As the café-bar boom continues, so the number of suppliers to the trade increases.  The coffee trade is lucky to have many supremely professional and knowledgeable suppliers… but like any industry, there are some less than reliable ones too.

How does an independent operator tell the difference? How can you be sure a supplier is any good?

Ian Boughton

One of the biggest problems facing the new café bar owner is not finding people to sell to – it is finding the right people to buy from.

For any high-footfall retail business, it is absolutely essential to have a series of suppliers who are thoroughly and completely reliable. In a café bar, if the espresso machine develops a fault, one entire major area of service stops; if the coffee supply is irregular and of varying quality, the customers are going to notice. Heaven forbid that the milkman doesn’t turn up!
So… how on earth do you choose the right suppliers?

In her book ‘Anyone Can Do It’, which has been regarded as a pretty good text book for those intending to open a café, Sahar Hashemi recounts exactly the same problems when she formed the Coffee Republic chain: “We learned through nightmare teething problems that at the beginning, we really underestimated the importance of choosing suppliers carefully.

“However great their product, their look, their brand, what really matters is delivering consistency, day after day. We really learned a lesson about how difficult life can be if suppliers are unprofessional and inconsistent.”

In her case, the problems ranged from the ludicrous to the unfair – some of her deliverymen kept getting parking tickets outside her first café, and one of her first bakery suppliers was discovered to be pulling a fast one on muffins – they were using frozen muffins from a wholesale source, but defrosting and glazing them every morning, and delivering them as ‘freshly baked’!

The big problem that Sahar faced is the same one as every new café bar owner faces – there are no standards, or quality marks, or gradings, by which to judge a supplier. There is no hallmark for suppliers of coffee machines, in the same way as gas engineers can be registered by qualification. There is no guarantee that a person who sells an espresso machine, or indeed any other equipment, knows what he’s doing – and some advice can be downright dangerous. Quite recently, one particular business start-up book included the incredible advice that operators could find second-hand coffee machines on Ebay. This, as any reputable machine supplier will agree, is quite literally one of the most dangerous things a café operator can do.

There is, indeed, no ‘badge’ or quality mark for suppliers of any product in the coffee sector at all. Suppliers can of course be members of a relevant trade association, but that often only means they’ve paid a membership fee. Some of those organisations may have a code of practice, but that by itself means little.

There is also, as yet, no real qualification for café staff – the Beverage Standards Association has pioneered the City and Guilds barista course, which was a creditable move and is indeed growing, but other than that, espresso machine suppliers may issue a certificate for staff, which really only means their installer has shown staff broadly how a machine works. There is no strict criteria or Mark for accredited barista trainers, which is a serious matter for those who are starting up in the business and want to make a serious quality coffee offer.

There is no specific grading or qualification for an espresso engineer, as a result of which there have been recent cases of domestic plumbers and even telephone engineers being hired to work on espresso machines.  There is no recognised environmental movement within the coffee trade – the serious environmental matter of what happens to millions of disposable takeaway cups is still without regulation or any accepted practice. On the face of it, this is a trade without standards!

So, how does the would-be coffee-shop owner assure himself of the standards of the suppliers he chooses for all the various equipment and supplies that a coffee shop needs?
The chairman of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply once said that he couldn’t understand why so many business people make purchases, often for pretty large amounts of money, without going to see their supplier’s premises. It is a shrewd observation – a visiting salesman gives no true impression of his company’s standing; a website can be extremely misleading.

By contrast, visiting a supplier’s premises can be a priceless experience – thirty minutes spent watching your coffee roaster at work brings an encyclopaedia of practical understanding. A selection of senior people in the coffee trade have a lot to say on the subject:

Gary McGann, director of the specialist coffee-shop wholesaler Beyond the Bean, says that personal observation and questioning will teach you a lot. “It’s easy for a supplier to put up a flashy website, and you don’t know what kind of business is behind it. However, it does not take much to look behind a café counter and see what they’re using – and if you ask them why they use what they do, you’ll find people are more willing to share information than you might expect. You will find that in the café-bar trade, it is very easy to build a lot of connections with people who are willing to share their knowledge.”

That is very true, says Jim Devlin, president of the Beverage Standards Association.  “A new coffee shop owner should talk to a number of suppliers and ask them for the names of a couple of their customers who you could talk to. On occasions that suppliers have said to me that ‘they will come back to me with some names’, then I know they are a ‘no-no’ – if they cannot name some satisfied clients immediately, I know there is a problem! Try and get some sort of references by talking to people in the trade – I accept that simply being a member of a trade association is no guarantee of quality, but these associations are a good source of other people to talk to. When there is a lot of networking going on, a poor reputation can make itself obvious pretty quickly.”

