Cafe Culture Magazine - Issue 44

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magazine MAY 2011 ISSUE 44

TASTING THE LIFESTYLE OF THE CAFÉ SECTOR

London

GOURMET

SYRUPS

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Welcome!

CONTENTS

Our congratulations go to the winners of this year’s Café Society Awards who received their awards at the Café Society Awards Luncheon held at the Roof Gardens in London on 22 March. We would like to thank all who attended this event, as well as the sponsors and judges, and look forward to recognising and rewarding similar success and innovation in 2012.

May, of course, has become an important month for the café and coffee shop sector with the holding of the annual Caffè Culture exhibition at Olympia, London (18 and 19 May). Café Culture will be present at the show on Stand E44, and we very much look forward to catching up with many of you at this event which never fails to provide a source of new ideas and sound business advice for the sector at large.

Clare Benfield - Editor Editor Clare Benfield, Tel: 01291 636336, E-mail: clare@jandmgroup.co.uk Advertising Manager Paul Steer Tel: 01291 636342 E-mail: paul@jandmgroup.co.uk Production Manager Jayson Berry, Tel: 01291 636339, E-mail: jayson@jandmgroup.co.uk Subscriptions and Customer Service Tony Lorimer, Tel: 01291 636333 Email: tony@cafesociety.orguk Editorial Address Café Culture, Association House, 18c Moor Street, Chepstow, Monmouthshire, NP16 5DB Fax: 01291 630402 E-mail: cafe@jandmgroup.co.uk www.cafeculturemagazine.co.uk Opinions expressed in Café Culture are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of J&M Group Ltd or Café Culture. No responsibility is accepted for the opinions of contributors. Café Culture is published by J&M Group Ltd. and supports Café Society. It is circulated to managers, executives, buyers, retailers and traders in the café industry. © 2009 J&M Group Ltd

NEWS

ARTICLES

5 Caffè Culture set to draw the crowds.

26 Café culture down under – Australia’s coffee guru, George Sabados, talks Scurves and Antipodean influences.

6 Birmingham coffee shop sells world’s rarest coffee.

8 Tetley’s redbush tea promotion.

12 Allegra’s annual Coffee Leader Summit a success.

46 Pick of the pastries – Pidy’s ready to fill pastries.

EVENT REVIEW

50 UK Coffee Week – an inaugural event for the industry that both celebrated and showcased.

14 Café Society Awards 2011 winners.

EVENT PREVIEW 18 Caffè Culture 2011

FEATURES 32 Cake culture – the sweet treat that’s being eaten across the day.

38 Packaging gets going – ‘to go’ packaging takes off.

REGULARS 52 Coffee clinic – your maintenance questions answered.

54 Barista talk – your barista questions answered.

56 New products.

44 The Wi-Fi revolution – Wi-Fi comes of age.

58 Checkout.

75 flavours 6 sugar free 10 retail 3 sauces

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DON’T MISS YOUR COPY. SUBSCRIBE NOW! CALL 01291 636333. www.cafeculturemagazine.co.uk

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NEWS

Marta wins SSP UK Top Barista title

Penny Manuel, who was presented with the Coutts sponsored award at a glittering ceremony held at Cheltenham Racecourse.

Award for Soho Coffee’s Penny Manuel Soho Coffee Co. director, Penny Manuel, has been named Woman of the Year 2011, after she scooped the coveted Woman of the Year title at Gloucestershire Media’s Women in Business Awards 2011 which aim to recognise female entrepreneurs.

Soho has expanded rapidly under directors Penny Manuel and Chris Copner. There are now 21 outlets, nine of which are owned and operated by the company and 12 franchised, including two abroad. A new concession with the Arndale centre’s Next store began trading in 2010. Soho has outlets on high streets, airports, service stations and in 2011, the brand debuted at Butlins, Minehead and Skegness. In four years the business turnover has increased by 700% and competed buoyantly alongside the giant coffee shop brands that usually dominate the sector.

Cheltenham based Soho Coffee Co. Ltd specialises in organic, Fairtade coffee. Food is freshly prepared daily, at a central kitchen and distributed direct to stores each morning. Soho is a peoplefocused company, with a strong commitment to staff and high levels of customer care and looks set to continue its growth this year across various retail footprints and move into a new purpose built head office and kitchen premises.

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A signature drink mixing white chocolate, mint and coffee helped Caffe Ritazza team leader, Marta Twardygrosz, to secure the SSP UK Barista Championship title for 2011.

Marta Twardygrosz, who works at Caffè Ritazza at Liverpool John Lennon Airport, impressed the judges with four espressos, four cappuccinos and four of her signature drink in front of a live audience at Dickens Inn, London. She also beat off competition from colleagues at more than 600 units across the company portfolio, which includes Upper Crust, Pumpkin, Millie’s Cookies and Camden Food Co. Judges at the final, which saw eight baristas go head to head, said Marta showed “passion, dedication and a strong understanding of the whole coffee process.” Marta will now take part in the Caffe Ritazza World Barista Championships, following in the footsteps of SSP UK’s Matt Roberts, who reached the finals of the SCAE UK Barista Championships last month.

“I’m delighted to have won the competition and it’s opened up some fantastic opportunities for me. I have worked at Caffè Ritazza for three years and am very passionate about the coffee that we serve so it feels great to be recognised by the judges in this way,” said Marta Twardygrosz Graziano Moroni, national coffee specialist at SSP UK, has developed the internal competition over 18 months to reward and recognise barista talent within the company. “This competition

is part of a wider strategy to develop a culture of great coffee within SSP UK. We serve 22.5miillion cups in the UK each year so it’s crucial we get it right but we are putting a lot of energy into developing people who are really passionate about good coffee,” he said.

“In the last 18 months we have established 13 coffee training schools across the UK, training 42 head baristi and over 1,000 senior baristi. We have even reduced downtime of coffee machines as more staff become experts in the entire process of coffee making and the feedback from customers so far is very encouraging.”

Esquires celebrates New Zealand sale Esquires Coffee Houses is celebrating the sale of its New Zealand franchise to leading Australian franchisor, the Retail Food Group (RFG).

Following the acquisition, the master rights for Esquires Coffee Houses in New Zealand and Australia will now belong to RFG, having previously belonged to the Deeks family who brought the Esquires brand to New Zealand from Canada in 2001. Back in Britain, however, Peter Kirton remains managing director of Esquires Coffee Houses UK with 33 stores spread

across the country.

“It’s great to watch the Esquires brand grow, both here in the UK and overseas.

RFG has a wealth of experience in the franchising sector and this will surely bring countless benefits to the franchisees in New Zealand, as well as the wider international network,” says Peter Kirton.

“Here in the UK, I have no such plans to sell. We’re in a very exciting period of growth at the moment and this year, in particular, will see some fantastic locations and franchisees added to our portfolio.”

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NEWS

Caffè Culture set to draw the crowds Now a regular part of the coffee year, Caffè Culture 2011 (18 & 19 May, Olympia, London, www.caffeculture.com) is set to draw the crowds this year as coffee shops and café bar owners seek out innovative new products, as well as business advice tailored to their sector.

The Caffè Business Workshop programme will provide an entirely practical look at the business functions of café bars, providing expert advice on all aspects of managing and running a successful operation. For example, accountant Sean Farnell will offer a comprehensive guide to effectively managing the finances of your business covering profit and loss, bookkeeping, a guide to VAT, tax and payroll. Café consultant Chris Brown will host a session dedicated to ‘The Food Issue’ – giving visitors a chance to explore how to deliver an attractive and, most importantly, profitable food offering. The Coffee Boys - Hugh Gilmartin and John Richardson –

For a preview of the show, turn to page 18. will also be providing a step-bystep guide to setting up a coffee shop.

The Caffè Fundamentals Workshop programme will deliver a series of practical sessions on the operational side of running a business, including sessions on fundamental and advanced barista training (from an introduction to the basics through to techniques for espresso preparation, milk texturing and latte art pouring).

The Caffè Theatre will once again be offering free to attend seminars dealing with some of

the most significant issues faced by owners and mangers of hospitality related companies. For instance, consultant Richard Wills will provide a strategic look at how to ensure your business survives and thrives over the next 12 months, examining all aspects from pricing structures through to staffing costs, and Darren Betts - a former café bar owner - will offer a completely honest and light-hearted account of what not to do if you want to run a successful business - from someone who

has been there and done it and learnt the hard way!

Also new for this year, Caffè Culture will be offering free oneto-one consultations in the Caffè Clinic where visitors can book 30-minute sessions with a host of experts on café bar management (consultants will include Hugh Gilmartin, John Richardson, Richard and Jill Wills, Sean Farnell and Clare Rayner).

“Our programme of presentations and workshops are always extremely popular and, with the addition of the Caffè Clinic and the two new business workshop streams, we are excited by the huge range of onsite training, business and key industry issues we’re able to deal with in this year’s programme,” says Elliot Gard, event director. “We’ve brought together a combination of some of the world’s leading café bar experts with a collection of the industry’s best suppliers to deliver a must attend event for anyone who works in the UK’s thriving café and coffee bar industry.”

John Gordon defends his UK Barista Champion crown Reigning UK Barista Champion, John Gordon from Square Mile Coffee in Bethnal Green, London, has proven his weight in coffee beans once again by winning the Championship (held at the recent IFE exhibition) for the second year in a row.

Boasting a fierce knowledge and passion for coffee, John Gordon proved to be a hard contender to beat and his expertise came through in his presentation to the judges. Having performed well in the London & South East heat, John was a hot contender for the title, but still needed to ensure his coffees and signature drink were of high standard in the finals. He will now go on to compete in the World Barista Championship in Bogota, Colombia in June - the first year that the World Championships have been held in a coffee producing country (previously, they been held in coffee consuming countries).

“The UK Barista Championships have not only helped develop better skills for the coffee industry but fuelled an even greater thirst for knowledge about coffee. It has

allowed me to meet other baristas, develop contacts in the industry and share knowledge, which ultimately helped me to improve,” said John Gordon. “The benefit for me is personal; I continuously learn a lot about myself and overcome boundaries that I never thought I could. The experience and support I get from two fantastic roasters, Has Bean and Square Mile, as well as my fiancée, has left me with the confidence and drive to learn more and improve further. I am extremely proud and excited to represent the UK at the World Barista Championships in June.”

Delivering four espressos, four cappuccinos and four espresso based non alcoholic signature drinks to the judges, John was assessed by two technical and four sensory judges on his knowledge on the coffee chosen, attention to detail and creativity of his signature drink. His signature drink was based on a variation of a whisky sour - with a twist of lemon, peach syrup, poured over ice with espresso and a hop spray - but without the whisky as no

For the second year running, John Gordon is the SCAE UK Barista Champion. alcohol can be used.

The UKBC is one of five competitions run by the SCAE UK, the others being Latte Art, Coffee in Good Spirits, Cup Tasters and the Turkish competition, Ibrik/Cezve, and the World Finals of these competitions will also be held in June in Maastricht, Netherlands (for more information on the UKBC visit www.scaeuk.com).

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NEWS

Birmingham coffee shop sells world’s rarest coffee An independent Birmingham coffee shop has been serving up the rarest and most exotic coffee in the world.

Urban Coffee Company acquired a batch of Kopi Luwak, a coffee made from the beans of coffee berries which have been eaten by the Asian Palm Civet (or Luwak) and passed through its digestive tract. A single cup cost £8.95 with 20p from each sale going to Project Waterfall as part of UK Coffee Week, which ran from 4th to 10th April.

“The price of a cup of Kopi Luwak is more what you’d expect to pay for a glass of champagne in one of Birmingham’s bars than your average cup of Joe, but this really is no ordinary coffee,” said Jamie Weaver from Urban Coffee Company. “Only about 500 to 700kg per year is produced and worldwide demand from coffee connoisseurs is immense, which

Jamie Weaver of Birmingham’s Urban Coffee Company. means we’ve had to work extremely hard to secure some of this unique roast.

“The Luwak only eats the sweetest and ripest Arabica coffee berries. After swallowing the berries they ferment in the digestive system where its

Coffee Nation’s enhanced web site Coffee Nation has upgraded its web site to improve communication with both its consumers and business customers with a new home page incorporating Sat-Nav downloads for Coffee Nation locations (Tom Tom and Garmin), a link to the company’s new iPhone app, a Coffee Nation location finder (‘Find a Coffee Nation Stop’) which plots the nearest Coffee Nation location to any postcode entered, and ‘Plan your Journey’ where consumers can view Coffee Nation stops along the way, plus Coffee Nation Facebook and Twitter links.

In addition there is a ‘Make your own drink’ section where visitors can digitally play with Coffee Nation’s interactive touch screen and make drinks, customising them with syrups and double shots. A section is also dedicated to business customers with useful information tailored to each sector – Forecourts and Convenience, Education, Healthcare, Contract Catering and Facilities Management (www.coffeenation.com).

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stomach enzymes break down proteins in the coffee. The inner beans are then passed intact encased in their protective hulls, then collected, thoroughly cleaned, dried and lightly roasted to preserve their flavours. The result is a very

aromatic and complex coffee, with very little bitterness.

“We wanted to be able to offer an experience totally out of the ordinary for UK Coffee Week, which is all about giving something back to the countries which produce the coffee we enjoy every day. Anyone who buys a cup of Kopi Luwak will not only get to enjoy a gourmet gastronomic experience, but will also be supporting a great cause.”

Project Waterfall delivers development projects in coffeeproducing countries. The first project will provide clean water to communities in the Mbulu District of Tanzania in partnership with WaterAid. As well as donating 20p per cup of Kopi Luwak sold, Urban Coffee Company encouraged every customer who purchased any of its other coffees to donate 5p to Project Waterfall.

Italian passion holds key to Casa Espresso success A coffee expert with a passion for perfection is celebrating ten years of working with local bars and restaurants in Leeds and across the region.

Founded by West Yorkshire restaurateur, Tony Di Renzo, and his son Nino, Casa Espresso now supplies premium Sanremo coffee machines and top quality coffee to many of the leading eateries in the region, including Cafe Marinetti in Horsforth, Nino’s Restaurant in Pudsey and Moreno’s in Leeds. And, ten years down the line, Nino believes that customers have become a lot more discerning and are demanding to be served perfect cups of coffee.

“My family has been connected to the restaurant business for more than 30 years – my father was regarded as the pioneer of pizza in Bradford. As proud Italians, bad coffee really annoys us, especially as the latest espresso machines make it so easy to produce fantastic coffee drinks,” says Nino Di Renzo.

“We yearned for the high quality coffees served back in Italy so decided to take action. We formed Casa Espresso and made it our mission to bring the very best Italian espresso machines, blends, coffee shop products and barista training to West

Yorkshire. Coffee is my passion and I believe people are becoming savvier about the coffee they drink. Unfortunately there are still businesses out there serving inferior coffee, and suffering as a result. It is those businesses that we want to help.”

As well as becoming the first UK importer and authorised supplier of Sanremo coffee machines in West Yorkshire, Casa Espresso has launched a range of own label coffees, specially roasted in Lincoln and regularly deliver expert barista training to customers in the area.

Nino Di Renzo is celebrating 10 years of helping bars and restaurants across Leeds serve high quality coffee.

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NEWS

Tetley’s redbush tea promotion Tetley Redbush has become the focus of the Tetley Tea Folk in their latest TV advertising, making it a good time to stock up on the tea, suggest the brand.

The eight-week campaign, which started in April and runs through to May, is aiming to create a greater understanding of Redbush, say the company. Within the adverts, the Tea Folk discover where Redbush comes from, how it is picked and highlight the benefits of drinking this particular type of tea.

Pitched as the ideal drink for today’s health conscious consumers, it is as

Mövenpick launches mango & cream ice cream With the launch of the brand new Mango & Cream flavour, Mövenpick, the super premium ice-cream producer says that it is now offering a taste of the tropics, all year round.

This tropical ice-cream sits perfectly alongside cooling fruit sorbets such as Mövenpick Lemon & Lime or Grapefruit & Orange, and is the perfect complement to creamy desserts, such as Sticky Rice with Coconut Cream, suggest the company.

Alternatively, blend coconut milk, pineapple juice and Mango & Cream ice-cream for a refreshing fruit smoothie – simply add a shot of rum for an innovative twist on a Pina Colada.

Mövenpick Mango & Cream is available in 2.4 litre tubs through leading frozen food wholesalers nationwide (for stockists and support in menu development, serving suggestions, accessories and POS, visit www.moevenpickicecream.com).

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In their latest advertising campaign, the Tetley Tea Folk are helping to educate customers about redbush tea. hydrating as water and even counts towards the recommended eight units of fluid in a day, point out Tetley. Naturally

caffeine-free, this tea can be drunk how you would your normal cup of tea, plus its naturally sweet taste means that it can be enjoyed without sugar.

Tetley Redbush teabags come in individual envelopes, with Tetley’s unique drawstring mechanism, which provides drip-free service whilst being ideal for both cup and pot use. Alongside the television campaign, Tetley for Caterers are running an online scratch card promotion where caterers can win a free case’s of Tetley Redbush along with a host of other prizes (www.tetleyforcaterers.co.uk).

New nylon pyramid teabags from Drury The Drury Tea & Coffee Company, the London-based speciality tea blender and coffee roaster, which this year celebrates its 75th jubilee, has launched a new range of nylon pyramid speciality teabags, with the nylon material permitting the use of large leaf teas in teabag form and the bag shape and mesh allowing the tea to brew more efficiently.

Designed with a blue ‘family’ feel, each of 12 different varieties is differentiated by an art deco style illustration relevant to the respective tea type. The design evokes the mood of the thirties when the Drury Tea & Coffee Company was founded and the packaging has a clear window so that the bags can be clearly seen.

