The Australian 28/09/07 - Coffee Report

donnas650

Hi Guys,
Just thought I would let you all know that there was an 8 page coffee report in the Entrepreneur section of The Australian yesterday.  It was mainly talking about chains vs small cafes, but touched on bean suppliers, setting coffee benchmark standards(ASCA pushing for it along with some chains), microroasters, Koko Black(I liked this place), fairtrade, etc.  

Definitely worth checking out if you get to, even if you don't believe everything said, which I definitely didn't.  
Matt  

psaigh

Sounds great, sorry i missed it.  Did you keep a copy, can i borrow it, i promise to take good care... There's a couple of free coffee's in it for ya'  :P what did it say about the debate between franchise and small op.?

askthecoffeeguy

check with your local newsagemt they often keep backcopies - i'm checking mine! did anyone read the article on (the now defunct) Marchetti's Latin, in the Melbourne weekly a couple of weeks ago?   I missed out on it but would be keen to get my hands on one as I worked there for 5 years (and yes were were profitable then - when I ran the beverage side of things!) Cheers, Pat

DoubleRistretto

I just happened to pick up copy of that issue by chance - actually not a bad feature [some of the articles into franchising though]. one of the things i thought was pretty interesting was les shirato the head of Vittoria, complaining about people bribing cafes with machines on loan... from what a couple of senior people in the industry have told me, Vittoria was one of the first companies to start doing that! dR

psaigh

Lol, i know many operators whom i've tried to convince to go local, boutique and they've all opted against it quoting exactly that.  And most of them use vittoria, HAHA!

askthecoffeeguy

It does seem to have become a bit of a competition for market-share, with companies offering financial kickbacks, free this, free that - sometimes we tend to lose sight of the product that we are trying to promote in amongst all these freebies! I will say, though, that I've dealt with a few of the big name companies in the past, and their customer service was spot on.  They don't get to be big for nothing. Cheers, Pat

admin

actually someone sent this on to me - seemed a bit of a 'puff piece' for the big companies... i thought it would have been interesting to have more of an analysis of the benefits of starting a franchise vs owning your own cafe. -A