tea, soup and a little snack to take away.”

And then, she referred to the dangerous matter of the profit element.

“I really, really wouldn’t want my customers to pay for what I see as quite a spiritual thing. We have a responsibility to share our success with others that need help in our society. It would feel dirty to get money from someone and make a profit from someone else’s misery.

“To set up a scheme like this and get everyone to say ‘ah’ and get them to pay for coffees that they don’t know are ever going to be provided stinks of scam and it’s not necessary.

“If you truly want to support these individuals, either ask what coffee they would like, and take it to them, or make sure you visit your independent coffee store more regularly, in the knowledge that most of them would give out coffees upon request and at discretion to homeless people. Book an appointment with yourself and friends, to meet in your local independent coffee shop, buy them all coffees, introduce them to a great business, help the business to thrive, so they can keep trickling down the love and support that you have given, into their community.

“That’s sustainable!”

Her argument drew many comments – some people argued that to be seen doing good in any way is a great thing, others argued against it, and one even said that the supermarket practice of inviting customers to donate tins of food was simply a profit-making scam. Some agreed with the concept that any decent coffee shop owner would donate a drink to a needy person, others said this would not happen in business.

(A barista from another country, writing with tongue firmly in cheek, suggested that he could make a nice profit from the extra coffees, and even more if he did not give any away at all – as the homeless are unlikely to be reading Facebook, he suggested, they will not know the scheme exists, and are therefore unlikely to come in and claim a ‘suspense’ coffee!)

One of the cafe owners working the scheme, Kevin Kavanagh of Frescoes, readily acknowledged that there are potential problems, and that he had attempted to balance the altruistic aspect with the commercial needs of a business.

“I did think of the other aspects, and it’s a tricky one,” he said. “However, we open Christmas Day morning for the homeless, and we make no charge for things like that whatsoever. So I see the ‘suspended coffee’ idea as enabling Joe Public to do something… if Joe wishes to. If you like, I’m creating the opportunity for people to help the homeless in their local area.

“The other commercial consideration is that it’s important not to harm the business by clogging up the day-to-day operation with lots of people after a free coffee… so I am doing it as a 12oz takeaway from 8-30 to noon only.”

Meanwhile, within the supply side of the coffee trade, a different version of the idea was devised.

Angus McKenzie, managing director of Kimbo Coffee, came up with the idea of a ‘suspense’ coffee which benefits Shelter from the Storm, the homeless shelter in London founded by Louie Salvoni of Espresso Service and supported by many in the trade.

McKenzie’s idea was to set up a text donation scheme – by texting a code ‘CAFÉ13£2’ to 70070, a donation of £2 would be given direct to the Shelter, and that donation would be entirely given over to supplying cups of coffee to those in need over the shelter’s counter. As the Shelter is a non-profit charity, there would be no question that any portion of the donation could be used for any profitable purpose.

The suggestion was taken up so quickly that the text line was open within hours… and one of its earliest supporters was indeed Karen Mercer from My Coffee Stop, who had raised concerns over other schemes.

“We have done away with any doubt about where the money goes,” said Louie Salvoni, of the Shelter.

Curiously, Louie Salvoni did suggest to Starbucks that they take up the idea in support of the Shelter, but the giant has taken another route.

“Coming soon, when a customer buys a suspended coffee we will provide coffee to that value to our long-standing community-charity partner Oasis, which will distribute it through community hubs across the UK,” the company announced.

The man who had the idea in support of Shelter from the Storm, Angus McKenzie of Kimbo, said he understood the concerns raised by My Coffee Stop.

“I know Karen is very central to her community and she simply grudges the notion of a genuine and existing concept becoming branded and stolen, to the delight of the big social corporate responsibility departments of chains,” he remarked. “In the high street chain model, there would be an outcry if the £2 donated by one consumer really meant that the costs of a coffee – perhaps 23p – were passed to a needy recipient and the remainder went towards operating profits of the host coffee shop!

“So, our inverse scenario promises a very simple idea – your ‘micro donation’ of £2 goes entirely to the charity and is further enhanced by charity tax relief, so the shelter can give even more in a place where the needy get shelter, warmth, nourishment plus love, compassion and TLC. We’ve taken the very best human spirit and kindness and simply channelled it directly, cleanly, transparently, to those who need it.

“How fitting that in April, as it snowed on the streets of London in the bitter, bitter cold, chunks of £2 started flying in to help. It’s heart-warming, it’s bloody great, it’s real and it’s happening!”

This story also appears on the Caffe Culture news portal

Bewleys of Ireland buys top UK coffee roaster

Bolling Coffee of Yorkshire, creator of the high-profile Grumpy Mule brand, has been acquired by Bewley’s, the giant coffee business of Dublin.

“We have had a lot of interest,” Bolling’s managing director Ian Balmforth told Coffee House. “We accepted Bewley’s because they are honest, seriously good coffee people with integrity, and are absolutely right for the future of Bolling.”

