COFFEE NOTES MAY/JUNE 2021
With each passing day, we seem to be edging closer to the relaxation of lockdown across the UK. In this edition of Coffee Notes, we’re exploring a few key topics that bring a sense of positivity for the future of hot beverages as we begin to re-open and reflect. Firstly, we’ll dive into what’s yet to come on the journey out of the pandemic and what the road of innovation looks like for the hot beverage industry, before moving on to tell you about the upcoming NHS Big Tea Day in July and how you can get involved. We’re also continuing our travels into the world of Smart Coffee, this time taking you through the science behind productivity and hot beverage solutions in the workplace. Finally, we’re putting the focus on an innovative new method of tropical reforestation that utilises waste from coffee production. Let’s start by looking at our first article: a message of hope to remind us that brighter days lie ahead…
5-MIN READ
CHALLENGING COVID -19 COVID-19 vaccines have been developed and deployed at breakneck speeds here in the UK, and several other countries are well on their way through their own successful vaccination programmes. This level of expansion has given hot beverage brands and operators a new lease of life in planning the return of customers back into the hospitality, travel, workplace, healthcare and education sectors to name just a few. As of early June this year, 74.9% of the adult population in the UK had received at least one vaccine dose, with this number increasing daily.*
THE BREWING OF A BRIGHTER FUTURE With a long overdue sigh of relief, it seems as though the world is starting to reach the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. Thanks to the ingenuity, dedication and sacrifice of individuals and communities around the globe, we’re looking forward to the future with a great deal of optimism. To shine a spotlight on these efforts, we’re exploring the key moments of change that will help those of us in the world of hot beverages steer our gaze towards a brighter future.
*GOV.UK, Vaccinations in United Kingdom, 27th May 2021. ^World Coffee Portal, Feb 2021.
THE RISE OF NEW TECHNOLOGY
Contactless payments, online ordering and intelligent tracing programmes made it possible for cafés to stay afloat and remain open in some way so that their teams could operate with a greater level of efficiency and a focus on safety, allowing them to interact with customers and serve up important moments of joy for their local communities. As we move into a reality that includes the blurring of online and in-store purchasing and a continued relaxation of social distancing rules, it is likely we will watch digital innovation become even more of a top priority for brands and outlets looking to successfully ride the wave of post-pandemic consumer behaviours.
GLOBAL ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Despite the ongoing uncertainty, there are some positive signs that economic revival on a global level is well underway. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is forecasting world fiscal growth at a rate of 5.6% for 2021 and predicts that international outputs will recover to pre-pandemic levels by mid-2021. Although the UK branded coffee shop market is projected to take three years to fully recover in the same way,^ World Coffee Portal has forecast a modest 1.2% outlet uplift in 2022. It may not be the increase we were hoping for, but growth is growth!
FOCUSED ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE
The rapid growth in ethical and sustainable business practices is a testament to the changing attitudes surrounding tea and coffee production. With the world keeping the protection of the environment front-of-mind at home and in business, there’s more opportunity than ever to join in this support and keep the production and supply of our favourite drinks greener than ever. Read on through the rest of this issue of Coffee Notes to learn about a particularly positive new development in the fight for more sustainable industry practices. It’s safe to assume that most of us are ready to make the final push for normality in all walks of life and start enjoying brighter days, but there’s still work to be done. At Nestlé Coffee Partners, we want to encourage everyone to be kind to one another, support the NHS, and help you ensure that your cafés are safe places for your customers to come together once again for all their favourite beverages. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with one of the team if you need any assistance in navigating the new normal. We’re here to help.
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4-MIN READ
RAISING A MUG FOR THE NHS In true British fashion, almost half of the UK public agree that regular tea breaks have been instrumental in helping the nation’s workforce to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. As a way to thank our unique health service, NHS Charities Together is urging people to participate in the NHS Big Tea Day on July 5th.
The event will involve a nationally recognised tea break to raise money for NHS key workers and to thank their entire network of staff for their dedication and sacrifices over the past year. The charity has conducted research to compliment the event, leading to some fascinating insight around the importance of tea to our nation, particularly during periods of lockdown.
•N early half of the UK public (46%) believe that traditional tea breaks have helped the nation to get through the pandemic. • Across the UK, 58% of people work a regular tea break into their daily routine. • 7 3% of Brits believe that a tea break offers a welcome break from work, with 60% citing it as an excuse to stop staring at screens.