The new range is all blended and packed in-house at Drury’s premises in south London and is the result of a sixfigure investment in a new Fuso packaging machine from Japan. The range initially comprises 12 different teas – English Breakfast Leaf, Assam FOP, Yunnan FOP, Pinhead Gunpowder Green,

Camomile Flowers, Lemon & Ginger Infusion, Imperial Earl Grey, Darjeeling FOP, Jasmine with Flower, Spiced Chai with Assam FOP, Peppermint and Rooibos.

“We have been encouraged to make this substantial investment in machinery by the growth of speciality fine teas in recent years,” said Drury director, Marco Olmi. “The new packs really do look stunning and we believe our faith in both the retail and out-of-home tea market will be repaid. What is so special about the nylon bags is that they allow us to use real leaf, so we don’t have to compromise on the type of tea we put into a bag. The benefit for the consumer is that these bags have all the flavour of leaf tea coupled with the convenience of teabags.”

The packs each contain 15 teabags and are packaged six to a case, with some varieties available in bulk packs of 100 (prices start at £15.60 per case or £15.00 for bulk packs).

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NEWS

Cherizena launches two new flavours Cherizena Coffee (www.cherizena.co.uk) has created two exciting new flavours, adding to its range of around 50 different coffees.

The specialist family firm’s Grand Marnier brings warm orange aromas to its Columbian Coffee, but without the alcohol, say the company, while its new Café Crème – also a Columbian Coffee – is creamy and smooth, making an ideal dairy-free treat.

Available in both regular and decaffeinated versions, the coffees can be teamed up with Cherizena’s ‘snip and pour’ packs for filter machines, which are available in boxes of 50, including filter papers.

Available as beans or ground for easy use, the coffee is packaged in a range of formats for food service operators up to a kilo in size, and in branded or own-brand packaging for retailers. Retail pack sizes range from 60g to 500g.

“We wanted to add a little extra zing with the addition of Grand Marnier – one of our favourite liqueurs here at Cherizena,” says Kate Jones who runs the Leicestershire-based firm with husband Tom. “And to balance things we thought we would mellow out with the creaminess of Café Crème. These new flavours are ideal for food service operators looking to freshen up their coffee menus.”

Cherizena have a Grand Marnier flavoured coffee, without the alcohol.

Exclusive tea launch for foodservice Premium tea brand, Ridgways of London, has announced that it will be launching its speciality and infusion tea ranges exclusively into foodservice.

Ridgways has been in the tea business since 1836 and its range of 10 teas includes English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Darjeeling, Assam and Pure Green, and Peppermint, Camomile, Red Berries, Citrus and Rooibos infusions.

“The fact that Ridgways teas are not available on the high street provides operators with a truly unique proposition and a great sales opportunity,” says Lynn

3M extends range of disposable scale control filters Diversified technology company, 3M, have announced that they will be displaying their popular range of scale control filters for coffee and vending operators on Stand C74 at AVEX 2011 (15-16 June, NEC, Birmingham).

A main highlight, say the company, will be its new ScaleGard Pro H+ Range of disposable scale control filtration systems designed to reduce scale forming minerals and, therefore, scale build up, helping to minimise service costs on coffee and vending equipment. Also on the stand will be the floor-mounted 3M ScaleGard Pro (SGP) P1175 Anti-scale Filter and 3M AP2-G Water Filters.

3M’s new scale control filters feature different resin to the standard range – a

Pritchitts launches Magic Number promotion Dairy company, Pritchitts, has launched a Pritchitts Magic Number promotion this month, which offers caterers the chance to win throughout the year simply by entering a ‘magic number’ to be found on Pritchitts products.

With weekly, monthly, as well as a grand prize draw, every code has three chances of winning a multitude of prizes, including Spa Day vouchers and Red Letter Day Experiences, mini

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Jeffries, customer marketing manager for Ridgways.

The teas are Fairtrade accredited and come in a variety of pack sizes and formats (string, tag and envelope, for example), and Ridgways have branded POS material available, including hardwood boxes, gold display stands, hardwood envelope stands and branded bone china saucers. ‘Foodservice Rewards’ will also be on offer with every purchase (contact sales@ridgwaystea.co.uk for more details).

breaks for two, and the star prize of an all expenses-paid gourmet break to Ireland.

Pritchitts Magic Number Promotion is running across the whole range. All caterers need to do is enter the product code, or ‘magic number’ found on Pritchitts packaging at www.pritchitts.com/magicnu mber to be entered into the weekly, monthly and grand prize draw. The promotion will run until to December 31st 2011.

3M will be at AVEX 2011 with its range of water filtration products. non-buffered resin which competes directly with alternative offerings and allows for an extension in capacity claims due to suppression of the pH, say the company. As per the standard range, it includes a carbon block post filter to reduce chlorine taste and odour in vended drinks.

The special resin is optimised to prevent hard scale formation in the heating coils of coffee or vending machines to ensure maximum uptime and efficient energy usage. Available for bypass and non-bypass models, recipe quality water can be delivered for hot beverages, as well as steamers or steam arms, say 3M (www.3M.co.uk/filtration).

STOP PRESS! Beverage Standards Awards 2011 Café Society members are being offered a discount of £15 on the normal entry cost of £45 for the Beverage Standards Awards 2011 which recognise excellence of drinks quality in the café market and encourage best service standards.

Each café to enter will be visited by a mystery shopper to assess their quality of drink dispense. A

report by assessors from the Beverage Standards Association will then be provided in confidence to the café’s owners to help support staff training and development.

The deadline for Café Society members is Friday, 27 May 2011 and application forms are available from www.beveragestandards association.co.uk.

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NEWS Nelson launch new dishwasher range Nelson says that it has launched its most advanced range of undercounter dishwashers - the all stainless steel Speedwash Advantage machines - which enter the market at the top end but still carry a realistic price tag, say the firm.

A patent pending heat recovery system uses radical new technology to recover a vast amount of heat from waste water which can effectively raise the temperature of new wash water by approximately 20°C – a dramatic advance on existing technology, say Nelson.

Further energy saving

features include thermal insulation to the wash tank, wash chamber and boiler while the wash tank is also acoustically insulated, ensuring a cool and silent working environment. A standby mode deploys automatically between cycles, resulting in 70% energy saving. When the door is opened, a patented condenser reduces humidity to prevent steam escaping.

Water usage, too, is minimised (the Speedwash Advantage has a tank capacity of only 11 litres and just three litres - the minimum amount necessary to ensure good results is replaced at the start of every new cycle).

Heinz launch new Heinz Beanz Fridge Pack Heinz Foodservice has added a brand new format to its iconic Beanz range - the Heinz Beanz Fridge Pack, a re-sealable bottle which is available in a 1kg format that can be stored in the fridge after opening, allowing caterers to deal with leftover beans easily with no hassle or wastage.

Following a successful launch in the retail channel and supported by a £3million marketing campaign, the Heinz Beanz Fridge Pack, is now being rolled out into Foodservice. The new 1kg pack is equivalent to two and a half standard cans and will be aligned with the look and feel of the contemporary new label design, say Heinz. The bottle has also been shaped to easily fit on a fridge shelf, providing added convenience for caterers Foodservice outlets can

often have baked beans left over from a can after a service which they either have to throw away or transfer into a container to store in the fridge. The Heinz Beanz Fridge Pack eliminates wastage while the re-sealable screw top lid ensures that once opened, the contents stay fresh for up to five days. Caterers are therefore more likely to get complete usage out of the 1kg pack delivering greater value for money. It also eliminates the need to shift can left-overs to a fridge appropriate container, saving time and avoiding messy transfers.

Allegra’s annual Coffee Leader Summit a success On 30 and 31 March 2011, Allegra Strategies held its annual UK Coffee Leader Summit which was attended by 275 industry leading operators and suppliers from the UK branded and independent coffee shop, food-to-go and food-for-now sectors and held at Millbank Tower in central London.

Universally recognised was the fact that a diverse market is positive and although the market is competitive, there are many opportunities for both large and small companies to excel. Competition from fast food and food retailers is on the increase.

“Despite a headwind in the economy, the industry must continue to adapt, evolve and innovate,” said Darcy Willson-Rymer, managing director of Starbucks UK and Ireland, and who also urged suppliers and operators, both large and small, to stay focused on working together as an industry to grow the market.

Jim Slater, marketing director at Costa Coffee was also in attendance and spoke about channel management, explaining how Costa’s expansion strategy is based on identifying customers’ needs, selecting the best channels, developing partnerships and earning trust. He added that the company’s recent acquisition of Coffee Nation, the UK coffee vending company, and subsequent launch of Costa Express will make the brand more accessible to consumers and build on

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brand trust.

Allegra Strategies’ managing director, Jeffrey Young, forecasted that the branded coffee shop market turnover is estimated to grow at a compound annual rate of 8.4% to reach £2.5 billion by the end of 2013.

Delegates also heard from Mark Lilley (CEO and co-founder of food-for-now concept, Abokado), Steve Leighton (owner of Has Bean Coffee, a micro-roaster that sells coffee online), Vincent McKevitt (managing director of Tossed, a healthy fast-casual concept that has recently decided to make in-roads into the coffee sector) and Richard Reed (cofounder of Innocent, the smoothie company).

All four presentations highlighted key challenges for emerging brands, namely driving awareness and educating consumers, delivering quality, creating a brand experience and making money!

David Rogers, sales and marketing director for Lavazza’s retail division spoke about ‘the capsule revolution’ and how home coffee consumption is changing as tea and instant coffee consumption declines (in 2010, Lavazza sold two billion capsules worldwide and 20% year on year growth is anticipated this year). At the forefront of this revolution are the ‘urban cool’ consumers aged between 26 and 45, and the ‘bright young things’ aged between 26 and 35, observe Lavazza.

Shelagh Ryan, founder of independent

London-based outlet Lantana, spoke about what UK operators can learn from the highly evolved Australian coffee industry where the third wave independent operator is king. As in Australia, micro-roasteries, new brewing methods and special blends are gaining popularity, but Shelagh Ryan warned UK operators against overwhelming consumers with too much choice, emphasising that independent operators needed to differentiate themselves clearly and deliver the elusive combination of the best coffee and best experience.

Michael Stiff, director, Stiff + Trevillion Architects picked up on the theme of the instore experience by explaining how to create the best possible environment, and envisages more de-branding of big brands as operators strive to create unique, local environments with redundant buildings turned into heritage designed A3 venues.

The final presentation of the event was from independent café operators, Vic Frankowski and Rob Dunne, of Tapped & Packed who told delegates that every successful coffee business should be founded on three guiding principles passion, pride and personality. They suggested that the industry cannot move forward until people view being a barista as a career rather than a fill-in job until something better comes along.

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NEWS

SHORTS Trade statistics announced According to the International Coffee Association, world coffee exports amounted to 8.48 million bags in February 2011, compared with 7.39 million in February 2010. Exports in the first 5 months of coffee year 2010/11 (Oct/10 to Feb/11) have increased by 14% to 42.3 million bags compared to 37.1 million bags in the same period in the last coffee year. In the twelve months ending February 2011, exports of Arabica totalled 66.9 million bags compared to 59.9 million bags last year; whereas Robusta exports amounted to 32.2 million bags compared to 34.7 million bags.

Compass scoops two MIDAS awards Foodservice and support services provider, Compass Group UK and Ireland, is celebrating after picking up two Menu Innovation and Development (MIDAS) awards. The Head of Food award was presented to Nick Vadis, Compass’ UK Executive Chef, and the company also won the Fairtrade award for the third year running for its company-wide commitment to ethical sourcing.

Soft drink sales surge According to Britvic’s Soft Drinks Report 2011, soft drinks sales have grown to £9.4 billion in the UK. Based on independent Nielsen and CGA market data, take-home sales totalled £6.6 billion (growing by 6.6% in value). Sales of soft drinks in on-premise held, growing by 1% in value to £2.8 billion, with the foodservice channel reversing its 2009 decline (up 9.4% in value to £284m), and Cola growing substantially across all channels.

Limini Coffee celebrates third birthday On the 11th March 2011, the Doncaster-based coffee supplier and barista training centre, Limini Coffee, celebrated its third year of operation, and report that over those three years they have already trained hundreds and hundreds of people, developed dozens of espresso blends, tasted a crazy amount of new coffees, as well as utilised a lot of espresso machines and coffee brewers in the process.

Tea Monkey Café launch The very first Tea Monkey café has opened its doors in Milton Keynes, with further cafés set to open in major towns and cities throughout the UK (with three tiered franchise opportunities available later this year). Tea Monkey says that it will be promoting the health benefits of tea, although that’s not to say they won’t also be serving great coffee too. The new chain also plans to offer a wide range cold drinks and food, with gluten free products and vegetarian options.

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Awards 2011 Spnsored by

The Café Society trade association recognised the creativity and innovation taking place in the sector with the hosting of the annual Café Society Awards luncheon, held at the Roof Gardens in London on the 22 March 2011 in an event that was attended by a hundred people from across the UK coffee business.

A sophisticated sector Angela Maxwell OBE (European advisor to UK Trade & Investment and former commercial director of espresso machine manufacturer, Fracino) presented the awards, and also gave an informative talk about the development of the coffee shop sector.

In particular, she observed how well informed the UK coffee business has now become, both in terms of the expectations of customers as well as the diverse nature of products and the ever more sophisticated nature of the technology that the UK coffee shop sector has come to embrace.

The Café Society would like to thank sponsors Bel UK and Barclaycard and all those who took part in the judging process, particularly Simon Stenning (Allegra Strategies), Marco Arrigo (Eurobrands) and Martin Bates (CEO of the Craft Guild of Chefs).

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CAFÉ SOCIETY AWARDS

The Café Society Award

The Café Innovation Award

Given to an individual or organisation considered by the judges to have been exceptionally influential in shaping the café market in the UK.

From left to right, Angela Maxwell and Peter Dore-Smith.

Winner: Peter Dore-Smith, Kaffeine.

To encourage innovation in the market, either by operators or suppliers.

From left to right, Gabriele Giammario (Electrolux), Angela Maxwell and Richard Flynn (Electrolux).

Winner: Electrolux for their High Speed Panini Grill

High commended: Long Black Ltd’s Byocup

The New Product of the Year Award

Short listed: Rail Gourmet’s Brew Mobile Café

To encourage the development of products (including drinks and equipment but excluding food) for the market.

Kavis’s Spooncup Tri-Star Packaging’s Porta Tray

Winner: La Marzocco for the Strada MP Espresso Coffee machine From left to right, Roberto Bianchi (R&D director, La Marzocco), Angela Maxwell and Massimiliano Valenti (finance director, La Marzocco).

From left to right, Kristel Valaydon (Long Black Ltd), Angela Maxwell and James Dickson (Long Black Ltd).

The Café Design of the Year Award To encourage good design practices in the sector bearing in mind the importance that the atmosphere of an outlet can have on its success.

Highly commended: Rail Gourmet’s Brew Mobile Café

Winner: M&S Café From left to right, Tesh Chauhan (Rail Gourmet), David Small (Rail Gourmet), Angela Maxwell, Roger Williams (Rail Gourmet) and Andy Hollings (Rail Gourmet).

Highly commended: Esquires loose leaf Suki tea range Short listed: Top Tea (Nepalese organic loose leaf tea) Caffe Vinci (Hot Choc Heaven) Foodservice Support (Cool Berry Frozen Yoghurt)

From left to right, Peter Kirton (Esquires) and Angela Maxwell.

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From left to right Jason Danciger (Marks & Spencer), Angela Maxwell and David Condliffe (Marks & Spencer)

Highly commended: Lavazza Espression, Harrods Short listed: Coffee #1, Thornbury Cooper & Co, Jersey

From left to right, Claudia Galetta (Lavazza Espression) and Angela Maxwell.

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CAFÉ SOCIETY AWARDS The Café/Coffee Bar Chain of the Year

The Café Food Award To encourage the innovation and development of food products specifically for the café society market.

In recognition of the work being done by leading operators to set standards and drive the market in terms of innovation, standards and consumer satisfaction.

Winner: Caffè Ritazza (Firecracker chicken and chorizo panini melt)

Joint winners Coffee #1 and Rhode Island Coffee

From left to right, Sonia Hebrard (brand manager, Caffè Ritazza) and Janet Carroll (senior national account manager, Bel UK).

From left to right, Andrew Watt (Barclaycard) and James Shapland (MD, Coffee #1).

Highly commended: Natura Amore Caffe Gusto (Flatbread and sandwich range)

Short listed: Caffè Ritazza Caffe Gusto

Short listed: Snowbird Foods (Thai meatballs) Kerry Foodservice (V*go Mediterranean Cous Cous)

From left to right, Ricardo Amado (Natura Amore) and Janet Carroll (senior national account manager, Bel UK).

Highly commended: Natura Amore

From left to right, Raj Ruia (Rhode Island Coffe), Andrew Watt (Barclaycard), Andrew Smalley (Rhode Island Coffee) and David Howarth (Rhode Island Coffee).

The Café/Coffee Bar Independent of the Year Highly commended: Kaffeine

Given in recognition of the work being done by entrepreneurs in the industry to develop successful independent café/coffee bars.

From left to right, Angela Maxwell and Peter Dore-Smith.

From left to right, Agnes Potter (Allpress Espresso), Angela Maxwell and Anita Langlands (Allpress Espresso).

Winner: Allpress Espresso

Highly commended: Ground Coffee House Highly commended: Cooper & Co

From left to right, David Warr (Cooper & Co) and Angela Maxwell.