Both companies have a high reputation in the direct-sourcing of coffee, which in its correct form is the extremely deep and thorough system of sourcing which involves a true ‘relationship’ between roaster and farmer.

“Bewley’s think we work in the correct way for the UK market,” said Ian Balmforth. “Their direct sourcing is an example of best-practice in the industry, and at the Allegra conference last week I said from the stage that I was bloody well fed up with some of the nonsense that some brands talk about ‘direct sourcing’… and I got a round of applause for it!

“We have talked for a long time about ‘beyond Fairtrade’ and ‘beyond Rainforest’, and the way Bewley’s works and the way we work joins up a lot of very good dots in good direct-sourcing practice. We all see sustainable, traceable, ethical sourcing as the future of the industry.”

Bollings will come under the direct control of Brendan McDonnell of Bewley’s as managing director; Ian Balmforth will adopt a commercial director role, allowing him to undertake more commitments outside the company.

“This is my baby, and I’m not going anywhere,” he told us firmly. “I’m just not working seventy hours a week any more!”

This story was first exclusively reported by Boughton’s Coffee House. http://www.coffee-house.org.uk

Bold move in coffee house and cafe awards

Jaguar, the extremely significant importer and distributor of spare parts to the coffee machine trade, has made a big gesture to encourage entries to the Beverage Standards Association’s annual accreditation scheme – this year, it may possibly subsidise a hundred entries from beverage operators who might not otherwise have been able to put themselves in for recognition. Furthermore, the Jaguar initiative may mean recognition for more pubs, hotels, and other kinds of caterer who have moved towards higher standards in hot beverages.

The theory of the BSA awards is to give cafes and caterers the chance to display a quality sign or ‘mark’ which confirms that the venue prepares and serves its drinks in what the trade considers the right manner, and to the proper standards. There are some individual prizes awarded to some cafes which are reckoned to have served the judges the best drinks in the country, but the overall benefit of the scheme is that the beverage industry can demonstrate an increasing number of venues working to high standards.

As with so many trade contests, the drawback is of numbers – the number of outlets now serving espresso-based coffee might be reckoned to have reached the hundreds of thousands, but entries to national café or barista contests still struggle to reach three figures.

It is always a matter of debate as to whether entry fees are a factor in this – event organisers will argue that they need income to cover the costs of judging and administration, whereas for independent café owners, an entry fee is just one more expense that they can do without. And, has often been observed, what may be ‘a relatively small amount’ to a well-paid executive can be an awkward and unwelcome extra expense for a front-line café owner!

With this in mind, Jaguar has invited its distributor network to get involved. Every distributor who does a certain item of business with Jaguar in the near future will have the right to nominate a beverage operator as an entrant for the BSA awards. Jaguar will effectively subsidise that operator’s entry, and has committed to supporting up to a hundred entries – which, managing director James Russell has told the Portal, appears to be a perfectly achievable figure.

“We were involved last year as sponsors of the three milk-based drink prizes, and while there were a lot of things about the contest that we liked, the thing that stood out for us was that the numbers were not enough.

“Every entrant we spoke to, without exception, said that the process had been good for them, on two levels – not just publicity drawing people in, but the process of being monitored and the target of keeping standards up in a day-to-day business.

“But it really stood out that this needs to happen to more people. It has to be on a bigger scale, because the more winners, the more credibility… if the consumer sees one sticker on a window, they may forget it, but when they see it again and again, they realise it must mean something.

“The general idea of something that the public can see relating to drink standards is a good one for the trade in general.”

A curiosity of the Jaguar move is that it may see the accreditation stickers appearing in more kinds of venue than before. Last year’s BSA awards did appear to recognise some pub and hotels serving good coffee, but James Russell thinks he can broaden this.

“Some of the distributors we work with specialise in cafes, some in pubs, and some in hotels… but by supplying all the distributors, we cover them all. So, through what we’re doing, the potential for hotels and pubs and restaurants now has more scope.

“If standards are rising in the kind of venues where you might not have expected it, then this move may achieve a widening of the recognition of the different types of business now serving good drinks.”

This story is by Boughton’s Coffee House magazine, and also appears on the Caffe Culture Portal, the news website allied to the cafe trade’s main show: http://www.caffeculture.com

Los meses flacos – the scandal of the ‘thin months’ in which coffee farmers still starve

What is the true situation of coffee farmers, as we enter 2013, a clear twenty years after the establishment of the Fairtrade Foundation? In some places, the truth continues to be very disturbing – the horror of starvation still exists among poor farmers, to a degree which many in the British and American coffee trades just do not realise.

It has now been revealed by Rick Peyser, of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, in his book Brewing Change, which has become available in the UK.

The remarkable thing about this book is that it has been described as ‘a charming memoir’ of the writer’s time in the coffee trade, and at first it certainly seems a gentle and easy story… until, when you least expect it, the author assaults you with the bare truths of what he really found in coffee farming communities.

