Every year, all over the world, thousands of coffee shops are opening. Although many of these succeed and become prosperous enterprises, many of them fail. There are many reasons for this – the wrong location, the wrong business plan or even the wrong product. Like in every industry, only the strong succeed. So how can you ensure that your coffee shop will be a success? Espresso Works created the info graphic that features some of the most important steps that will aid your ambition of opening your very own café. [Sign up to continue]
Tag: Baristas & Coffee Shops
How to Select a Good Cascara?
Cascara, meaning ‘skin’ or ‘husk’ in Spanish, is the outer peel of the coffee cherry (berry). In biological terms, we can say that cascara contains exocarp and mesocarp. The mesocarp contains a lot of pectins and small sugars while exocarp contains mostly polyphenols. It was for a long time a by-product of coffee production. Today, cascara has an added value as food and food ingredient.
The classic use of this by-product is infusion in hot water, but you can now find it as flour. It can then be used in flour blends to add colour, fibres and caffeine.
So, cascara is becoming popular and we expect in the next few years a big increase of its consumption. Why? Simply because Starbucks is launching a cascara latte. They will make cascara a trendy product.
Now, the most important part of this brief article:
How can I choose a safe cascara ?[Sign in to continue]
Why are Espresso Blends so Complex?
The complexity of an espresso blend is something very important for the roaster. It is part of his “savoir faire” and his own knowledge. By coffee roasters, the recipe is the identity of the brand and therefore all recipes are well protected against hard copy. As recipes can’t be protected by IP, a way to do it is to complexify
Boosting your Coffee Shop: 2 Stories of Innovation
This is hardly breaking news: Survival in the increasingly crowded and competitive coffee marketplace is hard, very hard. In a world of strong international chains and franchises, the average street corner coffee shop wages a daily battle to nibble at new parts of market. However, opening a new bar is the dream of many, but is there still place left
Five “B” Plans for Coffee Shops
They say things always come in three’s; so when the coffee machine, dishwasher and high-speed oven decided to stop working in the week before Christmas, the good news is that we had all bases covered. What are your emergency plans? In the past, any one of these issues could have sent us into a tailspin, but strangely enough, even though
Build It. They Will Come
‘Build it; they will come.’ may have worked for Kevin Costner in ‘The Field of Dreams’ but it’s a strategy that rarely works for coffee shops. Recently we stumbled over one of the best independent coffee shops we never knew existed. We have just been to a town that we visit very infrequently, for a crucial meeting and coming out
Christmas Planning for Independent Coffee Shops
The well oiled seasonal retail calendar drives sales throughout the year, and in many markets, Christmas is the biggest of them all. It’s not always a great trading period for everyone, though. Those coffee shops that are in city centres or shopping malls that attract the hoards are planning their big trading days, stocking up, staffing up and getting ready
How to Find and Retain Great People
It seems that everyone we speak to at the moment is finding it more and more challenging finding and retaining staff. The additional stress of recruitment and training on a small business like an independent coffee shop can be enormous. When someone leaves a small team, the team goes through a mourning phase and unless there is an immediate replacement,
Why a Not for Profit needs to be Profitable!
Profit is not always purely financial; it can be measured as an advantage or benefit derived from an activity. In particular for charities or social enterprises who will measure their success in many other ways. Every week we talk to many coffee shops and Cafe from different sectors, including the not for profit & charity sector. We come across more
CoffeeBI becomes an SCAE member
Since September 2016 and less than 1 year from its launch, CoffeeBI has become an SCAE (Speciality Coffee Association) member, a sign of a gradual but fast growth of our project in the coffee industry. This is an important stage that shows our commitment in being closer the players of the coffee industry in order to help them manage every problem