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Short listed: Barista Café Bar, Bury Tina, We Salute You, London

From left to right, Matthew Orchard, Richard Curtis (Ground Coffee House) and Angela Maxwell.

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18th & 19th May 2011 – Olympia, London

Your Business, Your Event

Are you looking to grow your profits?

Visit Caffè Culture and get practical, easy-to-apply business advice and top tips to help you improve your business and achieve measurable results.

Register for FREE* entry today

caffeculture.com/ccm Off ficial Milk Supplier

Show Suppor ters

Have a smar tphone?

Then scan this QR barcode and be taken directly to register for free entry.

* And save yourself £20 on the door

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SHOW PREVIEW

Caffè Culture 2011 Caffè Culture 2011 (18 and 19 May, Olympia, London) has become the UK’s premier industry event, bringing together a unique blend of exhibitors, leading industry professionals, practical workshops, seminars and clinics to give café bar owners and managers all the inspiration and business support needed for the year ahead.

Free seminars The Caffè Theatre will once again offer free to attend seminars dealing with some of the most significant issues faced by owners and mangers of hospitality related companies.

Consultant Richard Wills will provide a strategic look at how to ensure your business survives and thrives over the next 12 months by examining all aspects from pricing structures through to staffing costs.

Darren Betts, a former café bar owner, will offer a completely honest and light-hearted account of what not to do if you want to run a successful business - from someone who has been there and done it and learnt the hard way!

Good and bad customer service will come under the spotlight with a keynote speaker highlighting how to grow your customer base and increase their spend with a simple refocus on the level of service offered, whilst Bill Gorman, chairman of the UK Tea Council, will explain how getting the right tea offering can ensure business growth.

Gary McGann from Beyond the Bean will host a session titled “Your Brand in their Hands”, helping visitors to understand how, once a brand is built, they can protect it in the mass media world of social networking.

There will also be a number of panel discussions with leading industry professionals looking at everything from the impact of the rising costs of green coffee on independent café bars, through to the latest trends in coffee preparation (a full schedule is available at www.caffeculture.com).

Also new for this year, Caffè Culture is offering free one-to-one consultations in the Caffè Clinic. Visitors can book 30 minute sessions with a host of experts on café bar management – allowing you to explore solutions to a specific problem you may be

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facing in your business. Consultants will include Hugh Gilmartin, John Richardson, Richard and Jill Wills, Sean Farnell and Clare Rayner (for a full list of consultants, their areas of specialism and to book appointments visit www.caffeculture.com).

Responding to research among visitors about the sorts of companies you would ideally like to meet at the event, Caffè Culture has ensured this year’s event delivers a broad spectrum of the very best products and services for the sector, from small local producers through to large international suppliers.

New products and launches Ashbourne Foods Ltd (Stand C6) was formed to develop and market a range of food goods based on the principle of being best in class in terms of taste by using simple well balanced recipes and natural ingredients wherever possible, with no transfats, GM modified ingredients, or artificial colours or flavours. They will be showcasing their two main brands - the indulgent Sugar n Spice products and the newly launched Naturally Nutritious healthy eating cereal bars which are low in fat, are dairy free and are certified by the Vegetarian Society.

Fracino and Coffee Latino (Stand F30) are making their third consecutive appearance at this year’s show, promoting their mobile trikes, and coffee cart and espresso machine combo, as well as the Fracino range, including stylish machines such as the Classic and Romano, the revolutionary beanto-cup Cybercino, and Fracino’s dynamic Piccino (a diminutive coffee machine aimed at the discerning coffee lover seeking to recreate an authentic barista experience in their own kitchen).

“The buzz of Caffè Culture is fantastic,” says Barbara Crocè, sales director of

Perfect harmony - a Fracino coffee machine on board one of Coffee Latino's trikes.

Newcastle-based Coffee Latino. “It’s a perfect platform to showcase Fracino’s world-class machines with our leading carts and trikes which enjoy global recognition for their value and quality. We’re very much looking forward to this year’s event.”

Wenlock Spring (Stand B27) will be exhibiting its still and sparkling water, in both glass and plastic bottles, including 500ml and 330ml variants, and their 750ml glass bottles will also be on show at the event.

Rational (Stand G7) will be demonstrating its multi-talented cooking technology, pointing out that the food offering in coffee shops and cafés is getting more sophisticated as consumer expectations rise with a key issue for the market being staff knowledge - it’s one thing to toast a pannini, quite another to cook ‘proper’ meals. In particular, Rational will be showing its latest SelfCooking Center - a smart cooking technology combi steamer that can roast, poach, bake, toast, slow cook, fast cook, grill and even prepare chips. Show visitors will be able to book a test-drive at one of Rational’s TeamCooking Live seminars, being held at over 100 venues around the country.

Scanomat UK Ltd (Stand C24) was founded in November 2010 and says that it will be using show for its inaugural visit to a UK exhibition. Bringing lots of established Scanomat beverage systems to Olympia, the company will also be launching the Top

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SHOW PREVIEW

Brewer – a bean to cup coffee brewing and dispensing system which uses freshly ground whole coffee beans and has been designed to be built into any table or counter top, with only the stylish curved pouring spout visible above, and leaving precious counter space free for additional sales and customer service opportunities. Supporting the new launch at Caffè Culture, Scanomat will also be showing its latest range of state of the art Venezia bean to cup systems and revealing two new launch models including the funky Amokka branded Venezia II. Manitowoc Foodservice UK (Stand E32) will be showing visitors what’s hot with live cooking demonstrations from its latest award winning advanced cooking solutions.

The company’s Merrychef eikon™ speed cooking ovens and Convotherm Mini Mobil are helping food retailers create exciting new hot menu items across the globe, including partnerships with Subway®, Marks & Spencer, Applegreen and Little Chef. “We’re looking forward to the opportunity to demonstrate how our products can help UK café and coffee shop retailers speed service and increase sales,” says Simon Frost, Manitowoc Foodservice’s director of sales, UK & Ireland. “Both ovens have a space saving footprint ideal for coffee shops and kiosks and are stackable to provide a total cooking solution.”

Melitta (Stand G39) will have the UK launch of a brand new, second generation model to join their countertop bar range. The highly compact bar-cube 2 is a fully automatic speciality coffee machine that offers even more features and benefits, say the company. As well as having the capability to produce up to 150 perfectly brewed espressos, or 80 speciality drinks per hour, the new model has several, important, additional features including a hot chocolate menu with dark or white chocolate which can be made with milk, water or a mixture of both. In addition, coffee strength can now be effortlessly micro-managed via three buttons

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Melitta’s compact bar-cube 2.

Sielaff’s Piacere bean-to-cup machine.

on the display to offer customers a choice of pre-determined strength levels across the calibrated menu settings.

Instanta (Stand L15) say that they will be using the exhibition as a platform for promoting a wide range of products from its portfolio of water boilers for beverage making. Their CT range has had a makeover with the introduction of the new CT8000 and an upgrade to existing models.

Available as a 6kw or 9kw machines for large volume users, new features include new diagnostics and a seven day timer that allows the units to be The Instanta CT8000. switched on and off much like a central heating boiler.

Furthermore, a digital filter warning display will also be included to indicate the status of any associated water filters. And caterers with a limited budget who are looking for a hot water boiler with the quality and reliability associated with the Instanta range will be delighted with the latest countertop value range which includes the 1500LCD that can generate 11.5 litres in one go and also offers easy access for cleaning and service.

Sielaff (Stand D24), a German manufacturer of quality hot drinks dispensers will be showcasing its versatile Piacere bean-to-cup machine and joining Piacere will be the CVT tabletop bean-to-cup coffee dispenser and the freestanding CFS fresh brew vending machine, which will be configured to dispense leaf tea.

“With six different models to choose from, add–on modules and further options, the Piacere is probably the most versatile bean-to-cup machine at the show. Caterers can put together their own personalised

beverage centre allowing them to choose a product menu from ingredient types that perfectly matches the requirements of their customers,” says Sielaff UK’s general manager, Karen Nash. “All the principal components have been designed by Sielaff itself and the machine benefits from typically high standards of German engineering. With its top end build quality, the Piacere represents incredible value for money.”

Premium brand Monin (Stand E36) will be launching Apple Pie syrup, a dessert inspired flavour capturing the taste of baked apples with caramel and biscuit, and a touch of cinnamon. The deep gold coloured syrup has numerous applications from lattes, teas, iced teas, dessert cocktails, smoothies and even pastries, suggest Monin. Expert baristas will demonstrate Apple Pie syrup, along with other flavours and the full range of fruit purees.

Monin (Stand E36) will be demonstrating how to utilise their range of syrups.

Sweet brand Kopiko (Stand H26) will be showcasing its range. Already sold in 55 other countries, it is now available in the UK in two different varieties - original coffee and smooth, creamy cappuccino. Both sweets are made from the finest real Java coffee beans for the authentic taste of coffee on the go, say the company.

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SHOW PREVIEW

Workshops The Caffè Business Workshop programme will offer an entirely practical look at the business functions of café bars, providing expert advice on all aspects of managing and running a successful operation via a series of pre-bookable workshops (prices to attend range from £40 to £60 per workshop).

Wednesday 18 & Thursday 19th May 2011 - Workshop one Time

Title

Workshop overview

Speaker

10.00 – 11.30

Managing your money

An introduction to profit and loss, bookkeeping, VAT, tax, payroll and – all you need to know to effectively manage the finances of your business.

Sean Farnell – Burgis and Bullock Accountancy

12.00 – 13.30

The Food Issue

How can we produce distinctive food in a small space with minimal equipment? Bakery cafés are the rage throughout Europe and innovative, distinctive food is a must. Fresh and easy to prepare is the mantra. The big chains have specialist food development teams and huge purchasing power – how can you, as an independent, compete, flourish and win out.

Chris Brown – Turpin Smale Catering Consultancy

14.00 – 15.30

People power – how to manage the most important aspect of your business

With added pressures on time and resources, it's become increasingly difficult to ensure your people are engaged, developed and retained. This is why it's vital to have robust manpower systems firmly in place to ensure that people issues aren't hampering your business. If you're ready for new ways of achieving this and original thinking when it comes to delivery methods, this is the workshop for you. It's all about results.

Learn Purple – employee engagement experts

16.00 – 17.00

Its systematic – how to grow your business

The key to ensuring the growth and future of your operation is a system that means your business operates in exactly the same way, whether you are there or not. The holy grail of any café or coffee bar owner!

Se Gorman – Café Krem (18 May) Robert Henry – Another Cup (19 May)

Wednesday 18 & Thursday 19 May 2011 - Workshop two Time

Title

Workshop overview

Speaker

10.00 – 12.00

A complete guide to starting a coffee bar business

A complete guide to starting and running a café or coffee bar business. Everything a new business owner needs to ensure success.

Hugh Gilmartin and John Richardson – The Coffee Boys

12.30 – 14.00

Increasing customer spend

How to attract new customers, retain your existing ones and increase the spend of both to secure the future of your business.

Clare Rayner – The Retail Champion

14.30 – 16.00

Making the most of marketing

How to market your business, from utilising your position on the high street and word of mouth through to PR, advertising and your online and social network marketing strategies

Jill Willis – author of Start and Manage a Sandwich and Coffee Shop

The Caffè Fundamentals Workshop programme will deliver a series of practical sessions on the operational side of running a business.

Including sessions on fundamental and advanced barista training – from an introduction to the basics through to techniques for espresso preparation, milk texturing and latte art pouring. There will be workshops hosted by international tea expert Malcolm Ferris Lay on every aspect of tasting, making and serving tea. Peter James will look at improving your overall coffee offering in a session titled “Beyond Espresso” and Hasbean Coffee will host a session on “cupping a different table” (for a full programme and to book places visit www.caffeculture.com).

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SHOW PREVIEW Bunzl Catering Supplies (Stand J27) will be unveiling two exclusive new own brand products - Metro Cup and TableSMART® and visitors will be able to view the full ranges and obtain further information from qualified stand staff. Metro Cup is a new range of disposable hot cups featuring exclusive designs never before seen in the UK, available as single and double wall cups in two eye-catching, contemporary designs in 8oz, 12oz and 16oz. TableSMART® is a new and exclusive range of tableware offering exceptional value for money without compromising on quality, say Bunzl, including tissue dispenser napkins, small and large, for counter top and table top dispensers that can help coffee outlets manage wastage and cost.

Café Culture magazine (Stand E44) Café Culture magazine (www.cafeculturemagazine.co.uk) is affiliated to the Café Society association (www.cafesociety.org.uk), and is published six times a year, providing extensive coverage of the UK café sector, from product news to profiles to regular in-depth features and advisory articles. To pick up a complimentary copy, sign up to receive the magazine on a regular basis, or join the Café Society visit Stand E44.

Tri-Star Packaging (Stand D20) will be highlighting the huge range of benefits offered by its PortaBrands out-of-home drinks carriers at this year’s Caffè Culture exhibition. Visitors to the show will have the chance to see first-hand how the innovative PortaTray™ and PortaDrink® carriers can help café and coffee shop owners improve a number of aspects of their business, including product presentation, customer experience, speed of service and, most importantly, sales.

Catering software specialist FretwellDowning Hospitality (Stand B34) is launching Saffron Cuisine, a new version of its Saffron management information software - a web-based solution that has been tailored specifically to help managers of cafés and independent restaurants achieve greater control of their business. It simplifies many back office processes such as automatically calculating a cafe’s profit margin by linking the item’s selling price with the cost of making the recipe, say the company, as well as creating recipes and menu summaries, and nutritionally analysing menus.

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In the Caffè Theatre The Caffè Theatre will once again offer free to attend seminars dealing with some of the most significant issues faced by owners and mangers of hospitality related companies.

There will be a strategic look at how to ensure your business survives and thrives over the next 12 months, examining all aspects of running a business from pricing structures through to staffing costs.

Wednesday 18th May 2011 11.15 - To cut or not to cut – how to survive the toughest 12 months of your business’s life A totally focused look at how to survive the next 12 months in business. This session will examine everything from your pricing structure through to your staff overheads (Richard Willis – Taste).

12.15 - How to achieve good customer service Jodi Goldman will provide an insight into how you and your staff can achieve good customer service and be excellent consistently. She’ll also demonstrate how making small improvements to your customer care can deliver big results for your business (Jodi Goldman - Learn Purple).

13.15 - Tea – the future of your business Only one in five cups of tea drunk everyday in the UK is consumed out of the home, this compares with one in three cups of coffee. Bill Gorman will explain how getting the right tea offering is potentially the single most important thing you can do to grow your business (Bill Gorman -The UK Tea Council).

14.15 - A completely honest account of opening, running and ultimately selling a café bar Following redundancy from a high powered management role, Darren Betts followed a dream and opened a café bar business in a trendy town in the north of England. Four years on he is here to share the highs and lows and the successes and failures in a completely honest account of what it means to run a successful business as opposed to making an interesting lifestyle choice – and why so many of us get that confused when launching a café bar (Darren Betts– formerly of Café 72).

15.15 - Our brand in their hands You know your brand, you have defined it and hopefully communicated it –and then you let it go. Its takes years to build a brand and hours to damage it in today’s fickle mass media world. In this session you will learn how to monitor what is happening to your brand (without paying someone shed loads of money to do it for you) and hear about some case studies of successes and failures! (Gary McGann– Beyond the Bean).

16.15 - Coffee Trends In this panel discussion all the latest

developments for the UK café bar owner will be examined – from the newest brewing techniques to a look at how the price of green coffee is impacting on businesses in the UK (a panel of industry experts).

Thursday 19th May 2011 11.15 - Sustainability – a review of your business strategy Has your sustainability strategy gone out of the window as your business fights to survive. Paul Allen will discuss what practical and affordable steps you can take to ensure you continue to operate a sustainable, socially responsible and environmentally sound business whilst still delivering a profit (Paul Allen – author of Your Ethical Business).

12.15 - A smooth operator The key to ensuring the growth and future of your business is a system that means your business operates in exactly the same way, whether you are there or not. In this session, Robert Henry will provide an overview of what you need to consider before thinking about expanding your business (Robert Henry –Another Cup).

13.15 - Tea – the future of your business Only one in five cups of tea drunk everyday in the UK is consumed out if the home, this compares with one in three cups of coffee.

Bill Gorman will explain how getting the right tea offering is potentially the single most important thing you can do to grow your business (Bill Gorman - the UK Tea Council).

14.15 - When local met social Every day Google returns over one billion location specific search results to consumers seeking products and services. 40% of users search by locality. 43% of searches return a local result. 82% of customers searching locally take action immediately after. What are you doing to ensure that your business is represented? Better still what difference would it make to your business if you could target more of these searches? Find out how you can deliver a better online strategy to improve your footfall (Andrew Rayner – Emphasis).

15.15 - Improving your customer spend and retention In this inspirational session, retail expert Clare Rayner will give you an insight into how to improve the spend per visit of each of your customers, as well as ensuring they visit more often. A must-attend session for any café bar owner (Clare Rayner – the Retail Champion).

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MAY 2011 CAFÉ CULTURE 23

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Introducing

Vouchercloud Café Society members can now take advantage of a great new marketing tool following agreement between the Café Society and Vouchercloud, rated the UK’s leading consumer voucher app by the Sunday Times, Sun and Daily Telegraph with over 1.3 million downloads.

Promotions Vouchercloud enables businesses to run voucher promotions over mobile phones, providing consumers with an instant incentive visit their outlet. Furthermore, because it is localised, even individual cafés and coffee shops can use it as a means of promotion – and you can change the promotions from weekto-week, month-tomonth or even day-today. You can also control how many vouchers each person gets with each voucher campaign as well as how many in total can be redeemed. With every redemption you also receive a digital receipt.