And that is, indeed, the way it happened to Rick Peyser himself – for him, the truth was a long time coming, and when it came, it hit him hard.

Rick works with Green Mountain Coffee of Vermont, which is just a name to many in the UK, but which is absolutely massive in the US. He has been, among other things, public relations director for Green Mountain, but at the same time has managed to fit in such jobs as president of the Speciality Coffee Association of America and being a senior man in the Fairtrade movement.

And so, in the early part of this book, we learn such interesting things as myths of organic coffee, the comparison of open sun and shade-grown coffee, and for the first time, details of the big SCAA fraud scandal of 2005, when a past senior officer was found to have left a vast hole in the accounts – four years later he was jailed for three years and ordered to repay almost half a million dollars. We also learn some new details of the bizarre case in 2006, when Starbucks attempted to trademark certain names of Ethiopian coffee regions (and we also learn that, amazingly, some people in the SCAA at first wanted to back Starbucks in the case!)

And then we hit the real story – what Rick Peyser refers to as ‘a parallel reality I hadn’t known existed’.

There is one extremely unusual skill which Peyser has, very rarely among coffee people, and it was this which helped him uncover the truth. That skill is that he bothered to take the trouble to learn the language of coffee farmers – indeed, to the astonishment and not entire approval of his family, he left his home to travel for quite a period in coffee-growing areas, to become fluent in their language.

Had he not done so, he would have completely missed the true significance of a phrase which came up in conversation with farmers – ‘los meses flacos’, or ‘the thin months’. He came to realise that this simple phrase did not mean just an inconvenient period at the end of the harvest, when the money had run out – it could mean an annual period of starvation lasting four months, or even longer.

Having worked for the Fairtrade organisation, Peyser was shaken. “These were Fairtrade farmers who were supposed to be getting a reasonable price for their coffee – and they were struggling to put food on their table for a significant part of every year?

“The family situation hit me – they went hungry for three to four months of every year.

“I was furious I hadn’t known about this. I felt stupid. How could I be in the industry for so long and not know what the farmers were dealing with?

“I realised I had never thought to ask… nobody had.”

Thoroughly embarrassed by what he had learned, Peyser went on to consider that he had been promoting and believing Fairtrade – “but what good was Fairtrade if the famer can’t put food on the table for his family?”

He also realised that the commercial coffee industry had simply assumed that its pursuit of high-quality coffee would have a trickle-down financial benefit to the farmers. It did not.

And he realised that in general, when buyers made their VIP visits to coffee farms, they did so after the harvests, when the farmers had been paid – of course the farmers were smiling, because they had food on the table when the industry visitors came.

This was the awakening which led to the work that Green Mountain then put in on behalf of farmers. One of their senior managers asked the troubling question: ‘do we want our customers to know that our farmers struggle to put food on their tables?’ Putting it more bluntly, asks Peyser, what happens when the quality of the bean is put ahead of the quality of life?

The result of this thinking was projects such as ‘F4F’, the Food for Farmers project.

And does this situation really exist, in 2013, and what does the coffee trade think about it?

“I have found surprise to be the general reaction,” Rick Peyser told Coffee House magazine. “At an SCAA Conference, I shared the results of the study that indicated that 67% of those small-scale coffee farmers interviewed in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and southern Mexico had between 3-8 months of extreme scarcity of food every year. A percentage of the industry has now been made aware of the issue, but it is safe to assume that the majority of people in the industry still are unaware of the immense challenge that many coffee farming families face, even with the advance of “sustainable” certifications.

“After serving on the board of directors of Fairtrade for six years, I was personally very surprised by the existence of these ‘thin months’, as I interviewed Fairtrade farmers in Nicaragua as part of the study. Like others, I thought that Fairtrade would raise farmers’ income from coffee sufficiently so that they would be able to put food on the table all year long, send their children to school, etc.

“Those who have not heard it directly from the mouths of farmers, may be even more surprised than I was. Hungry coffee farmers certainly doesn’t seem ‘fair’ trade.”

Furthermore, says Peyser, if the industry continues to concentrate on the quality of coffee above the people of the growing communities, then the industry is doomed. All the disease-resistant hybrids in the world will not work if there is nobody alive on the farms to tend the plants.

And everyone in the industry can make a move towards this. He begins the book with the remark that: ‘you do not have to be a CEO to change the course of a company or influence an industry’, and an equally good lesson of this book is how it shows that even ‘just a PR guy’ can have something to say, and set in motion the wheels of great change.

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Brewing Change was published in the US last spring, and in the UK this February. It is available online from the Book Depository and Amazon at around £10.

This review was first published in Boughton’s Coffee House, the magazine for the UK coffee trade.
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Harris and Hoole coffee ‘scandal’ – did the press miss the point?

Nick Tolley

Although the ‘artisan’ sector of the coffee-bar trade has begun the new year by hitting the headlines in a negative way, the most remarkable thing about the press frenzy over the Harris and Hoole chain are that national journalists have missed the main feature of the story.

