Well, before I answer that, let me ask you a question. When you spend a day shopping, whether it be willingly with your best friend, or reluctantly, being dragged around the shops by your partner, where do you always spend at least half an hour of your time and at least £10 of your hard earned cash?

I’m willing to bet it’s in a coffee shop.

In times of recession, when the designer shops are empty and people switch to the cheapest supermarkets around, you will find the nearest coffee shop full of paying customers on any day of the week.

So it is no wonder that coffee shops are one of the few retail sectors in the UK to have grown consistently in excess of 15% year on year, over the last 8 years. And forecasts show that the number of branded coffee shops will double over the next decade, according to market research by the Allegra Consultancy company.

Therefore budding coffee shop entrepreneurs may wish to consider planning ahead so they can move from a single coffee shop into a fully franchised operation. Here are 7 simple tips to point you in the right direction:

1. Once you have opened your first coffee shop and have traded profitably over a sustained period, you will have a successful blue print to open more shops. You will be able to bring all the personal touches that have attracted your customers to a second shop and third shop. With your third shop you will know exactly what works and be in a position to pass that knowledge on to others.
2. With this third shop you are approaching the point when you should start planning your own franchise operation. This would allow you to expand much more quickly and your company would be run by management who are under your direction, abiding by strict guidelines that you have set down. Take advantage of all the knowledge you have gained to focus on this third shop as setting the parameters for your future franchised shops.
3. Switching from one shop to a franchise operation means you will need to widen your knowledge base consult experts in their various fields. You will need the help of more specialised professionals and you may have to change your bankers, accountants, estate agents and suppliers in order to move your business on. You will have to look at your business on a national rather than local basis.
4. Contact various franchise companies, not solely those involved in the coffee shop business, and request their information packs. The principles of franchising are similar whatever the product, and you can learn from this information how to put your own franchise package together and ensure that you protect yourself with legally watertight contracts.
5. With a proven track record of running successful shops, you are more likely to be offered better sites by landlords looking to lease their commercial properties. A landlord will always prefer to lease property to a business which is already successful rather than to a new franchisee, so you would have to take on the lease and sub-let to your franchisee. Therefore you should ensure that the right to sub-let is always written into any lease you sign.
6. When your business can afford it, consider hiring a consultant to liaise with all the affiliate bodies, including bankers and estate agents, on behalf of your franchise company and the franchisees.
7. Whilst your franchise operation is quite new, you would need to take on the role of property consultant yourself, until you can afford to employ a specialist. Although this adds to your workload, it can be a benefit as you will then know every detail of your business and this will help you to judge whether any full time consultant you eventually hire is of the standard and quality you require. Once you have a number of franchises up and running you may wish to consider offering territories to the best operators.

Tracey Beaney has collaborated with successful coffee shop owner Don Clarke to write a guide to setting up a coffee shop.

The guide has been reviewed by trade magazine Café Culture, and is currently being translated into Turkish by the Istanbul based Mikado Yayinlari Publishing company.

Every two months their website issues a coffee shop newsletter, containing relevant articles and contributions from companies associated with the coffee shop trade. If you would like to contribute, please visit the website:

http://www.howtosetupacoffeeshop.co.uk

There are also hundreds of coffee franchises so you will need to narrow your search down to the top 10 coffee franchises so you can make your decision based on the demand of the coffee drinkers. Here is a list of the top 10 coffee franchises that you may want to consider and a little about what they offer.

#10: Sonoma Coffee Cafe

With a Sonoma Coffee Cafe you will serve your customers great tasting coffee but you will also offer chocolates, donuts, bagels, even breakfast sandwiches.

#9: Gourmet Cup

It’s not just coffee at the Gourmet Cup. You can also enjoy a variety of tea as well. Your customers will come back time and again to enjoy the rich aroma of the coffee you offer.

#8: Coffee Heaven

Coffee is the only thing you will find in Coffee Heaven. The name speaks for itself. There is no mistaking what this name is about.

#7: Kelly’s Coffee & Fudge Factory

Coffee goes with everything including chocolate. Your customers may have a choice of baked pastries, salads, sandwiches, and home-style fudge. They will also receive a variety of flavored coffee, teas, or smoothies.