For the consumer, the apps are free to download, free to use and deliver a fantastic range of money-saving offers from popular national brands, such as Odeon and Vue cinemas to Debenhams, as well as local businesses.

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Using GPS technology, Vouchercloud instantly identifies the deals nearest to where the consumer is located when they are out and about. Alternatively, they can choose any location they will be travelling to in the UK to check out what’s on offer.

Food, drink, entertainment, leisure, travel professional services and shopping – they're all there, with new ones added every day. So there is a real benefit.

User friendly Vouchercloud is also extremely user friendly and using the app is as easy as 1, 2, 3…

1) Consumers simply browse for an offer by category or using the search facility.

2) Then they read the terms and conditions, and 3) When in store, press the USE VOUCHER button, show the next screen when paying and press SHOW CODE when prompted to do so.

The voucher use is then recorded through the system.

Benefits In setting up an arrangement with Vouchercloud, the Society has agreed a 12.5% discount for members off the annual rate for a business to use the system. For a small café, this brings the annual cost down from £199 + VAT to £174 + VAT. Any members wishing to take up this offer (or get more information on it) should contact Tony Lorimer at the Society on 01291 636333 (tony@cafesociety.org.uk) to obtain the special discount code.

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FOOD PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION UNIT WITH OFFICES AVAILABLE Flexible lease terms The Building is situated on a farm in a beautiful available Holyport Village, Maidenhead, Berks. The site is 2 miles from M4 Junction 8/9, close to the M40 and it is about 20 minutes from Heathrow Airport.

• It is purpose build as a food production and distribution unit, with Ground Floor approx 4,700 sq ft and mezzanine 4,300 sq ft • It has CCTV and alarm system connected to monitoring station.

• Ground floor has production kitchen with Blast and holding Chillers, large refrigerated areas for Goods In and out. Low risk and high risk production area temperature control also walk in freezer. Office and Staff rest area. The mezzanine has an executive office & large area for storage and future expansion.

Please contact Mr. Shaio at Coast Active Tel: 01784 465772/07798 518 546

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MAY 2011 CAFÉ CULTURE 25

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MARKETING

Café culture

down under

Take a closer look at many successful cafés and coffee shops in the UK, not least in London, and in addition to Italy, you can’t fail to notice the influence of Australia and New Zealand two countries that, like Italy, have long boasted healthy espresso-based café cultures. Here, Australian, George Sabados – franchisee motivator and sales growth specialist – gives us his personal insight into the development of café culture ‘down under’ and suggests what the UK market can learn from it.

Evolving markets Espresso markets have evolved at different times in different parts of the world. Even within the same country, some regional markets can have a more advanced espresso culture than others. Timing of introduction and fierceness - or concentration - of competition usually combined to create a rapid upward momentum of an industry toward saturation point. Once that point is reached, a defined market is at its zenith, or a level of maturity, that predisposes it to being surpassed by a sudden and new evolutionary or revolutionary direction.

When in business, it is important to ‘guess-timate’ the timing of this. Luckily, there is a tool which can reasonably identify the top end of one market, signalling the beginning of a new one, and, secondly, there are other markets which have travelled further down the same road which shrewd operators within the industry can then observe and learn from.

There is a bell curve to every market, every product, and even the expected profitability within each market at any point in time. The forward half of the bell curve – better known as the S-Curve - is a universal tool which any student of economics is taught to use in order to reasonably predict the introductory phase, rapid rise, saturation point, and decline of whatever specific use it is put to. And it can be applied to literally anything.

In my consultancy work I have successfully used it to predict changes in the profitability of a product or market sector, or the shift in the character of a market. The most interesting part about the S-curve is that each phase is of an equal time frame – introduction, rapid uptake, saturation, decline, and termination. Hence, used in the right way, it can be a very good predictive tool.

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Maturer markets We can almost take it for granted that there is another market somewhere in the world more mature than the market we find ourselves in. And if you are in business, it is your duty, as part of entrepreneurial due diligence, to make yourself familiar with the state of play around the world and to plot the current point these maturer markets find themselves at on the S-curve when compared to you.

Doing this exercise breaks the myopia that businesses tend to develop about where they are in the overall scheme of things. There’s always someone out there doing it better, faster, cheaper etc. Also, the prevailing elements and obstacles faced in any similar, yet more mature, markets can lend a great hand to preparing a business to take advantage of what will inevitably come to their market.

If we apply the S-curve litmus test to the global espresso café market and seek out the most mature ones, then the results are interesting. Of all the espresso coffee markets in the world, there are three that clearly display very mature espresso café market traits. These countries are Italy, Australia and New Zealand!

Surprised?

Whilst Italy may have been your obvious top contender, the other two may come as a complete surprise. For reasons I will explain, there is significant divergence in the latter two markets to the Italian market. And the direction of all emerging espresso markets is along the same path which the Australian and New Zealand markets have taken, simply because over 95% of espresso coffee drinkers in these markets drink espresso with milk, unlike the majority of Italians.

George Sabados is a well respected franchisee motivator and sales growth specialist, having worked around the world with more than 1000 franchise businesses over the last 11 years. His personal experience, skills and track record lies in an ability to identify the simple steps that franchisees (and small business owners for that matter) should take in order to create instant, rapid and sustained sales growth (30 to 40% sales growth in the first month has been a typical result for many clients, he reports george@gsroasting.com).

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MARKETING As such, a completely different treatment to the Italian market is required at every level of the supply chain to deal with the issue of milk being added to the espresso base – everything from the choice of different green beans, different blending styles and different roast developments by roasters, to different dosages of ground coffee at the coffee making end. Relying on the Italian espresso standard has proven not to be a long-term proposition for suppliers in any espresso (and for that matter, milk) market well on its way to saturation point.

Since the predominant number of consumers in the UK are milk and espresso coffee drinkers, it would pay to consider the history and direction these 100% espresso and milk markets have taken, and how they have matured. Somewhere amongst all this information there will be a kernel of an idea that anyone in a café business in the UK can use to turn greater revenue or profits.

The early days The post World War II migration of southern Europeans to Australia had a profound effect on the development of a sophisticated espresso market in both Australia and New Zealand. The espresso machine as we know it - notably one which drives hot water under pressure through the coffee by use of an electric driven pump - was mass produced

from 1948 onwards.

This is significant because migrants leaving Italy prior to WWII, the majority of whom went to the United States of America, did not have any knowledge of espresso as we know it. What they knew as ‘espresso’ was effectively a highly concentrated filter style coffee, made by pushing hot water driven by steam pressure through the coffee grounds – similar to a cafetiera (stovepot).

The American market did not experience early exposure to modern espresso, and given the lack of concentrated pollination of this style of coffee making, it has not gained complete national acceptance even today.

Whilst I am not denying that there is great espresso to be had in small pockets in the USA, it is far from overwhelming in its coverage. There are still huge swathes of real estate there where espresso based coffees are not being served.

On the other hand, Australia put a very ambitious migration programme in place following the end of World War II. Australia negotiated agreements with European governments and international organisations to help achieve high migration targets. A system of free, or assisted, passages was put into place. From 1947 onwards most Italian and other European migrants switched the pattern of their migration to Australia simply because the Australian Government introduced the famous ‘£2 ticket’. As a comparison, passage to the USA for anyone still in internment camps in Italy, or elsewhere, was still an expensive proposition (around US$100). By merely pledging to work for two years wherever the Australian government put them, an immigrant could gain a virtually free passage to Australia. The significance of this program was quite palpable.

These migrants, by far the largest groups being Italians, were already exposed to espresso style coffees in the modern sense. They had already witnessed the flourish of espresso in cafés in their country. Whilst many of them were not the café owners, they were the consumers, and when they arrived in Australia, they concentrated mostly in Melbourne, and then spread to all the major cities of Australia and New Zealand.

Amongst their own the demand for espresso was born.

Café culture takes hold It took the onset of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics to create a catalyst for the emergence of cafés.

In preparation for the arrival of the Italian Olympic team, a few

enterprising members of the large Italian community in that city (close to 1 million out of 3.5 million total) decided to import the very first espresso machines into Australia, and serve authentic Italian espresso (as noted earlier, Italians prefer to drink espresso coffee only, always with sugar and without milk). These cafés quickly gained popularity amongst the Italian community, hence the tradition of Melbourne being the home of espresso culture in Australia.

Up until the late 1980’s, the espresso market was restricted to pockets of migrant communities within Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. The concentration of the population base in these four cities set the framework for the rapid spread of espresso (of a total population of 20 million in Australia, over 13 million live in these cities alone!). Then a natural occurrence began to emerge.

The bulk of the children of these migrants, first generation ‘Mediterranean Australians’, began to reach maturity and look for venues where they could socialise in a non-traditional Australian way. They looked for venues which offered the chance for both sexes to socialise and chat over a drink, and doing this over a cup of coffee was more the norm for these people than socialising over a beer. Hence, the café sector began to expand rapidly to meet demand.

The explosive growth phase of espresso took hold first in Melbourne around the end of 1980’s, then in Sydney around the early 1990’s, then Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane in quick succession. The degree of concentration of these first generation Mediterranean Australians in these cities dictated the speed of uptake of cafés.

Only espresso What is unique is that outside Italy, the Australian and New Zealand café markets are the only other 100% espresso based markets in the world! Yet, the combined population size in comparison to the rest of the world of coffee drinkers make these two countries hardly a blip on the global espresso coffee radar – and therefore they go mostly unrecognised.

The markets of the USA, Northern Europe, Japan and many other countries are dominated by filter style, or brewed, coffee.

In the UK, a great many people still drink tea at a café. Tea sales in the Australia/NZ market account for less than 5% of beverage sales in cafés, even though these markets were once almost solely tea drinkers. Interestingly, unless you stay at a five star hotel, you cannot find a filter cup of coffee in a café in Australia and New Zealand (as an aside, these are points I feel were ignored by Starbucks International, much to their detriment).

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MARKETING As mentioned earlier, the Australian and New Zealand markets are also unique in that the espresso-based coffees are nearly always served with milk – over 95% compared to fewer than 10% milk based coffees in Italy. As an indication of the highly competitive, sophisticated and quality driven nature of these markets we must look at some interesting statistics.

The per capita of population to espresso machines in Australia and New Zealand is approximately 850 to 1, only beaten by Italy. As a comparative, in the USA figures are roughly 20,000 to 1. With such a limited number of customers per machine to draw on, cafés in Australia and New Zealand must use quality as their biggest drawcard.

Fewer than 6% of small businesses are franchised, as compared to over 40% in North America. The sheer number of franchised stores in North America only serves to reduce the average quality of espresso based coffee, not improve it. On the other hand, smaller, more aggressive independent cafés have spawned funky leading edge designs and cool looking places to hang out, along with a more competitive environment in terms of quality of product.

Barista training The rise of barista training schools began in 1998 in Australia and New Zealand. And for what it is worth, there is a minimum national standard for preparing and serving espresso in Australia. The number of espresso training schools and where that market finds itself on the S-curve is a direct relationship to the maturity of the espresso café sector. Australia and New Zealand have the highest number to population in the world.

The number of boutique roasters to population (also directly linked to the extended maturation of the café market) in Australia and New Zealand is phenomenal.

Australia boasts over 300 local roasters and New Zealand upwards of 100. That’s about one for every 62,000 people and rising fast. It seems that pound for pound the New Zealand roasting market is more saturated – one for every 40,000 people!

Comparing these statistics to the UK market provides a clear comparative. It cannot be argued that even in London, the level of competition in the espresso café and boutique coffee roasting markets can compare at the moment to the Australian and New Zealand market. That’s great news in that you can study the effects such numbers have on the businesses in these more mature markets.

For example, the average wholesale price of a kilo of coffee to cafés has dropped dramatically in the last five years.

The average profitability of cafés is at an all

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We are here

Where would you put this sticker?

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time low, which will encourage a transformation in the café sector. The wages/salary of baristas are at an all-time high. The average customer number per boutique roaster is getting lower, and customer desertion rates from one brand to another is higher than ever. ‘Package deals’ to cafés from roasters are becoming more and more outrageous, and the average term of supply agreements are increasing.

These are but some of the issues facing the coffee industry in Australia and New Zealand.

Defining quality And yet, there are some clear winners. The average quality and taste of a cup of espresso coffee in the Australian and New Zealand markets, in my opinion, is second to none. I say this when speaking of random visits to any café in any part of these countries. And I do include Italy in my assessment by comparing the average espresso based milk coffee there. I admit my opinion can be interpreted as subjective. That is not to say I have not found excellent purveyors of espresso and milk based coffees in various parts of the globe – I am simply comparing countries according to averages.

I believe I have the credentials to make such assessments, and the ability to compare ‘apples with apples’. Over the last 11 years I have been exposed to the highest echelons of espresso quality via the many national and international barista competitions I have attended as judge, so I hope to know what is possible compared to what is being delivered in a marketplace.

I have spent much time in London, in the USA, Europe and Asia consulting to the coffee markets in these parts of the globe.

So I have had ample exposure to where each market fits on the S-curve. I cannot say with hand on heart that most cafés in these markets represent the espresso coffee standard of the WBC, for instance.

However, it is my observation that the average UK and USA espresso standard (on a national average) is where the Australian and New Zealand espresso markets were 15 years ago. I know this is a ‘big call’, but anyone who has visited these shores from

the UK or USA would understand what I am talking about. So, the upside is that there is still a lot of room for development of look, feel and quality of cafés in the UK and USA. Key lessons Firstly, understand that the coffee product and methodology used in café businesses in the early stages of a market’s development simply do not create continued success and profitability as that same market matures.

Generally, as a market matures consumer expectations, and palates, mature proportionally. Cafés, quality of product and processes must evolve to meet these changing consumer expectations in order to guarantee continued sales growth and profitability. Businesses that learn the standard of more mature markets can apply those teachings to reposition themselves as instant leaders in their less mature market. And where there is leadership, there is profit.

Another key observation of maturing markets is this - start-up espresso café markets usually start off ‘Italo-centric’, but as these markets and the coffee consumers within mature, they begin to reject Italian brands. That is why in more mature espresso markets around the world Italian branded product is fighting a rear guard action just to maintain a market presence.

The impression is that they are not noted for quality of taste. Australia and New Zealand has long moved away from Italian brands designed to deliver a smooth, ‘nonoffensive’ and mellow flavour as an espresso (without milk), and have tended towards bigger bolder flavours which are required to ‘punch’ through a cup full of milk.

Where to from here?

During the last five years in the Australian and New Zealand markets, a strong desire on the part of the café sector for a distinct point of difference in the marketplace has emerged. This has led to a flourish of micro roaster cafés. Again, the sheer saturation of cafés and intensity of competition is providing the impetus here.

Alternatively, a large proportion of cafés are demanding, and getting, tailored blends for their establishments – another trend that has been going on for some time. Their focus is on raising the quality bar - on product, processing, service, shop design and other features - all adding up to an aggressive and continuing maturity of market. As I indicated earlier, it is only by knowing, and then applying, what is going on globally in more mature espresso café markets that you can start to place your own business at a significant advantage.

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ADVERTORIAL

Talking Franke A host of new modules for the Evolution Plus range, alongside the impending arrival of its latest generation of coffee machines, the Pura pronto and Pura fresco, mean Franke Coffee Systems has plenty to shout about right now.

Franke Coffee Systems UK, a subsidiary of Swiss-based Franke Coffee Systems, one of the world’s leading suppliers of fully automatic coffee machines, has introduced a number of new products and features which, it believes, enable it to offer a solution to any out-ofhome site, from the office-based workplace to restaurants requiring coffee of the highest quality.

A milk system setting new standards Fully automatic milk preparation has a new name: Franke Foam Master.

The desired consistency of the milk foam can now be individually programmed for each drink on the coffee machine thanks to this new product available for the Evolution Plus.

A cappuccino is produced with milk foam of latte-type quality, and when frothing the milk for a latte macchiato, different qualities of milk foam can even be produced for the same drink. This enables the creation of perfect layers of milk, milk foam and coffee.

This means unlimited options when creating new coffee and milk beverages and no more difference in comparison with milk frothed by hand. On the contrary, the milk is heated more quickly at the push of a button than by hand. The innovative milk system is awaiting patent.

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“Pura fresco provides the perfect fresh-milk solution for people who prefer it. The fresco is also equipped with two bean containers for fresh coffee and a dual powder dosage unit.”

As with all Franke milk systems, the temperature of the milk foam can also be set or each product. The use of new technologies means that the milk and the milk foam can now flow faster into the cup, glass or pot. Preparation time (service speed) is reportedly cut by some 50 per cent in comparison with conventional systems.

Franke Flavour Station- syrup at the push of abutton Available with the Spectra S and the Evolution Plus, the Flavour Station from Franke makes a myriad of flavoured coffee varieties possible.

In this way, coffee and milk specialities can simply be mixed with different syrup flavours. Pressing a button adds syrup to the cup through the combined coffee-milksyrup outlet.

Different bottle shapes can be connected to the Franke Flavour Station and alcoholic beverages can also be used alongside the numerous syrup varieties.

Furthermore, two types of syrup can be mixed automatically to create more specialities. This means virtually unlimited options for proprietors.

The Flavour Station is a 200mm wide, add-on unit in which up to three syrup bottles can be connected. Pumps transport the syrup to the combined coffee-milk-syrup outlet of the coffee machine. Depending on the amount of

room available, the Flavour Station can be placed next to the coffee machine or under the counter.

If it is equipped with the new Vetro 16 operating unit, the Spectra S will let you produce up to 48 different types of coffee, coffee-milk beverages and mixed beverages, using milk, coffee and/or syrup in combination. The menu decals can be replaced at any time and the colour of the buttons changed as required.