For café operators, there’s plenty of time to spread awareness ahead of the day. The event offers a fantastic opportunity to point your customers towards your tea range and encourage those who might normally be seeking a coffee to enjoy a cup of the country’s favourite instead. With that being said, Ellie Orton — CEO of NHS Charities Together — wants anyone to join the event, regardless of whether they prefer tea, coffee or hot chocolate. Anyone can participate by raising a mug at 3pm on July 5th.
“After so many months of isolation for many, The NHS Big Tea Day is a chance for everyone to join up with friends, family and neighbours, for communities to come together and thank NHS staff and each other for everything they have done over the past year, all while having a great time and raising vital funds to support NHS staff, volunteers and patients.” — Ellie Orton, CEO of NHS Charities Together
The Big Tea Day invites the UK to stop and enjoy a cup of tea while taking time to appreciate what matters. Whether you’re behind the counter at a café or sitting in your home, stop, take a moment, and join in to celebrate our NHS.
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3-MIN READ
COFFEE PULP: THE KEY TO FOREST RESTORATION? A NEW BRITISH-LED STUDY HAS UNEARTHED AN UNEXPECTED USE FOR AGRICULTURAL WASTE THAT COULD HOLD A COST-EFFECTIVE , INNOVATIVE AND READILY AVAILABLE SOLUTION TO THE RESTORATION OF TROPICAL FORESTS, ESPECIALLY THOSE THAT HAVE BEEN HIGHLY DEGRADED FROM MULTIPLE COFFEE BEAN HARVESTS. Findings published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal for Ecological Solutions and Evidence have shown that pulp — a waste product of ground coffee production — could be instrumental in speeding up tropical forest recovery on post-agricultural land. The study involved researchers spreading 30 trucks full of pulp onto a 35 x 40m area of degraded land in Costa Rica, with a similar area marked out separately without coffee pulp as a control.
The pulp-treated area of land experienced a massive 80% canopy coverage compared to an increase of just 20% seen in the untreated area. It also seems to have restored the land itself, with the pulp helping to curb the spread of invasive pasture grasses — something that can often put a stop to forest succession — and traces of growth-promoting nutrients like carbon and nitrogen showing up more in treated areas compared to the control. What’s more, the study was conducted on land that was previously used for coffee farming, which makes these results even more relevant to hot beverage brands and operators considering ways to add a new level of innovation to their sustainability commitments and ethical practices in the years to come. In the last issue of Coffee Notes, we mentioned that some of the biggest players in the coffee industry had announced a new goal: to cut CO 2 emissions by at least 1.5 million gigatons by 2050. We’re happy to report that, as part of this commitment, these brands are also looking at how their practices and supply chains can be modified to contribute to the restoration of tropical forests. In the fight against climate change, innovation like this will likely be one of the keys to our success. This particular study should prove useful in the global effort, as the waste produced by our industry could get us closer than we realise to our collective goals to nourish and protect our planet’s ecosystems without reinventing the wheel of coffee production.
Dr. Rebecca Cole, the lead author on the study, was impressed by the dramatic results:
“THE AREA TREATED WITH A THICK LAYER OF COFFEE PULP TURNED INTO A SMALL FOREST IN ONLY TWO YEARS, WHILE THE CONTROL PLOT REMAINED DOMINATED BY NON-NATIVE PASTURE GRASSES.”
https://www.comunicaffe.com/forests-on-caffeine-coffee-waste-can-boost-tropical-forest-recovery/
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7-MIN READ
SMART COFFEE:
THE SCIENCE OF PRODUCTIVITY & HOT BEVERAGES In the last edition of Coffee Notes, we introduced the new concept of Smart Coffee; our thought-leading hot beverage model that combines our deep knowledge of the category with the real science behind how the right hot beverage solutions could inspire productive behaviours in a way that significantly contributes to a more effective workplace. But to understand how we might achieve this, and truly ‘think smart’ about choosing the right hot beverage solutions, we first need to understand the four key behaviours of productivity and how they could be influenced with Smart Coffee.
WHAT ARE THE FOUR BEHAVIOURS?