#6: Jo to Go Drive through Expresso

The best thing about the Jo to Go is the fact that it also caters to kids, which is usually in the vehicle with mom or dad in the mornings too. You can serve your customers all the latest flavors in coffee, smoothies, fresh bakery goods and kids stuff too.

#5: The Coffee Beanery

This global franchise has a lot to offer you and your customers.

#4: Hawaii’s Java Kai

You can serve both hot and cold drinks to your customer. Keep them coming back with fruit smoothies and baked goods.

#3: Cafe Ala Carte

This is a great concept and you can control the number of customers you have. This cafe travels to all the exciting outings including open houses, weddings, family reunions, grand openings and more. Plus you can have a regular schedule for dedicated customers.

#2: Its a Grind

Featuring a blues and jazz theme for their coffee houses, it offers good espresso, iced blended coffee drinks, bagels, muffins, scones and other baked goodies. It is one of the fastest growing coffee franchises.

#1: Maui Wowi

There is something special about Maui Wowi. You can offer your customers fruit smoothies, Hawaiian Coffee, Smoothie Rip Sticks, Hawaiian Springs Water, Low Carb smoothies and more.

We hope the above information serves as a good starting point to evaluate your possible picks for a coffee franchise. Keep in mind that with each franchise, there are different franchise fees, royalties, initial investment amount, advertising fees, and renewal fees. Every persons business desires, needs and goals are different as are each of the franchise opportunities previously mentioned above. Your best bet for some advice on narrowing your list of choices to the best coffee franchise for you would be with an experienced franchise consultant.

Stewart Baker writes for JavaBeanReview.com where you can check out some of the top 10 coffee franchises which currently have opportunities for coffee entrepreneurs. Information about Maui Wowi franchise and It’s a Grind are available among the many offerings.

Now to be perfectly clear about this Howard Schultz is the man that had the vision of what Starbucks could become but he is not the founder of Starbucks. That title actually belongs to three other men. The three men are Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegel, and Gordon Bowker and they are the actual founders of Starbucks. Now the original Starbucks was a bit different than it is today. The three founders actually opened their store so that they could sell just coffee beans. Their inspiration actually came from another store called Peet’s Coffee & Tea which they would later buy.

It wasn’t until 1982 that Howard Schultz joined the company as the director of marketing. And while on a trip to Milan, Italy he learned of the Italian coffee bars. Once he returned from his trip he tried to convince the owners that they needed to start offering traditional espresso beverages. The owners weren’t particularly keen on the idea though as they thought that coffee was meant to be brewed and enjoyed at home. They did let him try out a small bar within the store but while successful they decided not to pursue it further.

Howard Schultz on the other hand had different ideas. Seeing that he was not going to get anywhere with the owners of Starbucks he decided to pursue the concept himself. So he opened Il Giornale in 1985. His small chain soon proved to be successful but it wasn’t until about two years later that his real opportunity came knocking. The founders of Starbucks were looking to sell. A short while back they had bought Peet’s Coffee & Tea which was their original inspiration and they wanted to focus on it. Soon after buying Starbucks Howard Schultz changed his Il Giornale stores into Starbucks locations as well.

From there everyone pretty much knows what happened. Today Starbucks is considered the leader in coffee. They not only sell drinks directly to the public but sell coffee beans as well which is somewhat ironic. They now operate over 15,000 locations in 44 different countries. Just about everywhere you go you can find the Starbucks logo on a street corner somewhere. It really is amazing how far they have come in a relatively short period of time. And if not because of the persistence and perseverance of one particular person the idea may have never even got off the ground.

Cash Miller is an expert in small business affairs. To receive more tips that can help your business and let you to crush your competition you can sign up for his FREE Newsletter at http://www.smallbusinessdelivered.com/free-newsletter-signup.html Once you’ve signed up your going to receive access to 5 FREE E-Books that can help your business prosper. And as a Bonus FREE Newsletter Members can expect to receive an additional FREE E-Book each week.

• demographic, such as the “graying” of America (creating opportunities in health services, for example);

• sociological developments, like the “green” movement, with its emphasis on recycling and environmental sensitivity, and;

• cultural changes caused by changing economic conditions and technological developments.