The matter which has recently energised the national press is the ‘shock horror’ revelation that the Harris and Hoole chain of ‘artisan’ coffee bars is in fact part-owned by the giant Tesco, which is the world’s biggest retailer and which accounts for one pound in every ten spent on the high street. First the Guardian, and then the Mail, ran long stories reporting how they had managed to find shoppers willing to say they were shocked at this news.

The situation is of course well-known to the coffee trade – both Coffee House magazine and the Caffe Culture Portal broke the news many months ago.

In its latest quest for sensationalism, the mainstream press have missed two major aspects of the story – that the Harris and Hoole team have already established a clear track record of being quite legitimate artisan coffee brewers, long before they worked with Tesco, and perhaps more important, that they have established an equally clear record in the ‘direct-sourcing’ of coffee, something which they have continued into the new business. They have effectively forced their ethical-sourcing principles into the deal.

The Guardian was first off the mark, finding several coffee-drinkers to say that, typically, that “I avoid Starbucks because it’s a big chain and it avoids tax… now I find this is Tesco it makes me upset. I feel duped. Tesco is taking over the world. If it Harris and Hoole had been called Tesco Coffee, I wouldn’t have come in.”

Almost immediately, the Mail copied this with a fairly identical story, finding more people to say more or less the same things. However, the Mail did briefly acknowledge that the Tolleys have a track record in coffee, before saying two things which are quite distinctly wrong: the writer reports that ‘not a single person I approach knows that today they’ve been drinking a Tesco product’, and then finishes the story by saying: ‘so, the next time you pop into an apparently independent café in search of a good cuppa, you might want to do some research into whose coffee you’re actually drinking’.

As the coffee trade knows, this is wrong – it is not Tesco coffee. For the coffee trade, much of the interest of this story when it first broke was that the Tolleys would not be using ‘a Tesco product’. They source their coffee from Union Hand-Roasted, whose reputation for direct work in support of farmers is long established.

When the coffee media first reported the story, one roaster said: “if Tesco really can keep to the ethics of Taylor Street Baristas, then that certainly will be a step forward for coffee,” and Jeremy Torz of Union commented: “Tesco may be doing this knowing that ‘better’ coffee is now on the radar of most consumers, and that they may create a bridge between the artisan world and the chain world.”

The latest expose was met philosophically by the Tolley family, and with unconcealed sarcasm by the New Statesman and the Spectator.

The Spectator was scornful: “It’s official: this country is going to the dogs. Tesco has been insidiously infiltrating the coffee shop market with a chain of shops that look independent. The greatest crime of Harris and Hoole, which has its majority stake owned by the family that founded it – is that Tesco doesn’t plaster its own logo above the shops. How dare they offer consumers a nice-looking coffee shop where they can choose to buy coffee, if they so wish. What an outrage.”

The New Statesman said: “This is supposed to be what capitalism’s about, right? Tesco has identified a desire that customers have, and joined forces with a coffee chain to provide for that desire. The question which no-one seems to have addressed is what it is that the customers actually desire.”

The chief executive of Tesco then wrote a blog, saying that he put money into the Tolleys business as part of the general vision of bringing good coffee to a wider audience. He added: “It’s the Tolley’s business, their brand. Our investment helps them to take it further. So what’s in it for Tesco? I’ve talked a lot about loving the stores we have, making them an appealing destination for customers to come. When the Tolleys are ready, we will put them into some of our stores… and it will be another reason for customers to shop with us.”

And that is the attitude taken by those in the coffee trade to whom the trade’s news magazine has spoken on the matter. Many have taken the attitude that ‘this is business’, and that the Tolley family have simply accepted an investment opportunity. As a side issue, it is widely hoped (although cynics express doubt about this) the Tolleys’ stance on good coffee and ethical sourcing will develop further into general retail.

The Tolleys themselves received the furore calmly.

“I was hardly surprised by the Guardian piece,” said Nick Tolley. “The interview with the journo was a most unpleasant experience – it was clear from the very beginning that he had an agenda for the article before we’d even met.

“The fact is, we’re behaving like a local coffee shop because that’s what we want to be – a local coffee shop. It’s in our DNA. Our managers are encouraged to think about how best to engage with their communities. We’re looking to source product locally. We hire locally. We design each of our shops individually so that each local town or neighbourhood feels like it’s got something unique to call their own; we’re not some pre-fabricated, soulless template that’s ubiquitously stamped on every high street in every town across the land.

“What’s more, we’re looking to do so by keeping quality coffee at the heart of our mission: by training our baristas beyond anything dreamed of by the current crop of high street multiples; and by using directly traded, specialty-grade coffee (again, the only high street operator to do so).

“Ironically, we’re looking to do everything that the big chains and corporates are accused of not doing. And yet, in taking this approach, we’re being accused of ‘deception’!”

