It seems that just about every cost is rising around us at the moment, fuel, electricity, milk, flour – you name it; it’s going up in price.  It looks like a good dose of inflation is on the cards for everyone but what, if anything, should you do about it?

Dealing with a rising cost base is a little frightening because you’re always left with the niggling feeling that if you raise your own prices then you’ll loose or alienate those loyal customers you try so hard to please.  Unfortunately there is no hard fast rule as to the correct course of action but there are a number of things you can do to help you arrive at a conclusion that suits your business.

• Your business produces sales data every day, capture this and understand how your margin is performing.  Focus on the higher margin lines but understand the relationship and interdependent items on your menu.
• Coffee is an inelastic luxury good, we don’t strictly need coffee to survive and we can definitely make it at home more cheaply, but we still choose to buy coffee at a café.  Visiting a café is about lifestyle and experience meaning that the actual price of the coffee is secondary to the experience. So if you need to put up the price of coffee, then do it.
• Visiting a café is about the customers’ experience not yours as a café owner or your barista.  Beware of faux coolness, trend setting or my pet hate ‘educating the customer’.  The experience should be meaningful to them, understand what this is and you’ll be able to deliver in spades.
• Quality is key, it doesn’t matter what menu item you’re selling if it doesn’t deliver on quality then you’ve missed a trick.  Continually taste the coffee as this practice will help to make sure the grind is set correctly, the machine is clean or if it needs servicing.  It is our experience that deterioration in coffee quality more often arises due to poor calibration of equipment, pour execution in coffee preparation and equipment in need of a little TLC.
• If you are looking to put though a price increase, consider a product bundle so that you can soften the blow for the more price sensitive as well as increase your average spend.

My thoughts on whether to put a price up or not: Squeezed margins give rise to poor cashflow in later periods.  Over doing a price increases is not such a good option either as we all know when someone is having a laugh at our expense.  If you choose to do nothing, run your numbers and make a conscious decision to do nothing. Perception matters, it may be abundantly clear to you why you are changing a price just make sure your customers understand your situation too.  There is a balance in determining the right course of action that can be found with a little enquiry.

At Watermark we have years of extensive experience in advising the cafe sector, please drop us a line or all us on 01 4666000 if you would like to have a chat on how we can help you grow your business and make it more resilient.

Our speciality Woodland coffee is made from 100% Arabica coffee beans that are Rainforest Alliance Certified.  Arabica coffee plants are self-pollinating and don’t need any direct assistance from bees to pollinate but the presence of healthy bee populations leads to higher coffee yields. Bees and other insects interact with the ecosystem that helps control pests and disease that otherwise curtail the healthy growing cycle of the coffee plant.  Coffee grown under shade (the forest canopy) allows for greater protection from weather events like frost but also provides shelter for a myriad of flower and fauna that allow for a thriving balanced ecosystem.

Growing coffee in harmony with the Rainforest will not stop severe frost events but it will go some way in mitigating the damage caused by these events thereby protecting the communities that depend on the coffee crop for their livelihoods.

So what can we do to help the situation?  Sourcing coffee that is Rain Forest Alliance (RFA) certified is a great step.  Rainforest Alliance is an worldwide organisation that promotes sustainable agricultural practices to protect the social, economic and environmental coffee growing communities across the coffee belt.  Woodland Coffee is roasted using only RFA coffee beans and we believe that this is one of the reasons why the coffee tastes so good. Please drop us a line, if you’d like to find out more!

Using freshly ground coffee beans delivers freshness, a great aroma and most importantly, a vibrant flavour.   Grinding coffee just before using it helps to reduce the oxidisation process allowing you to get the best flavour from the coffee beans.

How should coffee be ground?

There are lots of different ways to grind coffee, from bashing it up with a pestle and mortar, to throwing it into a food blender or preferably using a burr grinder.  Ideally we are looking for uniformity of grind size to allow the water react in the same way with all of the coffee being brewed.  This makes the burr grinder the preferred choice as each coffee bean must pass through the blades which are set at the same distance from each other which gives that uniform grind profile.  Whether you choose a manual hand burr grinder or a fancy electronic one, that’s a matter of personal preference and hand strength!

Why does grind size matter?

The coffee grind affects the time the water is in contact with the ground coffee and hence the length of time allowed for the chemical reaction between the two.  The grind profile will affect the speed at which the water passes through the coffee picking up flavour.  A fast extraction of coarsely ground beans will result in nothing more than tasteless coloured water and a slow extraction through very finely ground beans creates burning and an over extracted flavour, so it’s a bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, we need to get it just right!

What size should the coffee be ground to?

Now, it really depends on how the coffee will be brewed.  For espresso machines, a good rule of thumb is that the  grind profile needs to deliver an extraction time of approximately 25 seconds including pre-infusion; so from the time you press the button to the time you have extracted a 40ml shot of coffee.  As the water is forced through the coffee at pressure for a short amount of time, the coffee grind needs to be fine so that all of the flavour is extracted.  A useful guide is comparing the coffee grind to the texture of fine table salt.

For a French Press or Cafetiere, the coffee is immersed and steeped in the water for up to 6 or 7 minutes so a coarser coffee grind is acceptable to avoid getting an over extracted flavour from the coffee and a build up of coffee ‘silt’ in the cup.  For me a useful guide is a texture similar to that of granulated sugar.

For other types of filtered coffee like V60 drip or aeropress there is good scope for experimentation but I like a fairly fine grind similar to or a little courser than what I would use for espresso; something like fine sea sand.

Coffee that is freshly roasted or has a different roast profile will react differently when ground in a grinder so there are no hard and fast rules which leads to loads of scope for experimentation and fun!

Aswell as wonderful performance, what really makes the Radiosa something special is that it’s “A” rated for energy efficiency. Enjoy a coffee without compromise!