Opportunities can also frequently be found in current and developing business trends such as:

• the globalization of business,

• the need for outsourcing created by downsizing, and

• the burgeoning service economy.

The Internet and rapid growth of e-commerce have certainly created changes in the process of buying books and CD’s, trading stock, delivering information, and bidding on collectibles. Where do you see the next process to be transformed in a major way by the Internet?

Let’s do a brief case study in opportunity:

Neighborhood Coffee Shop

I live in the eastern section of town, which is growing rapidly, and food and business services are not quite keeping up. The “East” is fairly isolated from the rest of the city by water, an interstate highway, and an industrial park, forming a separate and distinct market. “People” are saying that the East desperately needs a good coffee shop. (Who are these people? Are they just in our immediate circle? Are they representative enough of the area to extrapolate from?)

Let us analyze some factors which indicate the opportunity potential of an idea:

* The “window of opportunity” is opening, and will remain open long enough.

We cannot be the only entrepreneurs that perceive these opportunities. How long before the need becomes compelling enough for others to jump in?

* Entry is feasible, and achievable with the committed principals.

Two friends want to be partners with me in a venture; one is managing a coffee shop across town, and willing to manage a startup. Between us, we could muster the capital for a coffee shop.

* The proposed venture has some competitive advantage.

We were among the first to locate in the new area, and are very active in the local business community. We know of an ideal site, and the building manager is a friend. She is willing to sub-contract the beverage and light-meal/dessert services the building provides tenants.

* The economics of the venture are “rewarding and forgiving.”

Materials costs are a small percentage of revenues; site preparation and equipment costs are minimal.

* We can break even at what seems to be an easily achievable volume.

We may even want to consider a more upscale atmosphere based on what some say is the difference between a “coffeehouse” and a “coffee shop:” About two bucks a cup… A coffee shop is a place to grab a quick bite and a cheap cup of coffee.

Eric Gerber of the MSN Network’s Sidewalk suggests that “A coffeehouse is a place to wax philosophical — Mozart or Bach, Faulkner or Fitzgerald, Xena or Hercules? — while seeing just how complicated you can make a simple drink like coffee: double latte espresso-chino with half decaf Jamaican Blue Mountain dark roast, extra low-fat foam and a Frangelica drizzle, please.”

The conditions for starting a neighborhood coffee shop seem favorable, but there must be more that we can do to critically evaluate the venture while improving our chances of success. That “more” is market research, and do not leave the business launch pad without it!

John B. Vinturella, Ph.D. has almost 40 years experience as a management and strategic consultant, entrepreneur, author, and college professor. For 20 of those years, Dr. Vinturella was owner/president of a distribution company that he founded. He is a principal in business opportunity sites jbv.com and muddledconcept.com, and maintains business and political blogs.

Selling food

I cant tell you much about selling food in Internet Cafes. I didn’t sell much food. I had pre-packaged food such as danishes, candy bars, and potato chips. I also sold water and soda. An interesting observation was that Coca Cola and water were the two main sellers. I could stock the fridge with 30 kinds of drinks. At the end of the day, it was the Cola and Water sold. I just sell Water and Coke now. If you have a long term lease, I would suggest opening a food portion to your internet café. Be sure to go to your local health department to find out all the rules in setting up your café. Also, be sure to look on eBay for your kitchen equipment. You can usually find restaurant equipment for 20% of the price on eBay.

Where to buy cheap PCs

We advise business owners to purchase their PC’s online. There are a great line of refurbished IBM PC’s on eBay. Its important that once you start out, you purchase the same PC’s, if possible. You’ll understand why shortly.

How to limit technical work

In the olden days, when we had PC problems we used to remove the PC, reinstall windows and all the software. This would take about 1-2 weeks before the PC was replaced. It was very annoying, it would takes hours of brainless work. Then we came up with the idea of removable hard drives. With this system, you must have all the same PC’s. You have a master copy of the hard drives. Then you use a program called True Image (www.trueimage.com) and clone your master hard drive. The cloning takes about 4 minutes. In 4 minutes you have a new drive with all the settings and no viruses. Your PC’s should also have a removable hard drive slot, you can purchase these online. You should make 5 extra clones of hard drives. If a computer is acting up, you simply take your key, open the hard drive slot, remove the old hard drive, and replace it with the new clone. That’s all. Your up and running. Once the system is set-up, maintaining a network of 10 or 1000 PC’s is effortless.