Evolution Plus with Flavour Station The Flavour Station for the Evolution Plus is 320mm wide. This increased size enables up to six different syrup bottles to be connected. As with the Spectra S version, pumps transport the syrup to the combined coffeemilk- syrup outlet of the coffee machine.

The Pre-Selection Plus operating panel allows the operator to expand simple menus with numerous beverage variations. Customers can pre-select beverage size, type of bean and milk and preferred flavour.

The automatically controlled syrup supply has the advantage that for each product, for example flavoured cappuccino, the amount of syrup can be programmed exactly to suit individual taste preferences. This guarantees consistent dosing and beverage quality.

The system also guarantees complete cost transparency. The restaurateur can control

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ADVERTORIAL precisely how much syrup is used for flavoured coffees. If the machine is equipped with a payment system, the Franke Pre-Selection Plus feature allows the storage of separate prices for individual beverages. This means that offering a wide range of beverages with different options does not make it any harder to control costs.

Blowing hot and cold Franke has also unveiled a new refrigeration unit with a convenient 5litre milk container (alternatively, two 2.5-litre containers, for example, for two kinds of milk) fitted underneath the machine.

The refrigeration unit is placed just below the coffee machine. At the push of a button milk is added during the process of preparing the selected coffee or milk drink. The machine is cleaned using the Clean+Clever cleaning and sanitising programme.

Like all Franke milk systems, this innovation also complies with HACCP requirements. The new refrigeration unit fitted underneath represents a perfect alternative to existing milk supply systems wherever space is limited.

Finally, Chill & Cup is an innovative addon device for the Evolution, Sinfonia and Spectra product lines. The unit consists of a refrigeration unit with a convenient 5litre milk container (alternatively, two 2.5litre containers for two kinds of milk) together with a cup warmer which can preheat approximately 120 cups on two hotplates. Designed to match the corresponding coffee machine in appearance, the Chill & Cup addon device is the ideal solution if there is not enough room on the counter.

The Pura range Due to come onto the market in spring 2010, the new Pura coffee machine range completes the Franke Coffee Systems product range. The company recommends this new range will appeal to businesses with limited to average demand and is therefore the right choice, for example, for professional restaurateurs with a maximum daily demand for 150 cups, or offices with similar needs. It is also ideal for businesses wishing to offer customers more than just traditional coffees or coffee and milk beverages.

Powdered or fresh milk?

Both machines process fresh coffee beans.

However, there are differences as far as mixed beverages made of coffee, milk and/or chocolate are concerned.

With its innovative instant milk system (patent pending), the Pura pronto instant

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Revolutionary concepts What makes the latest generation of Franke coffee machines different from the competition?

Innovative operation with a coloured display in the form of text and symbols greatly simplifies both product selection and the cleaning and maintenance of the machine. The operator can select from five languages. More languages can be programmed and selected at any time.

Equally revolutionary is the handling concept. The bean containers can be removed easily without coffee beans spilling out. The same applies to the powder dosage units.

unit also processes two kinds of instant powder. The dual powder dosage unit placed between the two bean containers is designed to process a milk powder with a chocolate powder added. The two powders are then processed in separate mixing chambers. This, contends Franke, is the ideal solution for customers who, for reasons of hygiene, prefer a coffee machine that does not use fresh milk but still do not wish to do without coffee and milk beverages.

Pura fresco provides the perfect freshmilk solution for people who prefer it. The fresco is also equipped with two bean containers for fresh coffee and a dual powder dosage unit. Here, for example, dark and white chocolate can be processed in the same mixing chamber.

“Franke has also unveiled a new refrigeration unit with a convenient 5-litre milk container (alternatively, two 2.5-litre containers, for example, for two kinds of milk) fitted underneath the machine.�

Given the modular concept, coffee machine operators can easily remove the individual components themselves, such as the brewing assembly, the milk powder chamber or the outlet.

The system is therefore very easy to service with the operator able to perform simple servicing tasks. There is a clear, step-by-step explanation of the procedures involved on the display. Having opened the front door, operators can service not only the water tank and the grounds container, but also replace a brewing assembly or mixing chamber themselves and save service costs in the process.

Timeless, modern design and lighting, which can be set to the colour of the customer's choice, make the Swiss made Franke pura eyecatching in any surroundings.

The Flavour Station for the Evolution Plus is 320mm wide. This increased size enables up to six different syrup bottles to be connected.

MAY 2011 CAFÉ CULTURE 31

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CAKES

Cake

culture Eye catching, highly portable and sweet to the palate, cakes have long been the preferred treat of choice for many to accompany a takeaway coffee. Whether you serve cupcakes, whoopee pies or muffins, as we find out here, it’s important for outlets to realise that cakes are a ‘must-have’ menu item because of their meal appeal across the day.

Ready to serve In recent times, the universal appeal of cup cakes has driven sales to an all-time high in the UK (according to data from Kantar Worldpanel, the UK spent 22% more on cup cakes this year than in the previous year, with more than eight million households purchasing cup cakes in the same period suggesting a well established craze that’s here to stay).

Tapping into this trend couldn’t be easier with products such as Readi-Bake Cup Cakes from CSM UK. Their thaw and serve Readi-Bake Cup Cakes take just 90 minutes to defrost at 15-20 degrees, meaning that you can have cup cakes ready to serve to your customers at any time of the day.

Available in three flavours - Chocolate Swirl, Zesty Lemon and Strawberry Swirl - these soft and moist sponge cup cakes are filled

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Dawn Foods breakfast muffin.

and frosted for an indulgent taste and luxury appearance that is right on trend, say CSM. The company add that their Readi-Bake Cup Cakes have also been developed to stay fresher than long-life ambient products, and provide consumers with a better quality taste. They also offer minimal waste and preparation times, meaning that unit cost and profit ratio are simple to calculate so you can easily build them into your budget and menu planning.

Counter-top displays of cakes such as these can create great added sales value with very little additional effort. They are perfect for a lunch or coffee-break treat and The recent royal wedding presented a good opportunity for outlets to dress up their cupcakes, as baking case supplier, Chevler, demonstrated here.

are also ideal for parties and events, and enjoyed by both young and old. Readi-Bake Cup Cakes are available in packs of 12 Cup Cakes with a minimum order requirement of eight packs.

Dawn Foods – who can offer their customers a range of recipe ideas, and call upon the skills of their technical bakers who can offer onsite support – also specialise in pre-packed, frozen products and mixes.

“To fit in with busy lifestyles cafés and coffee shops should have a mix of products that can be eaten on site, or on the go,” advises Dawn’s marketing manager, Jacqui Passmore. “A good breakfast service enables caterers to extend the ‘day’ part and respond to consumer need. More and more people are picking up lunch with their breakfast as they go into work, so having products available that can be consumed at both those times of day can increase morning sales and allow for the dip in lunchtime ‘to go’ trade. By offering a tempting, and varied, breakfast menu you can increase sales, and ‘grab and take’ products make it easy for customers to fill up on the go.”

As a result, bakery products in particular - cookies, cakes, muffins and pastries - are seen very much as a treat that can lift a boring lunch, or been an indulgent way to start the day for breakfast, say Dawn.

“Our research during UK Coffee Week shows that muffins are the most popular sweet treat with a coffee,” reveals Jacqui Passmore. “Operators should make sure

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CAKES

CSM’s thaw and serve Readi-Bake Cup Cake range. their offering is suitable for on-the-go consumption, but that it also fits into the treat and indulgence ideal that customers look for.”

Pre-packaged bakery products that are supplied frozen are a good way to keep an eye on costs, as you only defrost what you need. In the case of Dawn, once defrosted, their finished products have a shelf life of five days. Their Scoop and Bake muffin batters keep for three days once defrosted, again giving operators the scope to provide fresh products to customers with little waste (their new foodservice brochure has all the latest information).

“To get your bakery sales just right it’s essential that operators develop new and inventive flavours that keep their offering competitive with the high street, but they should still sell classic flavours alongside these,” Jacqui Passmore continues. “Firm favourites like chocolate chip, double chocolate, triple chocolate and, in the case of muffins, blueberry, should not be forgotten. All our products are made from natural colours and flavours, they’re guaranteed nut free and suitable for vegetarians, meaning caterers can feel sure they’re offering something that is consistent and tastes great.”

New additions The Handmade Cake Company (www.handmadecake.co.uk) have extended their range of traybakes and cup cakes by now entering the whoopee pie arena in the shape of two alternative offerings - Lemon Berry with a cream cheese filling and Chocolate with a butter cream filling.

Whoopie Pies originate from the US and have sparked a ‘is it a cookie, pie or cake debate?’ Also known as ‘hucklebucks’ over the pond, it is claimed that the name whoopie pie came from the reaction of Amish farm workers opening their lunchboxes to find a sweet treat sandwich inside, lovingly baked by their wives.

The Handmade Cake Company continues to place great store by only championing

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cakes made from all natural kitchen cupboard ingredients, to ensure a real wealth of great tastes, textures and bites.

They supply their whoopie pies in a mixed box containing 16 individual whoopie pies, and a typical Handmade Cake Company whoopie pie would retail at anything from £1.25 - £1.75, suggest the company.

In 2010 the Handmade Cake Company became the proud recipient of four more Great Taste Gold Awards for its Carrot Cupcake, Continental Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Pecan Brownie and Granola Slice (the latest in a line of 20 Great Taste Awards won over the last eight years). Their diverse customer base now includes Café Thorntons, BHS, John Lewis, most major UK contract caterers and many independent tea rooms, coffee shops and garden centres.

They also export their cakes to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, France, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and even the Falkland Islands.

Swedish bakers, Almondy, have launched a new variant in their range of authentic Swedish almond tårta (tårta being Swedish for cake). Almondy Toblerone is their classic almond tårta topped with pieces of Toblerone. Following in the highly successful footsteps of Almondy DAIM, the small Gothenburg bakery is carrying on the tradition of putting a chocolate bar on a cake, and anticipates the same enthusiastic

response from foodservice operators and consumers alike.

To make your mouth really water, the almond tårta base of Almondy Toblerone is covered with a layer of rich chocolate cream and smooth milk chocolate mousse coated with the Toblerone chunks before being smothered in a delectable milk chocolate coating, no doubt guaranteed to appeal to chocolate lovers everywhere.

“We are confident that Almondy Toblerone will be a huge hit with diners who love the idea of a chocolate bar on a cake and want to round off their meal with a touch of indulgence,” says Andrew Ely, managing director of Almondy UK. “We already have a loyal band of followers, known as Tårtoholics, who love the Almondy range but we believe that the collaboration with Toblerone will provide something truly different thanks to the crunchy yet chewy honey and almond nougat contrasting with the melt in the mouth almond base.”

All of Almondy’s tårta are conveniently frozen and pre-cut into 12 perfectly sized portions. However, they defrost in just minutes and are ready to serve immediately.

The Almondy range (which includes Almondy DAIM, Almondy Meringue and Almondy Caramel & Peanut as well as new Almondy Toblerone) is baked using premium ingredients, without any preservatives or artificial colourings and being gluten-free is ideal for the 600,000 Coeliac sufferers in the UK. All Almondy tårta are delicious served alone, and yet they supply foodservice operators with the versatility to offer a more luxurious dessert with superior

Tuleen Pattinson has recently been appointed as an additional pastry chef at the Haskins Garden Centre café at Longham, Ferndown. Having relocated from Zimbabwe, Tuleen took courses at Bournemouth and Poole College, devoting two years to patisserie and a year to cake making and decorating. “It’s great to have the opportunity to create such a wide variety of tasty treats and gain feedback from customers on the ever growing range of cakes, traybakes and patisserie displayed,” says Tuleen. “We now make up to 80% of the selection ourselves.”

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CAKES

BOOK REVIEW Squires Kitchen’s Guide to Cake Shaping by Helen Penman Making your own novelty cakes is fun and rewarding and with just a few simple techniques, you can make almost anything. Rather than jamming your kitchen cupboards full of shaped cake tins, in this book Helen Penman – who began cake making in 1994 and later started up her own cake making business - shows you how to carve plain cakes into spheres, cubes, cones, numerals and animal shapes so you can create all kinds of shapes.

Whether you’re making a pretty flower, a football, your favourite pet or a big, hairy spider, your cake is bound to be a talking point.

If you’re new to novelty cakes, you will find all the help and guidance you need to get you started, from cake and icing recipes to how to cover a cake. You‘ll even find clever ideas for using up the leftover cake crumbs. There are 13 colourful cake projects to choose from, each one complete with step-by-step pictures, instructions and templates, and once you’ve learnt how to create your own shaped cakes, anything is possible!

The book is available from www.squires-shop.com (RRP £12.99, ISBN 978-1-905113-19-4).

presentation, by being able to serve them with berries, fruit or ice cream on the side.

New Almondy Toblerone became available exclusively from Central Foods from April. Each case contains 6 x 1,000g packs, which are pre-cut into 12 servings.

For more information about the Almondy tårta range visit www.almondy.com or to stock call Central Foods on 01604 858522 or enquiries@centralfoods.co.uk. Alternatively, for a chance to taste the Toblerone tårta visit Caffè Culture, stand B23 on the 18 -19 May at London’s Olympia.

Healthy and gluten-free For cake lovers, coeliacs, vegans and health food enthusiasts alike, Love Pure Cakes is manna from heaven. From polenta and seaweed cake to indulgent chocolate and algae vegan cake, it’s a gluten-free range with a difference.

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Love Pure Cakes says that it is tapping into Britain’s growing appetite for artisan products, as well as adding an experimental twist via the use of health food ‘heroes’ such as wheatgrass in order to create mouth-watering delicacies. Even chocolate cake, often seen as the ultimate sweet treat in a coffee shop, has received an angelic twist with the addition of the super food and anti-oxidant rich algae.

“So much experimentation has gone into our new range that the kitchen is beginning to feel like a science lab,” says Love Pure Cakes founder, Lorna Pellet. “I want to take traditional recipes and make them exciting again by giving them a modern twist, and blending the right ingredients has been a complex but satisfying process. By using super foods like algae and seaweed, we are pushing boundaries and challenging oldfashioned ideas about what a cake can be without ever compromising taste.”

Love Pure Cakes is Lorna Pellet’s latest venture into culinary experimentation following the considerable success of Patisserie Florentin which she established in 1989. Later establishing Café Florentin, Bistro Florentin and pop-up marquees during the Edinburgh International Festival, Lorna Pellet’s commitment to exquisite seasonal produce challenged attitudes to food and dining. She brought continental delicacies to the Scottish market and ignited the palates and revolution of café society whose movement is still growing today. And now, she is back with a concept and vision for food and indulgence where guilt plays no part, but that has an ultimate aesthetic pleasure at its heart.

Pellet sold Florentin in 1999 and after 10 years away from catering, says that she was tempted back to run another pop-up café during the 2009 Festival. It was this experience that was the turning point that inspired her to create Love Pure Cakes.

“I was amazed at how people’s emotional relationship with food had changed over the ten years since I left the industry,” explains Lorna Pellet. “People were asking for bread without wheat, coffee without caffeine, cakes without gluten and milk without lactose. The demand for organic, gluten free produce had become mainstream as had food allergies and intolerances. People are making informed choices about what they eat and there is a growing market for food that is both exquisite to taste and nutritious.

“Running a pop up café after 10 years out of the industry, I heard the market telling me what they wanted but at the time, it was impossible to supply it. Six million people in the UK searched for “gluten free” on Google last month, but restaurants and retailers have been slow to tap into this market.

However, I always listen to my customers

and it is thanks to their requests that I have spent months devising and concocting recipes for the informed palette. I’ve had great fun experimenting with recipes that use healthy, unusual ingredients and tick the boxes of being gluten free, reduced fat, reduced sugar, dairy free and incredibly tasty.

“I have had fantastic feedback from people who have tried our samples. We put a lot of energy into inventing and experimenting with ingredients and people are often amazed that vegan cakes and gluten free can taste so good without eggs and dairy.”

All Love Pure Cakes are baked daily from kitchens in Edinburgh, Penicuik and Linlithgow. Their collaborative model brings together chefs from a range of culinary traditions and over the next six months, the business is planning to increase its range of vegan cakes and expand further into cafés and restaurants.

Patisserie Valerie to open in Peterborough Patisserie Valerie (www.patisserievalerie.co.uk), the internationally acclaimed continental patisserie that has become synonymous with premium cakes, has announced that it is to open a new outlet in Peterborough’s Cathedral Square, creating over 20 new local jobs. The award-winning Patisserie was established in 1926 and has been producing handmade pastries and cakes ever since.

“We are going through a period of rapid expansion and defying all the doom and gloom that’s around!” said Paul May, chief executive officer of Patisserie Valerie. “We look for quality shopping destinations and Cathedral Square in Peterborough fits the bill perfectly. We look forward to opening very soon and welcoming customers through our doors.”

“We’re delighted with Patisserie Valerie’s decision to come to the city,” added Steve Bowyer, head of economic development at Opportunity Peterborough. “They’re a high quality company renowned for delicious cakes and are the perfect type of retailer for Cathedral Square. Offering breakfasts, lunches, tea and coffee and delivered services for businesses, we expect Patisserie Valerie to be extremely popular and enhance the vibrancy of our city centre.”

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PACKAGING

Packaging

gets going

New from Huhtamaki, the ‘mmm…’ design of food to go containers offers strong visual appeal for ‘to go’ customers.

This month’s Caffè Culture exhibition (18 and 19 May, Olympia, London) will be the place to see some of the latest packaging that’s currently available to the coffee shop sector. Displaying a strong emphasis on ‘to go’ formats, coupled with a commitment to quality and sustainability, here we take a closer look at just some of the latest developments the sector has witnessed.

