14 .Wake up and smell the profit
These wake up calls are just
for starters. We haven’t
even started on varietals,
origins, roasting degrees
and milk preparation
techniques, so you need to
do some pretty heavy
research into the world of a
cup of coffee and how to
control enough factors to ensure that essential consistency. Coffee
is at the heart of your business. Treat it with serious respect. Find
a good advisor/supplier and get them to teach you how to buy
coffee.
Take care not to fall into the coffee marketers and salesmens trap.
Clearly Sustainable Fairtrade, Organic, Bird Friendly, Shade,
Rainforest Alliance, Utz Kapeh and other good coffee stories can be
good for your business and good for others, but they are applicable
only if you understand them first, can use them as part of your
business plan and don’t let them affect your taste standards. (You
have a standard written down don’t you?) The good coffee
businesses need to be environmentally, socially andeconomically
profitable.
Once you have established this great taste, you need to keep on
top of it. You need it to be there in your induction programme. It
needs to be there in your training and you need to keep checking.
You need a formalised mystery shopper system in place and you
must ask your regulars for constant feedback.
Wake up to expecting your
coffee to taste excellent
every time...
“High achievement always takes
place in the framework of high
expectation.”
Charles F Kettering