Start, Build and Run an Internet Cafe Business and/or Internet Kiosk Network, FREE http://www.internetcafewifi.com

Large coffee shops don’t necessarily make more money than smaller ones. They have to pay more for supplies, electricity, the building, employees, and other overhead expenses. They also have to spend a great deal of money to advertise. After all they can’t have that large facility being empty – it has to be full of customers.

Customers have other criteria that they are concerned with than the size of the location. People even go to drive up ones if they offer the right elements. They include fast service that is friendly, delicious coffee products, good prices, and a nice atmosphere. All of these things can be found at a small independent coffee shop or a large chain business.

In fact, you will find there are plenty of customers out there that prefer the atmosphere at a small coffee shop. They feel like they get more personal service there. It is often a sense of loyalty as well. They may have been going to that particular location for years. They aren’t going to abandon ship just because a bigger coffee shop has opened up around the corner.

Many of the large coffee shops are able to succeed due to being a chain. They are already known in the eyes of consumers as a great place to get coffee. There is also a stigma that comes with visiting such a location for some people. They still have to work to meet the needs of the customers though or they will lose business rapidly.

One disadvantage that small coffee shops have is not offering enough room during peak times. People don’t want to feel like they don’t have enough room to relax and enjoy their coffee. You may need to look at some options to take care of this issue if it becomes a problem. Sometimes just rearranging can give you more room than you thought you had.

You need to be confident no matter how large or small your coffee shop is. The fact that consumers aren’t placing their orders based on this information is good news. It means you have the chance to prove what you can do for customers on your own merit. You can focus on meeting their various needs instead of playing the size game.

There are small coffee shops that continue to grow in the number of customers. They may decide to expand in order to better serve them. This is an individual business decision that could prove to be a good move. However, if your business is already struggling, making the coffee shop bigger isn’t going to solve your problems.

Karyn Lewis writes about the ups and downs of the coffee shop business. Avoid the rookie mistakes many new operators make when they buy a coffee shop and read more coffee related articles at her site.

But before you collect your coffee maker and take out a lease on a quaint corner retail spot, you may want to take a moment to consider what it really takes to start a successful coffee shop.

Of course, the first requirement for a potential coffee shop owner is to have the passion for coffee. Sure, any top graduate from a business school who has more passion for business than coffee can put up a coffee shop, but it is often the personal touch of a coffee fanatic that can spell the difference among customers.

It is important to remember, however, that a coffee shop business does not run on passion alone. It seems that a best shop owner is one who is both passionate over coffee and a hardy dose of business acumen. One critical step, before you begin, is to have a solid and well thought out business plan.

A plan will help you clearly chart your business’s profitability for you and your investor. It will also explain why you want to have your own shop and where you want to go. Your plan will also help identify your possible market and their needs. A good business plan should be extremely thorough. Remember you may need financial assistance to fund inventory, equipment and marketing. And, if you can’t convince the bank why you need a loan and how you are going to pay for it, your coffee shop business will be toast from the beginning.

Once your business plan is completed, you need to turn from strategy and financial issues to functional aesthetic considerations. What are you going to do with all that money when you have no idea what a coffee shop should look like? A coffee shop can’t just be any place or any room. At this point, it’s a great idea to secure the help of an architect or someone with restaurant design on your team. Without such an expert on your side, you may have to study and think up the physical placement of your furniture and equipment yourself. You should consider such things as counter placement, dimensions and space allotment for your equipment. It may help to do some research and to observe successful coffee.

The next step after securing the financial and physical aspect of your coffee shop business is to kick your lust for coffee “up a notch”. Don’t be an absentee owner. Get yourself elbow deep into the details of everything about coffee. As the resident connoisseur you shouldn’t just love the taste of coffee; you should also be an expert in coffee beans, roasting recipes, and unique coffee products. Your diligence will rub off on your employees and attract customers in droves.

The road to the opening and success of your coffee shop is not an easy one. However, with careful planning, a can-do attitude, and most of all – your passion, the road to success can be an enjoyable and prosperous one.