This story has first appeared on the Caffe Culture news website, http://www.caffeculture.com

Coffee company diverts foil bags from landfill

An entirely new ‘upcycling’ idea has been pioneered by a coffee supplier in Scotland. It provides a partial answer to environmental campaigners who complain that the country uses too many one-time disposable carrier bags, and the supplier involved in the project has suggested that the entire coffee trade would do well to copy the idea.

The new idea involves the re-use of the foil bags in which coffee suppliers most commonly provide their roasted beans to the catering industry. These bags are generally destined to end up in landfill.

However, Findlay Leask and his team from Caber Coffee in Aberdeen have organised a project with a social enterprise company, which involves one-kilo coffee packs being turned into heavy-duty re-usable shopping carrier bags. The social enterprise company is getting through two hundred coffee packs a month, with Caber Coffee providing the used packs as the base material, and then paying for the new carrier bags.

The idea came up after a local school had experimented with foils in its workshop.

“These are the standard foil bags used across the coffee industry,” explains Findlay Leask. “A customer presented us with an apron made from this foil, which turned out to be waterproof and splash-proof – it was like a duck’s back!

“I was intrigued, and found out it had been made by a local academy, who then said to me – ‘we make shopping bags, too!’. I thought this was great – how many could they do? But a school has a limited amount of time, so we approached Glencraft, a social enterprise company which has the proper industrial sewing machines which you need for this – this is a very tough fabric, so you must use a commercial sewing machine.”

The process turns out to be extremely clever, while not too complex.

“Ten one-kilo coffee bags make one carrier bag – three each side, and then the ends and base. The original coffee bags are simply folded, and the tops are snipped off – we can even use torn coffee bags. There is no lining, so the waterproofing applies to the inside as much as the outside.

“The most difficult part was the handle, but the social enterprise company had a supply of webbing, which took care of that.”

The social enterprise company, Glencraft, employs several dozen workers with disabilities, visual impairment or learning difficulties. The company has pointed out that as its logo is stitched into every bag, it is having the effect of showing that such an organisation can produce high-quality bespoke products.

The coffee ‘carrier bag for life’ need not be a one-off idea, says Caber – it could be an inspiration to the rest of the coffee industry.

“This is a very interesting way of re-using something which must otherwise go to landfill,” says Findlay Leask. “It is a great way for the industry to give itself green credentials, and everyone we have shown this too has said ‘what a great idea!’ We’re not insisting that this is unique to us – it’s a subject which the entire industry could take up.

“It just shows that if you look at things which would go to landfill, and give them to someone with imagination, all kinds of good ideas can come out of it.

“The only downside is getting our coffee bags back – we always ask customers to put their empty coffee bags aside, and some of them always promise to do so, but at the moment we do not see more than ten per cent of them back.”

Although Caber is paying the social enterprise company £5 each for the new carrier bags, it is not selling them on – it is giving them away, partly as a promotional move and partly to encourage the rest of the coffee trade to take up the same idea, or to think up new ones.

“We have not sold any, because it has turned out to be such a great promotion in giving them away. You can imagine how proud I would be to see everyone coming out of Tesco carrying Caber Coffee carrier bags!”

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This story has also appeared on the Caffe Culture news portal, the news website of the Caffe Culture show. It was written by Coffee House, the leading news magazine for the coffee trade – see http://www.coffee-house.org.uk

Totnes v Costa – was the coffee chain petition over-hyped?

There has been a disturbing new development in the matter of small communities fighting to keep large coffee-shop chains out of their town centres. In the most famous case of all, the town of Totnes recently succeeded in preventing an opening by Costa Coffee – however, questions have now been asked about the massive petition which appeared to show that the entire town was against the arrival of the chain.

The case of Costa versus Totnes went on for several months, with the advantage being claimed by one side and then the other. At one point Costa’s application to open appeared to have been approved by the authorities, but the chain was then faced by a quite unprecedented display of local opposition.

Totnes is the home of the founder of the Transition Town movement, is said to be one of the most active Fairtrade towns in the UK, launched the Clonestoppers campaign to try and prevent national chains entering an area famous for its independent retailers, and even organised a coffee festival to highlight the standard of its local cafes against the proposed arrival of Costa.

A major factor of the campaign was the petition, from which it was at times suggested that a vast percentage of the local population had signed in protest against Costa. National press and broadcasting organisations used phrases such as ‘5,000 residents signed a petition…’

The reaction was such that Costa withdrew its plans for a 70-seat cafe in the town. It was widely reported that the local community had effectively beaten the giant chain.

However, the local community radio station has now suggested that the petition might not be all it had seemed to be. The chairman of Totnes FM, David Parsley, has analysed the petition, and has reported that less than a quarter of the town’s residents expressed opposition to Costa. Indeed, it is now alleged that claims suggesting the ‘whole town’ was against the chain may not be entirely accurate. It has also been suggested that local councillors and the local MP ‘uncritically’ accepted the campaigners’ word about the petition, and promoted the view that the ‘whole town’ was against Costa, when that may not have been the case.