Talking to a number of suppliers is useful learning in itself, adds Devlin. “The first supplier you meet will give you information that makes you ask better questions of the next supplier you meet, and so it goes on.”

There is logic in evaluating local suppliers, say several people. “I agree with the CIPS about visiting potential suppliers,” says Andrew Knight of Andronicas, the coffee roaster which has a café inside Harrods.  “The only time this is not important is if you decide to go with a nationally-recognised brand. With your coffee, the probability is that with today’s network of independent roasters around the country, there is probably one in your locality which can satisfy you. Indeed, you might ask yourself what the logic is in buying coffee from anyone else – a middle-man is certainly not the logical place to start, because you can exert no influence over the product if you deal with an agent’s salesman, but you can if you’re standing looking over the roaster’s shoulder! And there is enormous logic in choosing someone local – if it’s possible for you to visit them, that also means they can get to you when you need them.”

There are, it is true, hazards to choosing the local artisan roaster.  This is now a well-regarded ‘cool’ profession, and so there have been some enthusiastic new arrivals who are not as experienced as they might be. One experienced roaster tells of visiting a new starter who had bought one of the very best roasting machines, had bought the very best beans, and was advertising a high-class service featuring the best coffee beans in the world.  However, just like steak, great coffee beans can be burned to a frazzle if you don’t know what you’re doing, and this chap was achieving a blackened result!  There are times when the café owner’s best course is – taste, and trust your own taste.

There are other supplier issues to evaluate, says Angus McKenzie, managing director at the London office of the Italian coffee brand Kimbo. A typical one is the fraught question of training – in the café trade, this most commonly means that the supplier of an espresso machine will teach staff how to use it. In practice, this ‘training’ can be of variable quality.
“An espresso machine supplier will always offer ‘training’, but ask for a breakdown of exactly what that involves, ask for evidence that the trainer has achieved a certain standard, and also ask for a printed training manual, because 60 per cent of what is taught through speech is instantly forgotten!

“You shouldn’t be afraid to ask: ‘what qualifies you to give me this advice?’ Don’t be afraid of asking the background of the people managing a prospective supplier company! Don’t be afraid to ask for trade references, and speak to them.  You will find out whether a supplier is someone an operator is happy to deal with, or whether they have a reputation for leaving a trail of destruction in their wake!”

Such trails of destruction do occur in the supply of equipment, says Steve Penk, a director of La Spaziale espresso machines. Choosing the right supplier of an espresso machine is difficult, but it is critical. “There is a problem of salesmen who don’t have enough knowledge about the products they’re selling – they are one page ahead of the customer, and the customer doesn’t know enough to ask the right questions to expose them.

“There is also an element of desperation in the way machines are sold, and this is why we have the ridiculous situation of over-selling in espresso machines. Why are café owners buying large three-group machines when a compact two-group would do? Because the salesman’s on commission!”

So how does the café owner know how to choose a coffee machine supplier?  Steve Penk suggests: “A good start is to look around and see what equipment the big boys are using in the big cafes – because they won’t use anything that isn’t reliable. Then, the most important service for the use of an espresso machine is back-up.  There’s no point in saving a hundred pounds by buying your machine from a supplier at the other end of the country, if that doesn’t get you local back-up. The thing you need to know is – if the machine goes down for any reason, is the response time two hours, four hours, six hours, or 24 hours? If you’re running a coffee shop, a response time of two weeks is not going to help. So there is a lot to be said in looking for a local company, which is known as a key regional player and has a standing as an authorised centre for a product.”

The most pungent advice of all in choosing suppliers comes from Hugh Gilmartin of the Coffee Boys, the business consultants to coffee shop owners. In one of their books, the Coffee Boys refer to dodgy salesmen as ‘Mervyns’, and they are becoming more prevalent, says Gilmartin. “Because you can sell coffee easily, there are now a lot of people doing it, There are 40 people selling coffee in one area I know – twenty of them are comedians, ten are just bad, and perhaps six are good. That means there are over thirty ‘Mervyns’ selling coffee in that one area.

“So how does the coffee bar owner recognise the ‘Mervyns’? To a degree, you have to take some responsibility for learning something about the product you want to buy. If you have the desire to find out, and it’s well worth having the desire to learn, you will be able to seek out suppliers who are willing and able to really discuss what they sell… these are the ones who are likely to make worthwhile relationships.  A very good way to begin weeding them out is to ask them about a money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied.  As a key question, this one really sorts the men from the boys!”

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