Stan “The Ideas Man” Smith is the author of the popular “Billion Dollar Marketing Secret” eReports and a passionate devotee to the”Glory of the Bean”. Check out his directory of local coffee shops at http://www.localjava.org

People ask quite often of the importance of a business plan when starting a coffee shop. My response is always a statistic: Most businesses fail within the first year due to lack of planning but coffee shops have a higher failure rate due to their nature. If you don’t have anything to plan your course by, how can you move forward? Any business vision is blurry without a written plan.

Your plan takes time to write now, but it’s designed to help you avoid costly mistakes later. The true value of creating a business plan for your endeavor is not the finished product, but in the process of writing it.

Experience has taught me that while planning to open a coffee shop, templates and generic plans will not help you much except for the typical form the plan should follow so be very careful. You need to make yours unique, and as coffee shop friendly and specific as possible.

When I wrote my original business plan I read and studied quite a few versions of them on the internet, and picked out sections I liked best. I rewrote it until I was satisfied and then gave it to my banker. He said it was the best business plan he had ever seen. So I put the plan to use and opened my coffee shop, and made lots of mistakes!

My banker loved it but he was not a small business person, nor anyone that was familiar with coffee shop operations. Had I wrote the plan realistically and pertaining specifically to a coffee shop I’d have avoided a bad location, incorrect demographics, lack of capital, and a lot of other mistakes.

You have to be realistic with your prospective numbers and in many ways you have to get creative, especially with marketing. The specialty coffee business is unlike a lot of other food service businesses because of its nature. Writing your coffee shop business plan will force you to think about your business in a way that you will always have to think about it: it’s unique.

And just because you open your shop and may be open for a year doesn’t mean you can put the plan away. You should always be tweaking it. Trust me you will always be a business person and thinking about what you can do different and new. Things change, markets change and trends change so your business has to change as well to adapt. Otherwise, you will be closed before you know it.

It bears repeating: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. It’s as simple as that! Be sure you have a specific business plan when starting a coffee shop. Your plan won’t be worth beans otherwise!

Tony DiCorpo is a coffee shop owner, operator, barista and entrepreneur. He is also a coffee shop business consultant. He has authored many articles on the specialty coffee business and a business plan package that can be found at tonys-coffee-shop-business-plan.com

When Alfred Peet died in his sleep a few weeks ago he was a sprightly 87. He passed away peacefully hopefully dreaming of coffee trees laden with ripened cherries. While most people have never heard of him, Peet is widely recognised as being the father of modern “specialty coffee” in the industry. He was a Dutchman who became an American. He had traded tea for Lipton’s in Java, lived in Sumatra, worked in the business in New Zealand before, finally, settling down (somewhat) in the University suburb of Berkeley, California. It was at Berkeley where he founded his roastery in 1966 and Peet’s Coffee was born. Alfred Peet was passionate about coffee. His roasting exploits legendary and his ability to commentate, roast and put out fires simultaneously are famous. His experiences while living in Indonesia had given him an affinity with farmers who grew coffee, as well as a thorough understanding of the origin, the place where coffee was grown. This background, combined with his love of roasting, resulted in a place where coffee was not just a cup of Java, but something exotic, living and with a story.

From Alfred Peet’s inspirational example came many of the coffee cultures that now are household names today in America and around the world- Starbucks being the most famous of these of course. The original founders of Starbucks- Baldwin, Bowker and Ziv Seigel originally leant their roasting trade from Peet, in fact Peet roasted for them in their early years. Many others in the industry in America today also passed through the Peet’s Coffee experience. In fact when Howard Schulz purchased Starbucks, Bowker and Baldwin moved across and purchased Peets Coffee- Alfred Peet retiring to a role of Coffee Mentor for the Industry as a whole.

Today most coffee drinkers, from Surabaya to San Francisco, recognise Starbucks and its logo, but the name “Alfred Peet” often draws draws blank looks.

