The leading information and business resource for the UK's cafè bar market

August’s Caffè Case Study was conducted with Hugo Hercod of Relish in Wadebridge. Relish Food & Drink Location: Wadebride, CornwallOn the high street: No, tucked away off the beaten track – deliberately so!Annual turnover: £250kWho owns the business: Sarah and Hugo HercodNo. of staff: 9 (including Hugo and Sarah)Opened: December 2006Business model: Café with delicatessenLength… [Read more]

You can’t outspend the big chains, says Britain’s top lateral-thinking author… but you can outrun them. “Only the paranoid will survive…” As business philosophies go, that’s an attention-getter.  It came from the chairman of Intel, the computer chip people, and it has a major truth behind it – it means that if you do not… [Read more]

The café-bar trade may not after all be entirely isolated in its position on outside tables, chairs, awnings and barriers. For many years, the trade has fought a constant battle against local authority planning departments and county highways departments – often both at the same time.  Even many of the councils who have spoken of… [Read more]

One of the world’s greatest (and most expensive) coffees is now available in a decaffeinated version.  For the first time, Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee has been processed with the Swiss Water decaffeination technique, and will be distributed by Sea Island Coffees of London, the authorized distributors for Europe. According to a report in the Daily… [Read more]

The UK’s best teas and coffees, as judged by the Guild of Fine Food, can now be promoted through the beverage trade with the gold star ratings they received in this year’s Great Taste Awards. There has, however, been a slight murmur of enquiry over the judging of the coffees in this year’s awards as… [Read more]

The coffee trade has made a considerable impression at one of the world’s biggest think-tank conferences.  At the TED conference in Edinburgh in July, the Coffee Common organisation drew together a collection of the UK’s top baristas, using a selection of top coffees and state-of-the-art equipment to promote the coffee trade. Coffee Common is an… [Read more]

The next new ‘origin’ to appear in the world coffee market is likely to be China, with Starbucks having made a decision to invest in coffee growing and processing in the country.  It is probably not a coincidence that Starbucks has already identified China as its biggest potential growth market. There is already a history… [Read more]

Galleria illy, the coffee brand’s exhibition of coffee and art, will be in London for a month from 12th September. It is a temporary exhibition space hosted by lighting and furnishings designers FLOS and Moroso, and will include art, literature, science, design and food and wine events presented by famous designers. The artist Francesco Clemente… [Read more]

Murmurs have begun to spread through the British beverage trade about the possibility of a new contest for tea, along the lines of the well-known coffee barista championships, following the holding of a ‘world’ event in America in which no British contestants appeared… indeed, in which only one European country was represented. The snappily-titled Tea… [Read more]

The Costa café at Great Portand Street, London, has won the ‘café and fast food’ section of the Restaurant and Bar Design Awards.  The café, designed by Stiff & Trevillion, was shortlisted against several sites known for their espresso, including Beas of Bloomsbury, Tinderbox and Peggy Porschen and Moo:baa of Birmingham. Meanwhile, Costa surprised the… [Read more]

The two biggest competitors to independent café bars are both planning to develop their interest in the ‘drive-thru’ coffee bar concept. Costa opened its latest bar in mid-June at Lydiard Fields, a busy motorway site at junction 16 of the M4, just by Swindon.  A couple of weeks previously it opened a drive-thru site at… [Read more]

It turned out to be an extremely busy time for tennis-themed cafés at this year’s Wimbledon tournament.  The coffee service was dominated by one brand – in a remarkably large sponsorship deal, Lavazza served speciality coffee at sixty different points. Six hundred staff were trained in the use of 200 coffee machines. The brand had… [Read more]

Coffee bars who serve coffee certified through the Rainforest Alliance now have an extra promotional opportunity, planned for this autumn.  The Alliance has created its own ‘awareness week’, which will run between September 19-23rd.   Although the Alliance is probably the second-most familiar ethical coffee certification, it has not before now had any promotional mechanism of… [Read more]

There has been another surprising development in the trend for well-made filter coffee in the modern café-bar. There has for some time been a groundswell of opinion behind the belief that customers will come more and more to appreciate the qualities of excellent filter coffees, in which subtleties of flavour can be brought out to… [Read more]

The coffee bar sector looks to be benefitting from the remarkable amount of interest shown by the general public in tea and coffee events over the first half of this year.  The attendance numbers are high – the Bath Coffee Festival drew 10,115 consumers over a weekend, the Allegra London Coffee Festival has published a… [Read more]

The café bar trade and its suppliers are reported be increasingly exasperated with official progress on the espresso-machine safety question.  This follows the explosion of a machine in a café on the south coast (quite possibly the only such incident in living memory), which has brought back to attention the legal requirement for café operators… [Read more]

It is expected that the café bar trade will soon come in for more criticism over the rising number of coffee shops in provincial high streets. There are already regular reports within the industry’s trade news magazine of debates in local authority meetings, in which councilors regularly complain that their high streets are becoming crammed… [Read more]

Independent coffee shops will be facing competition from Waitrose, as was recently reported in the national press.  The supermarket’s managing director was quoted as proposing to launch a chain of standalone cafés – it turns out that he was mis-quoted, and that he really said he was going to develop his instore coffee shops. He… [Read more]

There has been another twist in the story of legal actions over the ‘capsule’ coffee format pioneered by Nespresso. The Nestlé corporation has been wrangling in the European courts against those who make coffee capsules to be compatible with its Nespresso machine. Nestlé’s great selling tactic is, of course, that once a consumer has bought the… [Read more]

The most distinctive product in modern beverage retailing, which was the subject of a very sharp rise and then crash in its home country, continues to spread in London. Bubble Tea is a curious drink devised in Taiwan, in which either fruit-flavoured herbal mixes or milky teas are served with chewy tapioca balls at the bottom… [Read more]

Last week’s Caffè Culture was once again a resounding success, with 4,433 visitors and over 200 exhibitors in attendance over the two days. Now in its sixth year, Caffè Culture, the UK’s most comprehensive resource for the UK café and coffee bar market, took place in the National Hall, Olympia on 18th & 19th May… [Read more]

The Big Question During the twenty years that we have owned or advised literally hundreds of start up coffee shops there has emerged one key question that, if answered correctly, will have a huge effect on the success or failure of the enterprise. So much of our message normally revolves around the need to treat

Chris Brown, Turpin Smale Catering Consultancy www.turpinsmale.co.uk As an operator you want distinctive, high quality food that will make you a great margin and keep the customers flocking back.  What do most of the small guys do?   Buy standard, worthy items from 3663 or Brakes; make a sandwich or two and keep life simple.  This… [Read more]