New launches Bunzl Catering Supplies will be showcasing two recent and exclusive own brand product launches at this year’s Caffè Culture Show - Metro Cup and TableSMART®, with visitors to Stand J27 able to view the full ranges and obtain further information from their qualified stand staff.

Metro Cup is a new range of disposable hot cups, featuring exclusive designs never before seen in the UK, say Bunzl Catering Supplies, who also supported the first ever UK Coffee Week from recently by donating £1 to Project Waterfall for every case of Metro Cup exclusive design cups sold in February, March and April 2011.

Available as single and double wall cups in two eye-catching, contemporary designs in 8oz, 12oz and 16oz sizes, the Metrocup range also includes rippled cups in white and brown which offer excellent insulating properties, as well as plain white single wall cups. The single wall cups are cased in quantities of 1,000, whilst the double wall variety is available in quantities of 600 and 780. The rippled cups can be purchased in cases of 500 and Bunzl’s latest Metro Cup range.

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1,000 and the range is complemented by coffee clutches, supplied in either white or brown.

To help your brand compete successfully in such a competitive market, Bunzl Catering Supplies offer a ‘print your logo here’ service which enables your brand logo to be printed across a range of disposables (Metro Cup single wall cups and the rippled cups both come under the service). In addition to the Metro Cup range customers can also utilise this service across a vast array of other Bunzl packaging products from disposables, soup containers, sachets, napkins and clear plastic tumblers, to salad containers, sandwich packaging and take out bags (www.bunzlcatering.co.uk).

In response to customer demand and changing consumer trends Planglow – who will also be at Caffè Culture (Stand K26) have announced that they have decided to launch another packaging first - the Ecoco bloomer pack, which offers a modern and stylish packaging alternative to the sandwich

wedge, say the company.

This innovative pack design is laminated throughout, providing a superior barrier to help keep sandwiches fresher for longer. The plant-based laminate that has been used also prevents any unsightly leakages or grease marks and is derived from plants, not oil, which can be grown again, mean that the pack is fully compostable (as is the rest of the Ecoco Collection).

The leafy Ecoco design means the pack can also be used to promote an outlet’s eco credentials, as emphasised by the tree-ring like stamp on the front with the board coming from paper mills that fully manage sustainable and renewable plantations, meaning no old growth forests are used.

The pack features a large plant-based viewing window for easy product identification and three lock-in tabs ensure the pack is securely shut. Suitable for 24hr usage the eye-catching pack is space Planglow’s Ecoco bloomer pack (to request samples email contactus@planglow.com).

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PACKAGING

The packaging dilemma

efficient on the shelf and easy to stack.

Available in boxes of 500 the carefully chosen materials will help you to do your bit for the environment whilst also providing a superior packaging solution, say Planglow.

Huhtamaki (www.foodservice.huhtamaki .co.uk) has introduced a vibrant new stock design to its premium quality disposable paper Food To Go range. The ‘mmm…’ design provides caterers with a contemporary serving solution that guarantees to brighten up takeaway offerings and make them even more appealing customers, say Huhtamaki.

A stylish addition to Huhtamaki’s innovative range of disposable packaging solutions, it has been designed to allow caterers to modernise their presentation and offer their customers a premium takeaway experience for a variety of foods – whether sweet or savoury, hot or cold.

84% of caterers are now serving takeaway food, according to independent research commissioned by Huhtamaki into the role and use of disposable packaging within UK foodservice, and the ‘mmm…’ range has been designed to accommodate everything from freshly prepared soups and other warming food options such as oriental rice and noodles, and Mediterranean-style pastas. You can even use them to serve snacks and side orders such as olives, coleslaw and potato salad, and for those who serve customers partial to something sweet, the containers can be utilised for confectionery, ice cream and desserts as well, point out Huhtamaki.

Manufactured from paper, these stylish stackable containers offer good hear retention, keeping the contents hotter for

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For busy café operators, packaging is a vital element of the business – without it, it would be difficult to meet customer demands for convenience, hygiene and mobility.

But packaging also poses a dilemma – how to meet those customer requirements and behave in a socially responsible way, as a wasteful society is no longer acceptable.

The Foodservice Packaging Association exists to help packaging manufacturers, foodservice operators and distributors debate those questions and find solutions that are acceptable across the industry. At a recent Foodservice Packaging Environment seminar, MP for Rugby, Mark Pawsey, highlighted this challenge by explaining the requirements of both Courtauld 2 and the Packaging Waste Regulations, and the need for operators to seize the initiative with appropriate recycling facilities on site.

If the industry self regulates it will avoid the imposition of a government led legislative framework. The current government is inclined towards a 0% waste culture and the industry must take account of this. Mark Pawsey urged the industry to continue its good work in minimising environmental impact whilst innovating to facilitate growth. The packaging industry needs to work together with operators to reduce quantities of packaging, increase recycling and reduce landfill.

So what can the operator do? One of the issues, point out the FPA, is that local authorities have different policies for waste and recycling collections and not all facilities are available in all areas of the country. The first step then, is to ascertain what can be recycled locally and work to ensure that facilities exist in and around the café to collect and recycle as much as possible.

Local Authority recycling schemes for businesses are rare and it may be that café operators have to find private collectors. It’s also important for the operator to assess what materials their packaging is made from – many different formats exist including recyclable, compostable and biodegradable – so it’s important to make an informed choice about what’s right for your business (membership of the FPA includes provision of the latest environment information and developments from INCPEN - the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment - which will help you keep up to date with developments).

The next issue is education – consumers perceive packaging as ‘wasteful’ but without packaging it’s just not possible to have a coffee to go and a deli salad lunch to take back to the office. Packaging often prolongs the life of products and reduces food waste – for example the removal of plastic sleeves from cucumbers leads to much higher totals of damaged produce. Packaging also plays a vital role, not just in meeting consumer demand for convenience, it also delivers positive health and hygiene benefits for single use items – preserving shelf life and reducing food waste.

“The FPA to keeps the industry informed of best practice and developments,” says FPA Chairman, Neil Whittall. “We welcome operators, consumers and press to hear what we have to say as an industry. We should be proud of our achievements in delivering packaging that plays such an important part in the distribution, protection, hygiene, convenience and display of food, whilst constantly improving its environmental performance and still fulfilling its vital role."

longer. They can also be fitted with tightfitting plastic lids, and for improved convenience to caterers, both the containers and lids are supplied in the same user-friendly combi-pack so as to help optimise kitchen storage space in small outlets.

There are four different sizes available to choose from (8oz, 12oz, 16oz and 32oz), and each size is conveniently printed in a different colour to make the job of selecting the correct container easier for busy outlets (Huhtamaki can also supply food to go containers are also available in plain white, supplied with paper lids).

Tri-Star Packaging have launched atimely new range of Union Jack-themed

out-of-home food and beverage packaging to help food-on-the-go and coffee shop retailers and foodservice operators cash in on a series of forthcoming national events.

The recent Royal Wedding was the first of several occasions this year, and next, where the country’s patriotism can come to the fore is the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in June 2012 (to be marked by a special Bank Holiday) and the eagerly awaited London Olympic Games that will begin a few weeks later on 27 July 2012.

Tri-Star’s new, special edition Great British range includes a Union Jackemblazoned version of the award-winning 4-cup PortaDrink® carrier, which has already earned plaudits for the way in

MAY 2011 CAFÉ CULTURE 39

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PACKAGING which it has transformed the customer experience at numerous major entertainment events. Also sporting the national flag are a new 12oz cup, suitable for hot and cold beverages, and a mediumsized paper carrier bag, ideal for carrying food and beverages.

“Our new range has been introduced to help businesses supplying food and beverage products out-of-home to add to the sense of fun, excitement and patriotism that will be experienced by consumers taking part in these occasions.

It will be perfect, too, for celebrating events such as British Sandwich Week (1521 May 2011),” says Kevin Curran, Tri-Star’s MD. Tri-Star will also be making a donation from every case sold to the Help for Heroes charity (more information can be found at www.tri-star.co.uk).

In addition, Tri-Star have also launched the PortaTray™, which they describe as a revolutionary new flat-pack, pop-up drinks tray that takes up just half of the space of a traditional pulp tray. Designed to take cups of most sizes and small bottles, the four-cup sustainable kraftboard PortaTray™ splits easily into two two-cup trays, making it the most versatile multidrink tray available and eliminating the need for businesses to hold two different kinds of drinks tray in stock.

Safe and easy to use, the PortaTray™ can be ‘clicked up’ in seconds by staff and consumers, cutting service and queuing times by up to 25% and helping to guarantee a smooth flow of trade and satisfied customers, claim the company.

Solo Cup Europe’s new and stylish looking Creative Carryouts® range.

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Tri-Star’s latest Union Jack-themed range has been launched to complement a series of forthcoming national events.

The PortaTray™ grips cups and bottles to ensure stability even at a 45° tilt, reducing the risk of accidents and making it suitable for busy cafés and even drivethrus. It can be branded on all four sides, making it ideal for communicating brand identities and sponsorships.

“The PortaTray™’s space-saving qualities mean logistics, handling and storage costs are reduced to the tune of 50%,” explains Kevin Curran. “By saving on inventory, space, waste and handling costs our customers are able, for the first time, to switch from pulp drinks trays without making a huge dent in their packaging spend.

“In addition, the PortaTray™ is manufactured in the UK, which translates to fewer transport miles, better service, greater flexibility and faster turn-around, which means it can be branded quickly and easily for any event.”

Besides offering excellent functional characteristics, the PortaTray™ also meets tough environmental standards. It is made from unbleached kraftboard sourced from sustainably managed forests and is reusable, recyclable and biodegradable.

The PortaTray™ is arousing high levels of interest in the foodservice and event management sectors. Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium has already placed an order, and

café and food-to-go chains including Greggs, AMT Coffee bars and Benugo are set to trial the concept in their outlets, report Tri-Star.

Solo Cup Europe has launched a new range of premium containers called Creative Carryouts®, designed to help outlets make the most of ‘to-go’ meal service and especially suitable for lunch, deli, full meal and snack service.

The Creative Carryouts® selection of containers and lids offers a range of material choices, container sizes and formats and will add style and value to your menu offering. Many items are designed to be ‘straight to table’ and are suitable for hot, cold, chilled and ambient service styles and many are also microwavable.

“These containers are designed for high impact presentation and performance. They are also available in a variety of materials that will reflect your company ethics – if minimising your operations impact on the planet is high priority then we’ve a Creative Carryouts® range, ECO™ Expressions® that will meet your needs,” says Tony Waters, managing director at Solo Cup Europe. “If you need compartmented deli and snack boxes that won’t fog or leak and are microwavable, we’ve a great selection for you. In fact we’ve a format under this new umbrella that will meet almost every foodservice and take-away requirement.”

Creative Carryouts® include polypropylene for freezer/fridge/heat lamp and microwave applications, polystyrene for great clarity and durability and rigidity and PLA base and lid units form sustainable resources (to find out more, visit www.solocupeurope.co.uk).

Extended ranges Detpak says that it now offers a range of Uni-Cups to serve the growing take-away food service market. A premium quality paper-board cup, Uni-Cups are particularly popular for soup on-the-go, but suited to many types of foods including curries, yoghurt and fruit salad, say the company.

They offer users a host of benefits including a poly-lining to prevent against leaks, the ability to be nest-stacked for maximum space, a wide rim for easy spoon access and a secure lid with a steam vent. The range is available in three sizes, in a plain white Single Wall or brown Ripple-Wrap™ version. The Ripple-Wrap™ Uni-Cup is particularly good for soups as it keeps your hand cool and the soup hot.

Uni-Cups can also deliver a great branding presence when custom printed with Detpak able to produce distinctively branded custom printed products which ensure our customers’ brands are instantly

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PACKAGING

Left, Detpak’s Uni-Cup and right, The RippleWrap™ Uni-Cup recognised – a good way to make your brand stand out from the crowd.

Detpak also now offer an array of food wraps, each with a different functional lining, for any type of food (included in the range are: Deli-Wrap™, Versa-Wrap, Fresh Wrap and Burger Wrap). Deli-Wrap™ is manufactured using a process where the wax permeates through the paper, leading to wax coverage on both sides. The result is a wrap with a good moisture barrier that is breathable and still resistant to condensation, making it ideal for foods such as sandwiches, baked goods and seafood. It is also available in dispenser packs which is great for portion control and hygienic handling of food.

Detpak’s Versa-Wrap is an alternative to plastic bags wrapped in butcher’s paper a lightweight tissue paper with a layer of extruded polyethylene that creates an excellent grease and moisture barrier. This product is commonly known as PE Tissue Wrap and is great for foods such as cold meats, fish, poultry, cheese and small goods, suggest Detpak.

Fresh Wrap is their premium heavyweight option - a thick paper with a poly-laminated layer creating a superior barrier to grease and moisture making it perfect for foods such as meat, fish and small goods. And for the growing fast food market, burger wraps are offered in wax or foil laminated on one side, the fast food option for burgers, kebabs and hot greasy food.

As well as wrapping up your food, Detpak wraps can be used as a portion control divider, a basket liner for food, in the microwave to prevent splatters and in the fridge to cover foods and keep them fresh without the sogginess. They are made in a variety of colours, prints and sizes or can be custom printed using our superior print quality and expertise. The paper in our wraps is purely from sustainable and ethical sources and manufactured in our HACCP and ISO 9001 accredited facilities.

Recognition Tri-Star Packaging has been recognised for its position at the cutting edge of the food and beverage packaging industry after

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earning coveted BRC certification status.

Impressed auditors certified the company to the BRC Storage & Distribution Standard, which ensures that businesses operating in the food and drink supply chain are meeting the highest standards.

Tri-Star met a range of demanding requirements to qualify for the certification, demonstrating to the BRC-accredited inspectors that all of its systems offered the highest possible levels of packaging safety and quality control to both its direct customers and end-consumers.

The inspection process evaluated TriStar’s systems from beginning to end, covering a comprehensive range of procedures, including storage, transportation, staff training and chemical handling. The company also had to demonstrate that its own suppliers were safe and provide full traceability for every type of packaging it supplies, large or small.

“We believe we are one of the only, if

Kevin Curran (right) andToni Guarnieri, who helped to ensure Tri-Star met the BRC requirements.

not the only, packaging distributor in our sector in the UK to offer its customers the reassurance of BRC certification,” said Kevin Curran, managing director of Tri-Star.

“In an era when food safety is at the top of the news agenda we felt it was important to be able to offer this valuable level of quality and safety assurance to our customers. In turn, this means the food and beverage companies who use our packaging will be able to demonstrate to their own customers that their chosen downstream packaging supplier is taking product integrity seriously, a factor which can offer a real point of difference.”

Kevin Curran added: “Our fantastic achievement in becoming BRC certified would not have been possible without the hard work of Tri-Star’s commercial manager, Toni Guarnieri. She led our efforts to gain certification, working tirelessly and with great skill to ensure we met the many stringent requirements demanded by the BRC inspectors.”

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Wi-Fi

The Wi-Fi revolution Simon Morley is the founder of PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi. The PolkaSpots Wi-Fi Network is installed in hundreds of businesses around the UK - from small cafés to hospitals and town centres. The company also operate a network of hotspots in Bermuda, and is part of a voluntary project in rural Africa, bringing the Internet to remote parts of the globe. Here, he reports on some of the developments he has seen, as well as what Wi-Fi is currently being used for.

Then and now Notting Hill 2005: I was a 24 year old engineering graduate struggling to find a job.

Trudging around the local area, looking for comfortable places to work, I realised the Wi-Fi Hotspots that were available were expensive and unreliable.

The same year, PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi was born, in a small bedroom flat, with some loans from my family. The plan was to bring a more affordable Wi-Fi service to both the public and cafe industry.

The banks said Wi-Fi wouldn’t take off: the experts said the mobile phone companies would obliterate PolkaSpots. How wrong they’d be…

In 2011 it’s actually the mobile providers who generate the most business for companies like PolkaSpots.

Why? Because they have too many people using their ‘phone networks and it’s slowing them down. To compensate, they’re using ours. But what does this

mean for your café?

Fundamentally, there's more traffic for you and a higher perhead spend because your customers are staying longer.

More and more people are walking around with the Internet in their pocket and yet, we’ve seen a 65% increase in mobile usage at our Wi-Fi Hotspots in the first quarter of 2011 over the same period last year. That’s a fantastic increase and with the tablet market exploding after the arrival of the infamous iPad, things look set to continue booming.

What’s everyone else doing?

Two years ago, many cafés were equipped with a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Most locations were offering a chargeable service that was generally overpriced and very underwhelming. In 2009, 90% of our Wi-Fi Hotspots were offering a paid Wi-Fi service, and by 2010, 90% were offering a free Wi-Fi service. The loss in revenue for the café owners has been made up by the increase

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in customers walking through the doors to use the Wi-Fi. But with customers looking for something fast and reliable, they’ll quickly move to the next comfy seat if your Wi-Fi service isn’t up to scratch. It doesn’t even matter that you’re giving it away for free. These days, Wi-Fi has become a commodity and when your customers are so reliant on it, don’t cut corners, and don’t sign up for the cheapest service you can find – it will only let you down.

What are the Wi-FI Hotspots being used for?

There’s no surprise that Facebook and Google remain fixed at the top of the most popular sites, but what’s surprising is the number of people now using our Wi-Fi hotspots for business meetings, and even an office away from home. The recession’s been tough for all of us, especially small businesses. It would seem they’ve ditched the expensive offices and private members clubs for the convenient and comfortable WIFi enabled café.