Specialty Coffee today is at a crossroad- an important junction in deciding which direction coffee will be heading over the next decade. In the last 10 years many new comers have entered the business. It is estimated that the global coffee sector today is valued at over US$80 billion. It is no wonder that with these revenue numbers, the industry attracts a mix of business people with mixed agendas- who often see the potential bottom line rather than education and passion as being the driving force in what they do. Traditionally the specialty coffee industry has been built on the strong foundation of sharing knowledge and experience- with the supposition that by helping each other the industry will be strongly quality focused. However a number of the more recent arrivals in the market are perhaps choosing coffee for the perceived easy profits, rather than for a real passion for coffee or its heritage. As a result many of the traditional methods of exchange are not as effective, or used as frequently as they have been in the past.

Globally Coffee is in a position where consumption is beginning to slow down and opportunities to grow coffee are becoming more difficult to find in the traditional coffee consuming markets- Europe, USA, South America and Oceania. The easy answer if to look at new emerging markets- China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia are prime targets. These countries either have low coffee consumption (Indonesian’s, for instance, consume 500gm per person per year vs. Norway’s 12kg per person per year), or have reasonable consumption, but historically are tea consumers (India). The new markets are also very suggestible to western branding- in many cases the strength of branding has been shown to be more important than the product itself. This presents a number of opportunities to strong western brands and of course new local brands to emerge. However it does not necessarily equate to long-term longevity of specialty coffee in these new frontiers.

In the more mature markets, the patterns of consumption have changed markedly over the last 15-20 years. The traditional, lower quality coffee products such as instants, are being replaced by roast and ground coffee (drips, plungers etc) and of course Espresso Based Drinks (cappuccino, latte, espresso etc). Fresh roasted coffee has many advantages over the instant coffee. It is more flavoursome and more importantly has a greater link back to where it originally came from. This means that customer awareness is also on the increase- bringing into the spotlight the actual paper trail of where the coffee comes from, who picked it, what price the grower get from it etc. To consumers in countries such as New Zealand this is very important- as generally there is a linkage between quality of coffee and the return the farmer or grower gets. The correlation is the better the return to a farmers, the better the coffee will be. Higher returns means more time can be spent in the origin country looking after the crop, pruning, selective harvesting, proper intensive drying and packing/storing the coffee once it is dried.

The role the specialty coffee industry plays in all this is very important. Retail shops that source and supply only the best coffee help to sustain the industry both upstream and downstream. This means the farmers and workers will be rewarded and the consumers will have access to quality coffee, hopefully growing the business further.

Unfortunately the reverse is gradually becoming more often the norm. Cafes, coffee shops and roasters entering the market all over the world tend to look for short-term cost advantages to try and fuel their business models. To achieve this they either buy poor quality coffee, as cheap as possible or average quality coffee…likewise as cheaply as possible. Cheap coffee equates to, at the best, very average finished product. This in turn means generally a poor perception of the place selling the coffee. This would perhaps be OK if there were not so many cafes now selling poor quality coffee. As it is it means that poor quality coffee is often accepted a being the norm- hence having the result of putting people off drinking coffee.

In many ways the industry can be seen as having come almost full circle back to where it was in the early 1970’s when instant coffee and coffee sitting on hotplates for 10 hours were seen and accepted as being normal coffee. This is what pioneers like Peet worked so hard to change. It is also why the crossroads the industry now stands at are so important.

The choices are really quite simple. For coffee to evolve and grow further there needs to be education of the retailer and the customer. The global industry is built around national organisations that play a varying role in providing advice and education to those in retail or wholesale. The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) and the SCAE (Specialty Coffee Association of Europe) are two such organisations. However to become members of these organisations is as simple as filling out a form and paying a fee. Often the motivation of the people joining is just to get a sticker to put on their shop door, knowledge is a secondary motivator. There is talk that membership should involve some form of basic enter test and then continuing education via the internet- which would at least help to provide tools to pass information on to those drinking the coffee.

Looking at those in the industry who do things well, is also a great way of building and planning the future for specialty coffee. In the USA quality roasters and café operators such as Allegro, Blackstump Coffee and Intelligensia have taken industry standards to a new level. Buying quality coffee, hiring quality staff and imparting quality knowledge to customers buying their morning coffee has proven very successful for these companies. So much so that it is an unquestionable part of their corporate culture. All of these companies also practice something unique- they regularly visit their growers in countries such as Indonesia, Guatemala, Kenya, Brazil and Colombia. To take this one step further, they do not just visit and spend a few nights- taking photos of a grower’s coffee trees, they maintain regular contact with those growing the coffee. This approach must be seen as the future for coffee in competitive, quality driven markets. It is true relationship coffee where the roaster becomes by default part of the farmers extended family.