Mr Parsley, who himself was a signatory to the petition, complained about this to Transition Town Totnes on 16 November, with copies to the local mayor and MP.

According to Transition Town Totnes, who have published the complaint, Mr Parsley alleged that these prominent people in the town had stated, on several occasions, that no-one in Totnes wanted Costa Coffee, or at the very least, that the vast majority of people in Totnes did not want Costa Coffee. By contrast, his analysis of the survey showed that 2,016 residents from a town population of 8,336 signed it. When nearby districts were included in the analysis, another interpretation could be that 2,895 from a total population of 22,869 in the town and surrounding areas expressed opposition – but either way, it was a minority figure.

It was suggested that the analysis of the petition was ‘very generous to the campaign’, in counting as for the campaign signatories who ‘probably’ lived nearby, those who seemed to have signed for a partner, and even those who had signed twice. Even when the analysis was thus ‘heavily weighted’ in favour of the anti-Costa campaign, it was still allegedly found that less than a quarter of townspeople actively objected to Costa.

According to Mr Parsley’s analysis, only 24 per cent of local residents, or 12 per cent of those living in the general nearby area, supported the NoToCosta campaign, and 63 per cent of signatures were from people who are not ‘locals’. These other signatories were not just from elsewhere in the same county, but from Scotland, London, Manchester, Norfolk, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Morocco.

Consequently, it has been alleged, claims that ‘the majority of those who live in the town were against Costa Coffee’ were not true.

The organisers of the petition and the campaign have responded remarkably mildly, saying that people continue to sign the No To Costa petition and that another analysis of the figures shows that 75 per cent of those who signed are from the local postcode area, and the rest are visitors from Exeter, Plymouth and further afield. It would appear that the campaigners’ view is that their petition undoubtedly shows a considerable anti-chain feeling.

They have said: “needless to say, we stand by our campaign.”

David Parsley has told the coffee trade magazine Coffee House that his analysis now raises a wider question of local government matters.

“I wanted to find out about the petition, because no-one had examined it. We had been told by a couple of people that a lot of out-of-towners had signed it, and when people make such claims, I like to test them.”

The result, he said, came as a surprise.

“I was surprised that people could claim a majority, when a majority had not signed the petition. I would have assumed that the mayor and the MP would have looked at it and checked the facts for themselves – they hadn’t.

“Politicians need to be brought to account. This is not now about Costa – it is about politicians making claims on things they haven’t checked.”

A spokesman for Costa was equally surprised to be told about the analysis of the petition.

The brand remarked:

“Our decision not to open in Totnes was based on a number of factors of which the petition was only part. However, it is disappointing to hear that the petition doesn’t represent the views of local people to the extent that was being suggested at the time.

“We will obviously be keeping an eye on this.”

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This story also appears on the Caffe Culture news portal, http://www.caffeculture.com.

Can anyone ‘analyse’ your house coffee blend?

This article has also appeared today on the CaffeCulture.com news portal

A coffee roaster has spoken this month of his catering trade customers being approached by rivals with an extremely bizarre sales tactic – and now the matter has come to light, other coffee roasters have spoken of experiencing the same tactic from competitor salesmen. It involves the alleged ‘anaylsis’ of a roasted coffee blend.

(For obvious reasons, in this story we have avoided the names of the main participants)

A well-established coffee roaster reports that he was supplying a restaurant with a hundred-per-cent Arabica house blend. A rival came along touting for the business, and said to the client: ‘I think your supplier is telling you fibs about what he’s selling you – it isn’t hundred-per-cent Arabica. Give me a sample of your house blend, and I’ll have it analysed’.

The caterer gave him a sample, and it was taken away. In due course, the salesman came back with information.

The result was actually given in writing, and was phrased obliquely. The would-be supplier reported that the existing blend ‘would appear to be… smooth, even, light flavour, little flavour’, and while not this time actually referring again to the promised ‘analysis’, suggested that ‘we expect the following coffees to provide a close match…’

The following suggested blend involved thirty per cent Vietnamese robusta, and the rest of it was x per cent of a certain origin, y per cent of another origin, and z per cent of a third origin.

The client was unhappy. Although the would-be supplier had avoided saying that the promised ‘analysis’ had been done, the proposal certainly inferred that it had, and it gave the client considerable cause for concern – because the clear suggestion was that his existing blend involved a large robusta content. If he were found to have been advertising hundred-per-cent Arabica which actually had some robusta in it, he could be in trouble with the trading standards people.

The client confronted his existing roaster, who, equally annoyed, went to the trouble of showing the client his recipe, proving that the ‘analysis’ was wrong in every single respect… not one ingredient was right. No robusta was involved, and some of the others ‘identified’ were arguably of extremely ordinary provenance, compared to the quality of the Arabica which had actually been used.

He then showed the client his sacks, and invited him to watch the blend being roasted.