INDIVIDUAL FLOW & FOCUS This behaviour is all about the productive mental state known as ‘flow,’ which is when we experience deep concentration while working on our own, free of any interruptions or distractions. But this behaviour is very fragile in that, when we do manage to achieve a state of flow, any one of these distractions or interruptions can immediately shatter its effect and leave us open to mistakes, missed deadlines or any other behaviours we would describe as ineffective. Take the open-plan office design as an example. During the Smart Coffee development, we found that this common layout could be one of the main inhibitors of productivity, so naturally we wanted to understand what it was about this familiar set-up that might limit us from developing the behaviour of individual state of flow and focus. With this behind us, we focused on the realistic changes that could be made to the design in a way that would boost this style of productive behaviour without businesses incurring massive expenses or insurmountable logistical challenges. Smart Coffee aims to encourage and maximise this state of uninterrupted focus on individual tasks.
OPTIMISED TEAMWORK Within a structured meeting, productivity takes the form of ‘optimised teamwork.’ This type of behaviour is often seen in one single team of engaged people who make room for collaborative thinking and open discussion. Sadly, not all workplaces will have the luxury of seeing this productive behaviour come to life on a daily basis. The statistics are particularly telling — 73% of people multitask during meetings, 71% of senior management consider meetings to be unproductive and inefficient time wasters, and 64% see them as a drain on valuable individual focus time rather than being a tool for driving quick results. Smart Coffee could help businesses consider how to breed productivity within team meetings and inspire collaboration between different teams as well.
T EAM-TO-TEAM AND IN-TEAM COLLABORATION Interacting face to face with each other can be a far more effective form of communication than starting a group email chain, chatting on Zoom, or messaging on Slack. Take into consideration one of the stand-out insights from the Smart Coffee concept: different teams are 9 times more likely to interact if they’re on the same floor. Now, most businesses will want the teams that overlap to communicate in the most effective ways possible. Of course, within one team we’re naturally more likely to interact and speak face to face with our colleagues, but it takes much more creative thinking to encourage two separate teams to come together, whether that’s formally in a meeting, reactively in passing, or in casual collaboration. This is where the faceto-face aspect really comes into play. Being 32 times more effective than any other form of workplace communication, face to face communication is the main driver in encouraging different teams to interact. But that’s not to say that we now subscribe to the open-plan office design — far from it. Studies show that this style of design decreases face to face interactions by 70% due to an over-reliance on email or a perceived lack of time to focus. Smart Coffee could encourage teams to make the jump from email or instant messaging to face to face communication, and part of doing that is through facilitating smarter breaks using strategically placed hot beverage solutions.
UNPLANNED INTERACTION The final productive behaviour explored in Smart Coffee is that of the ‘unplanned interaction.’ These are the spontaneous exchanges that we’re all familiar with — think of the times you’ve run into a colleague in the car park or quickly chatted to someone you didn’t know when you’re both in line for a coffee. It’s these micro meetings that are the foundation of the ‘strength of weak ties’ theory that this behaviour is built from — sparking ideas between people who might not ordinarily work together, but who could provide true value in this moment of unplanned interaction. Needless to say, encountering this type of productive behaviour has been almost non-existent during the pandemic, but as we start to get back into the physical office, Smart Coffee looks at how we all interact across the workplace and how we can facilitate these moments of spontaneous interaction once again.
HOW CAN WE ENCOURAGE THESE BEHAVIOURS IN THE WORKPLACE USING SMART COFFEE? We know that businesses will always want to drive a more productive culture, but what might be some of the challenges that they’ll need to meet first? One of the main issues faced by many businesses is a lack of structured plans in place to support productive behaviours and ‘limited’ to ‘no capacity’ available to deal with any current issues upon returning to the office, like the impact of open-plan offices, unproductive meetings draining time, or a lack of team interaction despite them sitting under one roof or working from home. We’ll be taking a look at these challenges in the next edition of Coffee Notes, but to give you a little taste of what’s yet to come, here are just some of the key questions we’ll be aiming to answer: • How do we get employees to see the value of the office post-Covid? • H ow can we drive unplanned interactions in the re-opened workplace? • How can we encourage people to take better breaks? • How do we do all of this without huge expense and reorganisation? Find out in the next issue of Coffee Notes, coming soon. In the meantime, download ‘Smart Thinking on Productivity’ to explore more on how Nestlé Coffee Partners could help reinvigorate your workplace coffee solutions.
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Nestlé Coffee Partners offers a range of brands and solutions to fit your customers’ requirements. If you’d like to talk through any of what you’ve read and explore how we can help you leverage the insight we’ve shared this month, or if you’d simply like to catch up over a socially distanced coffee, we’d love to hear from you. We’re available on +44 (0)203 124 1029 (Option 2) or at coffeepartners@uk.nestle.com