The Big Coffee Lie    Coffee Talk : July 2003

All coffee operators and resellers of every kind (and growing in number) know that the Big Lie is: Our Coffee is Quality. And they also know The Big Truth: We don’t invest enough TIME into our coffee service or solution.

The Big Lie has been circulating throughout the UK & Ireland for nearly 10 years now. You've probably been buying into this enormous lie yourself with the explosion of coffee bar brands and trendy fashionable Coffee lovers. If you're a coffee retailer and this especially includes Hotels, Restaurants, Pubs, even Hairdressers and Health Clubs now as well as Cafes and Coffee Bars, you already know that it is a hurtful, misguided, whopping lie. Your coffee is not quality. Quite frankly it is really awful.

If you sell bad coffee, you can always find a good reason. If you haven’t bothered to train the staff you can always say that you have not got the time and at the end of the day its only a cup of coffee. If you fail to take advantage of the massive margin in coffee, you can always say my customers wouldn’t know the difference. Good Coffee can be more beneficial to your business than you can ever imagine if you would only take the time to take it more seriously.

There are now ways to produce good coffee that only take changing the way you think about what you are trying to achieve. Focus, Planning & Patience . . . its as easy as that ! What does this have to do with me right now? Easy question. It has everything to do with you because right now your customers are insisting on a decent level of quality although are not quite at the point in Northern Ireland where they will tell you. They simply vote with their feet. Anything you can do to educate them about the amount of effort you put into your coffee service will be greatly appreciated and pay back enormously.

Furthermore -- if you give people poor coffee or get the coffee right and give them poor service by asking them to wait when they're in a hurry, you're not geared for the opportunity that speciality coffee presents and that lovely lovely margin.

• The Eighties was the decade of Improved Service. For Northern Ireland that still meant fast Instant Coffee.

• The Nineties was the decade of Improved Quality. For Northern Ireland that meant Real Coffee.

• The New Millennium is turning out to be the Decade of Opportunity where Quality and Service are the price of Entry. For Northern Ireland that means taking the time and trouble to make a good cup of coffee – and means extra profit in a part of the world that cannot rely on tourism for the easy ride of poor coffee profitability.

In 2003 Northern Irelands Coffee Awareness and Culture has really begun to catch up with Wine and the same trend is apparent where customers are becoming increasingly discerning and fussy about what they are served. Count on it remaining for the rest of your life. The way you make your coffee must be re-evaluated in the light of your market needs for that great coffee experience – that personal moment that needs to trusted and respected.

Speed should be employed to produce this quality experience at every opportunity which means you will simply have to invest the time, effort and money in training your barista’s and its not just the espresso bars that need barista’s after all it’s a profession in Italy.

Top Tip : Competing and winning in the arena of time will be the most potent marketing strategy of the next ten years, and probably the ten years after that . . and it is particularly relevant to the business of coffee. People will become more and more aware of the elusive, precious nature of time and as high quality espresso based beverages will be the norm you will have to find ways of delivering these expectations.

Good Coffee Marketing will therefore mean an investment with your time, energy and imagination rather than merely your money. Partnership is the name of the game and finding the added value in what you are buying is the key. Training your sales and service people will be time that will pay far richer dividends than money.

You read it here first: Your Coffee is not Quality unless you have invested your precious time planning every aspect of your coffee operation – because you will spend much more time trying to find something to sell that generates the same margin as easily . . . . potentially !