In this story, it is the question of ‘analysis’ which has exercised various members of the coffee trade this month. Trying to win somebody’s else’s client is an everyday matter, and so are wild statements by coffee salesmen. Trying to ‘match’ an existing blend is an extremely common occurrence. But is it really possible to ‘analyse’ a roasted blend, and tell what went into it? And what is the justification for trying to win business by scaring the customer out of his wits?

The alleged perpetrator of the ‘analysis’ tactic was challenged about this, and has responded through a third party, who reported it thus:

“They were adamant that they only do this on client request, and they were also adamant that the company they send it to for analysis is massive and very reputable, and has been doing it for many years with a high degree of accuracy. They were adamant that this company absolutely can break out the beans that have gone into a blend.”

This claim is so remarkable that many people in the coffee trade were asked for their opinions on it. And many were very quick to give them.

The supplier behind the alleged tactic had actually given the names of two companies to whom they sent coffee for ‘analysis’. Both of those companies were invited to comment, and reported the following (both of them are extremely reputable companies, but again, their identities have not been given).

The first company said: “this is something we don’t know. We assume that it can be done, but have never tried it.” The second said: “can you do a DNA test to tell arabica from robusta? Yes, but it is expensive and not standard practice. I would suggest that one roaster is using an underhand way of gaining business from another roaster.”

In its reference to DNA, this second company alludes to several items of scientific work which have indeed been done.

In the study ‘Compositional Analysis of Coffee Blends by near Infrared Spectroscopy’ (G. Downey and B. Spengler, 1996) the researchers did refer to a DNA difference between Arabica and robusta, said they failed to achieve sufficient discrimination between the two, but ‘saw promise for quantifying the robusta content of mixtures’. In ‘Coffee species and varietal identification’ (by Tornincasa, Furlan, Pallavicini, and Graziosi) it was said that the researchers presented a method to achieve an analysis to show robusta in a blend, making possible the detection of less than five per cent of robusta content.

In the delightfully-titled ‘Mass Spectrometry-based Electronic Nose’ (by De Winne, Van Leuven, and Dirinck) the researchers analysed all Nespresso blends, and while being able to show a recognisable identification of decaffeinated coffee, and being able to distinguish different ‘flavours’ among the blends, did not claim to be able to distinguish exactly what the different ingredients were.

Some specific work in Hawaii, undertaken in an attempt to stop counterfeiting of Kona coffee, has successfully identified ‘pure’ Kona coffee from coffees sold as Kona but from a different origin. Again, however, it was unable to say exactly what the others were.

In all this work, a certain amount of identification was shown to be possible, but not the compositional breakdown of a roasted blend.

What, then, does the coffee trade think of the alleged ‘analysis’ of a blend, and the claim that the contents of a roasted coffee blend can be identified, in detail?

“Some years ago we were approached by a legitimate university to fund research into DNA fingerprinting of coffee species,” says Stephen Hurst of the green-bean importer Mercanta. “I would love to be able to ‘unlock’ a blend and expose the massive frauds that exist, but to do so you would need a DNA profile from seeds and beans from coffee farms all over the world – a nearly impossible task. But some modest version may be able to identify origins – though I doubt this, as seeds often cross borders.

“I am sceptical that anyone using current technology can re-engineer the blend components of roasted coffee.”

Of all the other suppliers in the trade who were asked about this, in a list which included several roasters of extremely high renown and several green bean importers, not one person (except for the perpetrator of the sales tactic) believed that it is possible for the composition of a roasted blend to be scientifically analysed and the ingredients identified.

From Illy, Marco Arrigo did say that he has sent blends to his lab in Italy for analysis, but for different reasons: “when we look at competitors’ coffees, we look at their defects to judge the value and quality of their coffee. All you can hope to identify is pest invasion, production damage, percentage of oxygen in packaging, presence of fungus or mildew, or maybe age between beans in a batch with carbon dating… but that’s too expensive for regular testing.”

Virtually every roaster who responded said that if they are asked to judge, assess, analyse or copy another blend, they do it by the same basic instruments – the senses.

“We would look at the bean appearance, size, shape, centre cut,” remarked Simon Wakefield of the importing company DR Wakefield. “Do sacks come from origin blended as arabica and robusta? Yes, they do! But robusta beans look different to Arabica beans, both in the raw and in the roast. Different Arabicas and varietals also look different from each other.”

When invited to copy an existing blend, as many roasters are asked to do, extremely experienced coffee tasters can often make a very good educated guess as to the likely components of that blend – but that is a different thing from a claimed scientific analysis.

The basic instrument is the best, came the response from Ian Steel of Atkinson’s in Lancaster.

“I have a very sophisticated onboard analsyer tool called ‘The Nose’! It can detect robusta before it even hits the palate. The best noses in the business, like Jeremy Torz of Union Hand-Roasted, can detect the composition of a blend by nose – he did this once with one of ours that I thought was quite complex.”