I spoke to Ben from the Reynolds Café situated in Charlotte Street London, also home to Saatchi and Saatchi, Fosters and numerous other swanky businesses, and he told me the following.

“Since installing PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi 18 months ago, Reynolds has seen a change in the way customers use the service. Initially it was mainly students coming in for long periods prolonging a single coffee. However, we now predominantly see business people holding meetings and using the Wi-Fi to access and send emails. This has helped to keep the shop busy outside of the usual peaks times of breakfast and lunch.”

The busiest day on the PolkaSpots Wi-Fi Network is still Tuesday – it’s been like this since day zero and we still cannot understand why. We’ve assumed it’s all the photos being uploaded to Facebook after a weekend’s frivolity…

On average, we’re seeing at least 15 people per day use our Wi-Fi Hotspots and the average

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Wi-Fi session time’s doubled over the last 12 months.

When everyone ‘went free’, there were concerns that there’d be a lot of table dwellers, not buying much and sitting around all day, but even though per session time has increased, customers on the whole seem to respect the café and don’t abuse the free service.

Moreover, café owners can’t complain because they’ve got customers making it look busy.

After all, no one wants to visit an empty cafe.

If table management turns out to be an issue, a good Wi-Fi provider will restrict session time using Internet vouchers, or some form of registration portal.

The downside of limiting time is that the number of customers visiting the location dwindles. A mixture of access methods has proven to be most successful.

At the Jubilee Market, in the heart of London’s Covent Garden, for example, PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi was installed to service both the market traders and the local cafes (staff and public). With multiple cafés and dozens of traders, a number of different methods of access were required. We were able to supply Internet vouchers to each of the traders, enabling unlimited access during working hours. Customers in the many cafés could sign up for an account that provided two hours access per day. The service is self-managed, requiring no intervention from the market owners.

On top of this, the market’s built an online community using the login screens in combination with their Facebook fan page.

Branding and advertising Branding the Wi-Fi Hotspot has become a really big part of what we do for our customers. With pretty much every café, bar and pub having some sort of Wi-Fi service, locations are trying their hardest to make their business stand-out.

Branding the login screens is a simple and easy way to do this. These days, most of our Wi-Fi hotspots have their logos

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embedded and linked to their web sites and social networking sites, like Facebook pages.

Many are also including offers of the day and other such information.

And security?

Security will always be a worry and since the recent introduction of the Digital Economy Bill, we were expecting a decline in public WiFi Hotspots. Interestingly, since the coverage in the press, the numbers of cafés signing up for PolkaSpots has actually increased. The reason for this is that it’s no longer possible to run your own Wi-Fi Hotspot without seriously risking your business. You need some protection and it’s best to offload the responsibility onto a dedicated provider.

Wi-Fi providers, including PolkaSpots, have taken a hammering about such security concerns, but the responsibility still lies with the owners of the web site. For example, Facebook and Twitter have only just added secure pages to their web sites. Security is everyone’s responsibility, but the content providers also need to step up and make sure their sites are secure.

However, it's still essential to use commonsense when using public Wi-Fi Hotspots.

Wise up on Wi-Fi The Internet is an amazing tool that’s totally transformed the way we work and live, but it still has the power to frustrate massively when things aren’t working out. The easiest way to reduce your worry is to get educated about Wi-Fi, what it is and how it can work for you and your business. Better to spend a little time learning than walk blindly into the abyss.

Last year, we compiled 'Smart Wi-Fi', a short course for our customers and sales leads.

It’s a completely free, ten-part course delivered by email, designed to educate the cafe owner about all things wireless (if you’re interested, you can sign-up by visiting www.polkaspots.com/smartwifi).

MAY 2011 CAFÉ CULTURE 45

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CAFÉ FOOD

Pick of the

pastries For independent and chain cafés and coffee bars alike to remain competitive and profitable it’s not just about selling good coffee, but rather selling ‘a coffee plus…’ After a recent visit to the famous Belgium pastry maker, Pidy (www.pidy.com), Café Culture found out more about their heritage and production, as well as the innovative potential that their high quality pastry products can offer the coffee shop sector.

Entrepreneurial know-how Pidy (Patisserie Industrielle Dehaeck Ypres) was originally started as a small pastry shop in Ypres, Belgium, in 1967 by Andre Dehaeck, and has since gone on to become well known across the world for its comprehensive range of ready to fill pastry products which offer creative caterers a multitude of applications across all meal occasions. Typically in a year Pidy will produce more than 100 million pastries, and get through 450 tons of butter, 2000 tons of shortening and 2800 tons of flour in the process.

The company now has an established sales presence in Benelux, France, the UK (Pidy UK started in 1997 and is based in Northampton, headed up by Robert Whittle who originally entered the food business after starting his own company – Foodafayre), Germany, the USA and many other export markets, including the Middle East (52 countries in total).

A small, artisan manufacturer at the beginning, Pidy initially received orders from local hoteliers and business people, but soon went on to manufacture on a more industrial scale after expansion in 1972 and 1976, once word had spread about the quality and authenticity of its products. It also experienced further success and interest from overseas after attending international food exhibitions.

Andre Dehaeck’s son, Thierry, joined the company in 1972, aged just 17, and is

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at the helm now, having contributed a sales drive and international expansion plans to his father’s original founding know-how and entrepreneurial spirit.

‘Optimising the traditionals’ Over the years, continual expansion (they acquired their French factory in Hallouin in 1989, and started up their US production site in New York in 1995) has been the name of the game, but during the past five years, report the company, the emphasis has shifted to capitalising on their experience by developing new types of dough and products (such as ones for the aperitif market, which has surged in popularity in recent times) as they seek to ‘optimise the traditionals’ – a noticeable company mantra.

For example, after feedback from some of their customers, one notable innovation has been a pastry case that does not need to be reheated prior to use, meaning that it is far more convenient for the caterer, but can still be filled hours in advance and remain crisp – a key consideration for cafés and coffee shops where food might be on display for some time, but not lose any of its attributes.

They have also shown considerable expertise and creativity when it comes to shapes and styles. Their Duobelle product (a wave shaped, canapé pastry) won a design award in 2008, and their

One of Pidy’s factories is located in Ypres, Belgium, home to many cafés and chocolate shops, and the famous Menin Gate where since 1928 successive generations have traditionally come to remember their war dead in the daily Last Post ceremony at 8.00pm. edible spoon is a good example of many, many more pastry products that are both functional yet still highly appealing to consumers. They have also even devised a chocolate-themed edible coffee cup, a small, ice cream style cone that can be seated on a saucer alongside a cup of coffee, and there are fluted, pastry ‘bowls’ that can act as useful, portable vehicles for portions of salad.

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CAFÉ FOOD

Pidy have been launching non-pastry lines such as meringues and wraps so as to become a one stop shop for many operators in the food business.

Your creativity can know no bounds with the comprehensive variety of shapes and time-saving potential of Pidy’s ready to fill pastry products.

Two of Pidy’s innovations - chocolate ‘coffee cups’ and spoon-shaped pastries.

Their market segments include retail, cash and carry (HORECA, hotel, retail and catering), foodservice (deli, bakery and catering) and industry, with their products particularly suited to canapés, meals, dessert and food on the go applications. With their eight types of pastry (puff, sugared puff, ‘foncage’, genoises, tulips, choux, short dough and savarin baba), it is easy to see how their products can be used in both sweet and savoury recipes, and why, in turn, they have the potential to offer plenty of versatility to a café sector hungry for any point of difference and new ‘food on the move’ concepts, whether they be savoury lunch time snacks or sweet dessert treats.

Brakes, Kerry Foods, Spar, Waitrose, Domino’s Pizza, Marks and Spencer, Waitrose, Tesco, Lidl, Metro and Makro

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are just some of the companies Pidy supply. They have three brands – Gourmet Pidy, 3 Toques and Chef Laurent – enabling wholesalers, caterers and retail consumers to all have access to, and utilise, their products.

Most recently, they have made many of their products available via the amazon grocery web site (www.amazon.co.uk), allowing retail consumers to buy direct and experiment sooner rather than later with concepts that they might have just seen their favourite chef undertake on television. This online availability is also sure to have great appeal to independent café operators seeking to buy in small, manageable quantities of time-saving goods, but still indulge in the latest food trend that might help them gain an advantage over their high street counterparts.

“Sourcing our products on amazon means that any customer – from a keen domestic cook to a professional

hospitality or bakery operation – can now get hold of new products almost as soon as they are launched,” confirms Robert Whittle, Pidy’s UK general manager. “No longer will they have to nag their distributor to stock the items they need.

They will simply go on line and place an order for delivery the very next day or soon after.”

To help its customers get the best from its products, Pidy can provide recipe ideas, and also has a corporate chef who can advise on flavour combinations, as well as offer some professional tips and tricks of the trade.

Non-pastry lines In addition, Pidy UK has already revealed plans for a shift in the emphasis of its business, saying that it intends to widen its product portfolio and increase its remit of non-pastry lines.

“The demand for more than pastry has been building for a while now. In keeping with new customer requirements, as of April 2011 we have entered a wider arena where many of the products we sell will not be pastry based,” adds Robert Whittle. “The change is taking place in three distinct waves. The first wave of 30 items was introduced at IFE this year when the company launched a selection of crumble toppings, including meringue and gingersnap biscuit. Visitors to the show were also treated to Rum Babas, several new wafer lines and the biggest departure of all – flour tortillas for sweet and savoury dishes.

“The second wave is currently planned for 1st September and will involve at least 30 more. The third is expected to be rolled out later in the year or early 2012. We intend to make Pidy more of a one-stop-shop for all sectors of the food industry in the future.”

Production and quality control As both of Pidy’s European production sites are British Retail Consortium

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CAFÉ FOOD Mini tartlettes entering the oven.

Chef’s a Star promotion Pidy have launched the Chef’s a Star promotion - a buy and reward scheme where you can collect stars from Pidy product labels and exchange them for vouchers of choice from high street chains such as M&S, Argos, HMV, Comet and B&Q. The stars are collected in a special saving card which participants can download from the web site www.pidy.com/star. Once full, you post it to Pidy, who will then provide the voucher for you to spend as you wish (one exclusive winner will also be drawn from all the participants, winning a weekend trip abroad complete with Eurostar travel and dinner for two at a Michelin starred restaurant).

Customers signing up to the promotion can get their very own free starter kit of five stars to the value of £1.25 (call 01604 705666, or email pidyuk@pidy.com for details).

CAFÉ CULTURE READER OFFER! Stars worth up to £30 will be made available to the first five Café Culture readers to enquire on the above number and speak directly with Pidy’s Robet Whittle about the scheme.

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accredited, quality control and traceability checks are in operation right from when the raw materials arrive at the warehouse. They also have a small laboratory in operation where samples can be analysed and records maintained in relation to aspects such as humidity (which affects shelf life), acidity and fat content (calculated via the use of an extraction test, and which has implications for the all important ‘lift’ of the pastry).

Nothing is signed off for use in any production until all the necessary checks have been performed so as to ensure that the ingredients conform to the standards specified to their suppliers (the factories work on a just in time principle, holding enough stock for one or two days only).

In recent times, due to the rising costs of ingredients and price pressures, the company estimate that they have had to pass on list price rises of between 3% and 6%.

The Ypres site is mostly dedicated to puff pastry production, the French site to sweet dessert pastry production. Their factory in the US deals with special requirements, such as particular shapes, where hand finishing is often required (lower labour costs in the US make this a more cost-effective method to carry out there than in Europe).

The ingredients for the pastry dough – water, salt, flour and non-hydrogenated margarine in the case of puff pastry - are all mixed, then allowed to rest for four hours in a fridge before being put on the production lines and pressed (the

temperature of different areas of the factory is monitored and controlled via computer from the laboratory). The Dutch method of pastry making requires further mixing, whereas the French method uses layering so as to give the product good lift.

On the butter choux line to make profiteroles, margarine or butter is heated up and then flour and eggs added and mixed in before transferring to a baking plate which goes through an oven for about 30 minutes at a temperature of 36o0C. The golden yellow colour to their pastry is provided by a natural colouring – extract of carrot – and can be specified according to a customer’s requirements.

Similarly, products can pass through a second oven to help dehydrate and acclimatise them according to customer requirements.

Left over dough is re-used. When making short crust pastry, butter and sugar is mixed into a sugar cream before eggs and water are added, and any left over dough is used up quickly due to the egg content. Most of their production is dedicated to sweet pastry, say Pidy, with some savoury products. The vol au vent is probably their most popular product on the Continent, whereas for the UK market it’s the quiche case which can also be used a pie case.

A taste panel also sample products every twenty minutes, and each production line is fitted with a metal detector. A variety of packaging is possible, according to customer requirements.

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MAY 2011 CAFÉ CULTURE 49

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UK COFFEE WEEK

UK Coffee Week The first ever UK Coffee Week (www.ukcoffeeweek.com, 4 to 10 April 2011) provided a unique opportunity for branded coffee chains, independent coffee shops and industry suppliers to collaborate and celebrate the success of the industry while at the same time giving back to a worthy cause.

Fund raising opportunity A nationwide programme of charitable collections, in-store activities and public events raised funds for the Allegra Foundation’s Project Waterfall to deliver clean water projects in coffee-producing African countries with participating venues inviting customers to add a voluntary 5p donation to their purchases for the duration of the week.

The Allegra Foundation is a registered charity (No. 1133540) was established by the Allegra Group to support sustainable development projects in coffeegrowing countries. Project Waterfall is the central focus for fundraising and aims to deliver clean water projects in African coffee-producing countries (100% of all funds raised from consumer donations will directly benefit this cause).

The first project will provide clean water to communities in

The London Belle Barista team were successful in their record-breaking espresso making attempt. the Mbulu District of Tanzania in partnership with WaterAid. Ultimately, Project Waterfall aims to raise £1 million to provide clean running water to the coffee growing nations of the developing world.

Industry support The London Coffee Festival (8 to 10 April 2011) was the flagship event of UK Coffee Week, and took place at the Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London with 100% of all ticket sales going directly to support Project Waterfall. Alpro Soya was a Premium Supporter of UK Coffee Week, with United Coffee sponsoring the week's exclusive UK Coffee Week VIP event, set up to raise awareness of Project Waterfall.

“Coffee is our business and our passion and we are committed to ensuring a sustainable marketplace for years to come,” said Elaine Higginson, managing director of United Coffee, UK & Ireland.

“While the UK's tastes in coffee are becoming more discerning and expectations raised ever higher, there are still more than one billion people in the world who don't even have access to

running water. The VIP event highlighted the issue and helped to raise much needed funds for those who go without, we're proud to be sponsors of such an important event.”

The invitation only event took place at London’s Langham Hotel and was attended by more than 200 coffee lovers, cafe owners and key industry players. TV presenter, Caroline Feraday and

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UK COFFEE WEEK former Dragon’s Den panelist, Richard Fairleigh hosted the event. There was also a special preview performance of Coffee Week’s charity single, performed by UK artist, Sam Smith. Raffle prizes were donated by ClubTEN, Benihana, Ajala Spa, Grange Hotels, Amika London and The Langham London.

Matt Tuffee with La Cimbali’s M39HD at the festival.

Record-breaking During the week, UK baristas were also successful in smashing an Aussie world record, with a team of more than 100 UK baristas breaking the world record for ‘the number of espressos made in an hour’ by producing 12,003 espressos at a rate of 3.33 espresso shots per second. The London Belle Baristas team used 31 commercial espresso machines, eclipsing all previous records in front of London Coffee Festival attendees at 6.30pm on Saturday, 9 April 2011.

The official Guinness World Record was held by a Polish barista team with 3,386 in March 2010, but an unofficial record was claimed by a team from Brisbane, Australia in October last year making 5,061 espressos.

“This record is a tremendous achievement and really shows the rest of the world London’s leadership in artisan ‘Third Wave’ coffee culture,” said Jeffrey Young, managing director of consultancy, Allegra

Strategies, the company behind the event. “London offers bestin-class food and coffee with many visitors coming here to learn from trends in this great city.

“In the spirit of competition, and in the run up to the 2012 games, we will be taking this award to Mayor Boris Johnson.

Perhaps he may be able to get our barista championships to be featured at next year’s Olympics!”

Taking part in the record for the London Belle Barista team were representatives from many of the leading companies across the entire coffee industry including - Costa, Union HandRoasted, Lavazza, La Cimbali, La Marzocco, Alpro Soya, United Coffee, Joe & The Juice, Bean About Town, and a host of independent coffee shops from London and other parts of the UK. The record attempt was made in the presence of Specialty Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) officials and expert witnesses from the coffee industry and has been formally submitted to the Guinness World Records team.

Showcase La Cimbali UK – who showed off their M39HD coffee machine at the London Coffee Festival – report that their sponsorship of the event was a great success after experiencing a hectic three days, and also providing some of their machines for use in the world record attempt (one two group Cimbali M29 reportedly made over 600 espressos during the hour - the most espressos produced per machine group head).

On the La Cimbali stand consumers were able to use various machines to create their perfect Italian coffee with the M39HD proving a huge success as it showed how changes in brewing pressures can effect the final beverage after extraction. Baristas were then able to play with the machine to find their preferred profile.

"We had all different kinds of people dropping by the stand throughout the three day show; baristas, café owners and members of the public who just wanted to learn a bit more about where their coffee comes from," said La Cimbali UK’s

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sales and marketing manager, Matt Tuffee. "London Coffee Festival was our first real venture into the consumer world, but we were really happy to see that a lot of people recognise the brand from some of their favourite coffee outlets and needless to say, we got through an enormous amount of coffee."

