At Caffe Culture this year much of what Hugh and I will be doing is talking about marketing.
In our coffeeshopquestion survey (which if you haven’t filled it out yet - please DO!) the biggest issue so far is an inability to attract new customers. Therefore this will be a major part of our talk.
One [...]
Hugh and I were kindly invited by Jeffery Young of Allegra Strategies to attend the UK Coffee Leader Summit on the day previous to Caffe Culture. These events are always useful from a networking perspective (even though that’s generally an expression that puts the fear of god into me) but there was some great content [...]
I’m just back from nearly three weeks in the US and spent considerable time in New York - it is, as ever, just about the most stimulating city on the planet.
I saw some amazing retailing and some inspirational restaurants but I have to say the quality of the coffee bars (that I saw anyway) wasn’t [...]
I’m increasingly obsessed with this concept since it applies to such a large extent in so much of our lives.
Why does Tiger Woods want to keep getting better at golf for example? What drove Michael Schumacher, despite so many years at the top of Formula One, to still work harder than anyone else and [...]
Every coffee business of almost any type (even the unsuccessful ones) manages to generate some fiercely loyal customers. These customers very often visit every day and sometimes will visit several times a day. Occasionally they can be irritating and offer you all sorts of advice that you could easily do without. But [...]
Coming through Edinburgh airport for the second time in as many weeks I was again struck by just how superb a job the West Cornwall Pasty Company do. They have the last stand in a long line of food and coffee operations but their branding and use of great images is so brilliant that [...]
Its easy to make this point, and I realise like many things we all know the adage that ‘Show me your friends and I’ll tell you what sort of a person you are’, however, it is very difficult to convey the profound meaning of it and in the business of coffee like many others it is a [...]
“Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test [...]
According to a recent Mintel report the market for branded coffee shops will increase by 52% from 2006 to 2011. The profile it follows will be something like this.
2006 - £675 million
2007 - £736 million
2008 - £801 million
2009 - £874 million
2010 - £948 million
2011 - £1.02 billion
The big three - Starbucks, Costa and Caffe Nero [...]
Want to know where to go for great food when visiting somewhere ? …. or if you are like me want to know where the best coffee places are in a new city ? Trying to figure your way through the jungle of information that is available on the internet, or guidebooks ? You are [...]