The compliment was politely deflected by Jeremy Torz himself, who reported that he too has come under attack by the same tactic of supposed ‘analysis’.

“The same thing happened to me a few years back. A client was approached similarly by another company saying the coffee we had supplied was ‘poor’. They also claimed to have had an analysis done and that also came back with duff information.

“The other company was a large multinational. I was told about it, wrote to the CEO, and got a written apology after I threatened to go public and sue for defamation! They claimed that the action was that of their rep and was ‘not company policy’, blah, blah, blah…”

Only one reputable roaster in Britain, an extremely big contract roaster, is known to have referred to analysis of a roasted blend. The founder of that roastery is said to have told a client that he has an instrument like a scanner – beans go on the glass, the lid is put down, and the machine prints out a recipe of the origins, quantities, and how long they were roasted for. However, it is wise to approach this story with caution, because it is also true that this reputable roaster has a very lively sense of humour, even when teasing clients!

In the entire trade, the general opinion has been the same. Analysis of a blend cannot be done. It was universally thought than any caterer approached by a would-be supplier who offers to ‘analyse’ their existing coffee blend should exercise great caution.

And by far the most entertaining response, from the many who commented, was from roaster Steve Leighton, of Has Bean in Stafford:

“I’ve seen this stuff happen before, and it really is sad. I once had a customer who had an ‘Italian’ brand salesman go into his shop and do an ‘analysis’ of his blend by shaking the beans near to his ear… and then saying: ‘this contains a lot of Brazil’!”

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The Caffe Culture Portal is a leading online news service for the UK coffee trade. Boughton’s Coffee House is the leading trade magazine for the UK coffee trade.

British barista comes close to a world title

Dan Fellows of the UK has succeeded in taking fourth place in the international Coffee in Good Spirits contest, the barista championship which invites contestants to create a coffee cocktail featuring an alcohol content. Most unusually, one of his drinks featured wine, something rarely seen in a coffee contest.

This year’s contest was held in Korea. As well as being our national Good Spirits champ, the British entrant featured highly in this year’s UK barista championship. He works a couple of days a week as a barista trainer for Origin coffee roasters of Cornwall, while studying management training in York. Origin supplied all his competition coffees.

For the international contest, he was required to make both hot and cold signature beverages and an Irish coffee, which is a mandatory requirement of the contest. He had to deliver two identical cold designer drinks and two identical warm designer drinks to a team of four judges in eight minutes, and both hot and cold beverages had to contain Grand Marnier, the contest sponsor.

For the cold drink, he went for freshness.

“The judges had had a lot of creamy drinks – I wanted to stay away from that and give them something clean, not syrupy,” Dan told us after the event. “Grand Marnier is an orange brandy-based liqueur with a citrus acidity which goes well with coffee. I also added a cane sugar syrup poured over cherry ice, which had the effect of adding flavour as it melted, whereas water ice would have made the drink weaker. Then I used a good quality rum with caramel citrus notes, to which I added spices – rather like a mulled effect.

“I stirred together and served with espuma (a light foam) of fresh squeezed orange and lemon juices on the side.”

His warm drink was something very unusual – coffee with a Shiraz wine.

“I had wanted to find a drink which people didn’t expect to work with coffee… there are old arguments about wine and coffee, and which has the more compound flavours, and I wanted to show that they work together. I saw the judges looking perplexed when I introduced it, but they later said it was the best drink of the show.

“I needed something to bind the two together, so I created a crème, and infused the shiraz with vanilla, which ‘calmed it down’ and took the sharpness off it. The crème was blackberry and caster sugar, with Soju, a Korean liqueur – it’s like a mellow vodka, only 20 per cent alcohol.

“As there was a floral note in my Ethiopian coffee, I also added jasmine tea. I muddled them together, strained over Grand Marnier, and added the shot and the red wine.”

All Coffee in Good Spirits contests involve Irish coffee, and unusually, Dan used coffee brewed in an Aeropress.

“This was my downfall – it’s great for taste, but I slightly overfilled it!

“I’ve kept the whisky content secret because I may want to use it next year. I’m not giving away my choice of whisky, but the rules don’t specify that it has to be an Irish one, and this one has a very interesting ageing process.”

It is often said that the key to Irish coffee is getting the cream right. Dan used a local one.

“I went looking for a cream locally, and as I don’t speak Korean, I just picked the one which smelled cleanest. It is with cream that Irish whiskey can go horribly wrong, and the big clue to everybody is, don’t use ‘cream alternatives’! I did in practice, and they split every time – it was freaking me out.”

A big debate over coffee cocktails in competition is of whether drinks are commercially practical, or simply made to impress judges. Both of Dan’s have proved themselves, he told us:

“There is a score for drinks which are ‘commercially applicable’, and a big hotel chain has agreed to do a version of my warm drink. The cold one is something I have served in bars before.”

The championship was won by a barista from Hungary.

This story has also appeared on the Caffe Culture news portal, the major online news source for the coffee-bar trade.