Passing knowledge on to those who buy a coffee everyday, and arming them with information on what type of coffee they drink, how it is grown, who grows it, when it is picked, how it gets to them gives all power to the customer. It is a very important, yet lagging piece of the future of coffee globally. Being able to learn the differences in tastes/cupping qualities has some snob quality, but more importantly it helps the buyer to differentiate between good, average and poor coffee. Here lies the problem. A successful café founded on the principles of sustainability and true coffee culture has nothing to fear from education. A café selling poor quality coffee is unlikely, or perhaps unable, to want to educate clients about quality.

A failure to address quality, education and sustainability in the business sector (from the farmer to the retail customer) will ultimately result in consumption patterns falling further. Quality issues- especially over the counter and in the cup, need to be addressed. If not unfortunately those to suffer will be the grower or origin country, rather than the retailer. With current economics a grower in Indonesia receives only around 2-5% of the cost of the average cup sold in America or Europe. If demand drops off, the Arabica business ultimately will fall back into a cycle of commodity pricing rather than specialty pricing that many quality origins now enjoy. Competition from other beverages, and lifestyle choices, compete with the disposable income that coffee comes from.

If Alfred Peet was still alive, undoubtedly he would just carry on doing what he did well and loved, roasting coffee and sharing his knowledge and experience with anyone willing, and wanting to learn and listen- a model to all of us in the industry today.

© Alun H.G Evans, Merdeka Coffee, 2007. The writer reserves all moral rights to this article. May only be reproduced.

Alun Evans is a coffee roaster based in West Java, Indonesia. His company Merdeka Coffee, is pioneering relationship coffee with farming communities throughout the country. He can be contacted day (or caffeine fuelled night) at alun@merdekacoffee.com

This is one of the best places in town where you can do something like that. Try to go to the coffee shop in the late morning or the early afteroon. This way you can avoid the crowds. You won’t have to stand in a long line to get served. You also won’t have to wait around for a table to open up where you can sit down.

The cost of a cup of coffee is well worth the mental relaxation that I get from the atmosphere. There are a couple of different coffee shops in town that I frequent for such relaxation. Each one has a different feel to it and a different decor. I tend to choose the one I will visit based on the drink I feel like as well as the mood I happen to be in.

I never feel rushed while relaxing in these coffee shops. I can sit with a book or magazine and forget what is going on around me. I have seen some individuals in the coffee shops doing work, balancing their checkbook, and even working on their laptop. I tend to keep it simple though so that I can unwind. Sometimes I will write letters to friends though as that isn’t something I always have time for otherwise.

Hanging out at a coffee shop isn’t just something I do alone either. It is a great place to meet a friend to catch up. Sometimes my husband and I will go to one an hour before the kids get out of school. It gives us time to relax and talk without distractions or interruptions. We can have a serious talk or just laugh and enjoy each others company for a while.

You shouldn’t feel bad about just hanging out at a coffee shop after you have ordered your drink. In fact, most coffee shop owners are very happy to see customers doing just that. They want them to feel comfortable enough to come back on a regular basis. You may notice the same people in there all the time too if you frequent the coffee shop several times each week.

Standing in a long line at a crowded coffee shop in the morning can be stressful. You will find the entire process to be more enjoyable most afternoons. Those long lines will be gone and you won’t be watching the clock as you wait for your drink. You can simply relax and savor every drop of what you ordered. You may get a lower price during the afternoon as well which is always a plus.

While you can definitely go to a coffee shop in the morning for your fix to get your day started, don’t forget it is there later on. You may find that spending even 30 minutes at the local coffee shop before you head home can help you make the transition from work to your home life. It can help you to reduce the stress in your life and focus on what you have to look forward to that evening.

Karyn Lewis writes about the ups and downs of the coffee shop business. Avoid the rookie mistakes many new operators make when they buy a coffee shop and read more coffee related articles at her site.