At the event, La Cimbali's own coffee guru, Alberto Galimberti, was joined by Italian barista champion, Francesco Senapo, to present a range of seminars teaching baristas about the variables which must be controlled during coffee extraction. The individual components of an espresso were separated to show how adjusting the pressure of the extraction during the different stages of brewing presents a very different result in the cup, and the pair were able to guide baristas through the art of extraction with Francesco preparing many examples for the audience to participate with and taste the differences for themselves.

“The seminars were a great opportunity for some of the most experienced coffee experts in the industry to share techniques and ideas with baristas,” added Matt Tuffee.

“La Cimbali was founded in 1912, so we have an enormous amount of experience in coffee excellence to pass onto the wider industry.”

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FEE F O

CL

The Coffee Clinic Here, Glenn James of maintenance company Coffix (www.coffix.com), responds to some of your frequently asked questions and concerns about the day to day use and smooth running of coffee machines by offering some practical advice and guidance.

INIC

Question We are looking at purchasing a new coffee machine as we have had ours for over 10 years now and it is coming to the end of its life. We have looked around recently and found that there are so many different machines out there. What do you think we should be looking for in a machine? We have about £3000-£3500 to spend.

Lynda Harroop, Manchester.

If you have a coffee machine-related question that you would like answered, then why not email clare@jandmgroup.co.uk or write in with details of the name, location of your café and question to Café Culture, Association House, 18c Moor Street, Chepstow, NP16 5DB and Café Culture magazine will endeavour to source an answer for you!

Answer End of its life? Arrgghh! It seems that quite a few businesses have looked at swapping out their machines recently due to them being too old.

However, as long as you look after it, clean it, maintain it, these machines can last years. We presently have a handful of customers with machines that are over 20 years old, but they maintain, clean and keep their machines in tip top condition and - touch wood – they don’t have problems with them. Now, as for the features I'd look for in an espresso machine…

1) Dual gauges (1 x steam pressure, 1 x pump pressure). Cheaper machines mostly only have 1 gauge.

2) Sight glass indicator so if heaven forbid you have a fault it’s easier and quicker for the engineer to diagnose the fault.

3) Power. If you have to run your machine from a 13 Amp plug, you can only go up to a 3KW

Question I’m hoping you can help. We are located in London and we are constantly having problems with our grinder. It’s a Mazzer Super Jolly. We've had an engineer out four times in the last 10 weeks for pretty much the same problem, but he says it’s our fault and not the grinder’s. Each time he leaves it’s great, but slowly the coffee gets slower and slower through the group heads. He then returns and carries out the same repair and it works again. It’s costing us a fortune as we pay for each call out. What could the fault be and how can we stop it? Thanks!

Rachel (Camden Town, London).

Answer Fire your engineer! Sorry, I don’t say

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that very often, but I'd be having words if I were you. It sounds as if when you are cleaning your grinder, you are accidentally adjusting the adjuster ring at the base of the bean hopper. There should be a screw that you can tighten down to lock the adjuster into place meaning that you can't accidentally move it.

One thing that I’ve found works great is to mark your grind setting, so put a mark on the adjuster ring and then straight under it mark the actual body of the grinder. This gives you a reference mark to start from if your grind is out. Your engineer should have carried this out as it’s a common practice with the engineers the we deal with. I hope this helps and you keep serving great coffee.

element otherwise it will burn out. If you have a single phase supply check its rating 20, 25, 32 Amp supply, and then allow for an element that uses most of the allotted power. This will allow your machine to recover its heat and steam as quick as possible.

4) Adjustable boiler temperatures. You can alter the taste of your coffee considerably if you have the ability to alter the temperature even by as little as one degree.

5) Multi boilers. These are starting to get towards the top of the line machines. These have a designated boiler for the coffee water and a boiler for the steam arms. This gives a more constant temperature allowing for you to produce a better coffee.

6) I know a lot of people who say this doesn’t matter, but in my opinion it does, and that’s what it looks like. This is the least important, but you don’t want a machine that doesn’t fit into the environment that you've created!

CAFE CULTURE

2011

Coffix will once again carrying out workshops (in association with the SCAE) at this year’s Caffè Culture trade show (Olympia, 18 and 19 May). Our workshops will cover basic maintenance, cleaning procedures, information on water softeners and all the accessories that you can use to get the best out of your machine (you can buy tickets on the Caffè Culture web site). I hope to see you all there, and if you see anyone from Coffix please feel free to ask us any question that you need answering (sorry, but we can't save the economy!).

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FEBRUARY 2010 CAFÉ CULTURE 53

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RISTA BA

Barista talk Youri Vlag of training company and coffee supplier, Limini Coffee (www.liminicoffee.co.uk), tackles some of your questions and queries about your own barista skills, and offers some top tips to help you make high quality beverages. This month, the critical business of grinder adjustment…

We are changing the grinder all day long, is that normal?

That is a really good question and we get asked this all the time during the barista courses.

There are a lot of different theories out there as to why you need to change the grind all day long, but you just need to focus on the basics. As you might know, the grind is the factor that controls the speed of extraction.

At least, that is what most people are being told!

The truth is, however, that the speed of extraction is controlled by a lot of different factors as well and the grind is just one of them. Sure, it is probably the most deciding factor and really important to get right, but the grind is not responsible for everything. Most people think it is however and will often change the grind when the extraction is too slow or too quick.

TALK

Q

If you have a barista-related query that would like answered, then please email clare@jandmgroup.co.uk, or write in with details of your name, location of your café and question to Café Culture, Association House, 18c Moor Street, Chepstow, NP16 5DB and Café Culture magazine will endeavour to source a reply for you!

TOP TIP You should only change the grind when you are certain that it is the grind that needs adjusting.

Work on your tamping technique and once you’ve perfected it, aim for consistency.

There are two burrs. The top burr can move up and down to make the coffee finer or coarser.

A grind-on-demand grinder (the Mahlkonig K30).

Espresso brewing is all about understanding the variables and being able to control them as best as possible. I would like to point out that espresso brewing is a science and an art. You will never know it all, and you will always get surprises. And that is exactly what makes it so

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A traditional doser grinder. beautiful - the aim for perfection, but never quite reaching it. The best baristas are the ones who appreciate this and enjoy this about coffee.

I would also like to say that in my eyes it is impossible to brew the exact same espresso twice. There are just too many variables and in theory it is

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almost impossible. So, just accept this fact and enjoy the process. Of course we all aim for consistency and we should aim for consistent quality at all times. But don’t get stuck on a 26 seconds extraction time.

Instead learn what to look for in the extraction. You should be able to quickly visually check to see whether the settings are correct or not.

Why do I have to change the grind all the time?

If you are keeping all the factors consistent then you shouldn’t have to change the grind all the time. Most people will time the extraction. If the shot is below 20 seconds for example, the grind would be made finer to run it slower. If the shot takes longer than 30 seconds, the grind would be coarser to run it quicker. This is usually done by moving the slider or wheel on the grinder. What you are actually doing is moving the top burr closer or further away from the button burr (assuming you are using a flat burr grinder).

Just changing the grind to ‘fix’ the extraction is the most basic way and is not the correct way. Unfortunately this is what most people get taught and it can cause quite a lot of headaches. By adjusting the grind to ‘fix’, the extraction only works when all other variables are kept consistent and that is exactly where most people struggle (without knowing!).

If your grind is exactly the same but your dosage is one gramme less then your extraction will be faster. If you are unaware of the fact that your dosage is one gramme less, then you might think that this is the grind and you will make the grind finer. You can easily check your dosage. Simply look at your puck/cake in the group handle after you have made a coffee. The puck should be solid and a little moist. A wet puck is the result of not using enough coffee (under dosing). This is the kind of stuff that should be taught in detail during a barista course.

Now the next barista comes along and makes a coffee. This barista is using the correct dose, but now with a finer grind. So the extraction will be too slow again and the grind might be adjusted by the barista to a coarser grind. And it can go on like this all day.

If a barista tamps a lot harder, or very differently to everybody else in the team, then this will also result in a different extraction time. And inconsistent tamping can often be the reason why someone might think the grind needs changing. All this should be shown in depth during a barista course. When you know these things it will make your life a lot easier. More knowledge about this will make you more confident.

When you are more confident you are happier, and a happier barista results in happier customers. Happy customers result

Q

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in more profit and a fantastic atmosphere.

You see, a bit of training can go a long way!

So what should we be doing?

You need to find out if the problem is actually the grind. Don’t assume that because the extraction is slow or quick the grind needs to be changed. It might be the dosage that is inconsistent… or it might be something else.

If you have checked all other variables and you are sure that these are all good then you can try changing the grind. But only small changes at a time and make sure that you purge the grinder before you check again. You will have to change the grinder a couple of times throughout the day. This is perfectly normal and you are encouraged by all the people who love coffee so much to actually do this! The more you keep an eye on it the better. But make sure that you only change it when you actually need to. Make sure that it is actually the grind that needs changing.

‘A slow extraction tastes better than a fast one.’ One of the main reasons why you have to change the grind throughout the day is due to the fact that the coffee dries out and this will affect the extraction. At some locations it affects the coffee more and it is impossible to tell how many times a day the grind should be adjusted. Usually you would have to adjust the grind a couple of times.

Q

So how can I achieve better consistency?

Training, practise, the willingness to learn, the mindset to get it perfect! But also good equipment. A grind-on-demand coffee grinder will help you a lot. A good quality grind-on-demand grinder will give you consistent dosage each time and freshly ground coffee for each shot. That already takes care of two very important variables. A quality espresso machine will make a big difference as well. But in the end it mainly comes to down to the barista.

If you have a traditional doser grinder then you need to practise amongst yourselves. Work out a dosing technique that gives you great consistency. You all need to fill and level the basket the same way to ensure that the entire team is using the same dosage. Whatever you do, please grind fresh for each cup and do not fill the dosing chamber too much with ground coffee.

Also ensure that you buy beans that arrive with a date. You need to know when the beans were roasted because this is an extremely important variable. If you suddenly put in a new bag of coffee that is weeks older, you will most likely have to adjust the grinder. A side note: really fresh coffee can be harder to work with because of the foamy crema.

Q

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NEW PRODUCTS MARCO BECOMES EXCLUSIVE DISTRIBUTOR FOR BARATZA GRINDERS

NELSON AT CAFFÈ CULTURE 2011 Nelson Catering Equipment will be talking to Caffè Culture visitors about the importance of maximising on preparation, cooking and servery space and how the right design can increase customer footfall, strengthen brand identity and, ultimately, improve revenue.

Nelson Catering Equipment provides a full service from initial design ideas through to final 3D concepts, elevations, installation, commissioning and training, even including full project management if required. Nelson is able to undertake smaller projects through its in-house, specialist divisions. Their design solutions have also brought success to numerous cafés, both small and large.

Sister company, Nelson Dish & Glasswashing, will be sharing the stand to demonstrate the latest Speedwash Advantage undercounter dishwasher, its most advanced model yet. The super specified design addresses areas of energy efficiency and performance.

Special discounts will apply to any orders initiated at Caffè Culture Show, from their stand number H28 (Call 0208 993 6199).

Leading beverage equipment innovator and manufacturer, Marco Beverage Systems, has become the exclusive distributor in the UK and Ireland for USbuilt coffee grinders, Baratza.

The Baratza product range comprises the Maestro, Maestro Plus and Virtuoso grinders along with a Portaholder to allow direct grind to a portafilter. The grinders share unique features including an innovative calibration system with a 40step adjustment range to achieve precision grinding from espresso/fine to cafetière/coarse; a conical burr set with easy access for service and cleaning; a powerful DC motor with low revolutions to minimise the reheating of coffee grounds; static reduction to limit residual coffees from bean to bean and a clean and efficient grinds collector.

MELITTA LAUNCHES A FURTHER NEW MACHINE AT CAFFÈ CULTURE 2011 Melitta have announced that the UK launch of a brand new second generation model to join the countertop bar range will take place at Caffè Culture, on their stand G39.

The highly compact bar-cube 2 is a fully automatic speciality coffee machine that offers even more features and benefits. As well as having the capability to produce up to 150 brewed espressos, or 80 speciality drinks, per hour, the new model has several additional features.

There is now a hot chocolate menu with dark or white chocolate which can be made with milk, water or a mixture of both. Secondly, coffee strength can now be micro managed via three buttons on the display to offer customers a choice of pre-determined strength levels across the calibrated menu settings.

BLUE ICE TO DISTRIBUTE SPACEMAN MACHINES BLUE ICE is the sole distributor in the UK for Spaceman machines. The company was established in 1998, leading to 40 years of design and manufacturing experience in precision machinery and control. The aim of BLUE ICE Machines is to provide customers with

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The Virtuoso machine boasts a 40mm commercial grade burr set for home or professional applications and produces excellent grind profiles for switching from espresso to filter coffee. As with the Maestro Plus, the Virtuoso is equipped with a timer and pulse button option for espresso delivery into a portafilter.

Marco can be contacted on 01933 666488.

first class food refrigeration equipment at a low cost. The equipment that BLUE ICE provides includes ice cream, yoghurt making machines and milkshake machines.

The 218 Blue Ice Cream Model (pictured) is an ice cream machine that can output 130 cones per hour : Blue Ice also offer free installation and training on all machines supplied, and can be contacted on 0203 5385991 or visit www.blueicecreammachine.co.uk

The body of the machine has been refined and the dispense point is now illuminated with a neon strip to create front of house impact.

Bar-cube 2 has two quick release bean hoppers that allow operators to swap bean types. The automatic milk frother delivers foamed milk drawn from either a 4 litre milk cooler, concealed within the machine’s subframe or from an adjacent chiller.

All Melitta’s bean to cup machines are fully HACCP compliant. Tel: 01628 829888

PANIZZA – THE PIZZA SANDWICH Numero Uno Foods have launched a new product, Panizza, a handheld “pizza sandwich.” The Panizza is designed to be used in panini grills, and a three to four minute grill in a machine will create the hot product.

The Panizza is available in two sizes, as either 5” or 7” diameter pizza bases. There are several panizza fillings available including Margarita, Pepperoni Margarita, Pollo Bardi, Italian Ham and

Pineapple Margarita, Tuscany (Italian Ham, mozzarella and mushrooms), Chicken Tikka and Sorriso Margarita.

For further details on Panizza contact Numero Uno Foods Ltd on 0845 8336141 or visit www.numerounofoods.co.uk

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NEW PRODUCTS VICTOR’S BUFFET TOPPERS ARE TOP OF THE POPS FOR ALL SECTORS Victor Manufacturing, the catering industry’s favourite counter and servery manufacturer, has a range of ingenious portable Buffet Toppers that can be found in all sectors of hospitality.

Victor's Buffet Toppers, offered in a choice of four models, can be configured with a carvery, glass, tile or stainless steel top, all of which are interchangeable – with tops available to buy separately. These small, portable, counter-top heated display units deliver

optimum flexibility and are offered with or without overhead quartz heat lamps.

For outlets serving up popular roast meat courses, Victor’s Carvery Buffet Topper BTC4 is ideal. The unit is constructed from heavy duty stainless steel, has a quartz lamp above to complement the variable heat in the base, and ensures meat is kept hot throughout meal service without losing any of its succulence (call 01274 722125 or visit victoronline.co.uk).

CORN AGAIN - POPCORN’S SAVOURY RENAISSANCE With name checks from celebrities like Madonna and chef Gordon Ramsay, what’s behind the popcorn renaissance? The premium, predominantly savoury popcorn market is still very much in its infancy but as the hand-cooked crisps market becomes increasingly crowded a number of companies are bringing new and exciting flavours to the masses.

Leading the way are Corn Again, the UK's first gourmet savoury and sweet popcorn manufacturer. Based in Consett, County Durham, Corn Again popped into existence in April 2009, founded by husband and wife team Richard and Catherine Furze.

Using only natural ingredients, the couple are making four flavours in 100g bags, three of which are savoury (Garlic & Herb, Chilli & Fennel and Salty Sweet) and their latest which is sweet (Sweet Cinnamon Spice). Call (01207) 582691 or visit www.cornagain.co.uk.

UPGRADE THE CAFFÉ CULTURE FOOD OFFERING Check out Rational’s multitalented cooking technology at Caffè Culture Stand G7 (18 & 19 May 2011, London Olympia). Rational will be showing its latest SelfCooking Center - smart cooking technology that can roast, poach, bake, toast, slow cook, fast cook, grill, even prepare chips by cooking everything automatically and perfectly, simply at the touch of a button.

Show visitors will be able to find out more about Rational’s remarkable cooking technology and book a test drive at a

TeamCooking Live seminar which are being held at over 100 venues around the country. “The SelfCooking Center is ideal for any kind of café food, from baked potatoes to steak to pizza – it’s even perfect for paninis!” says Ian Ring, sales director of Rational UK (call freephone Rational UK on 0800 389 2944 or visit www.rational-UK.com).

JUST SPIKE IT!

Rational’s new potato baker, designed for the SelfCooking Center, ensures that baked potatoes are cooked perfectly, with crisp skins and light and fluffy insides – and all at the touch of a button. The 1/1GN potato baker accessory can hold up to 28 potatoes at a time and has spikes that conduct heat right to the centre of the potatoes so that they are cooked up to 50 per cent faster than by conventional methods. Corn on the cob, a notoriously difficult

menu item, can also be cooked so it is tender and juicy.

Using the potato baker and the special settings on the SelfCooking Center, baked potatoes can be ready in under 30 minutes, while sweetcorn only takes 10 minutes.

Built to withstand the demands of a busy kitchen, the potato baker is extremely robust and can be cleaned in a commercial dishwasher (call 01582 480388 or visit www.rational-UK.com).

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