The specialty coffee industry is becoming increasingly competitive. When coffee drinkers spend their hard-earned money in cafés, they expect the highest quality cup.
Having a set of standards to guide your coffee brewing is integral to maintaining quality in your café. Setting high expectations in both flavour and presentation goes a long way to build trust with customers, convincing them to come back.
Your coffee offering
Coffee drinkers have diverse tastes and preferences. An effective in-store coffee offering showcases your expertise across the full coffee spectrum. From reliable, consistent espresso blends, to seasonal drinks and single origins.
Diversifying your coffee offering to cater to a wide array of preferences, new audiences and emerging trends in coffee can help to drive business. Don't skip the café classic milk-based and black coffees, but introducing seasonal drinks and limited time flavours can encourage customers to keep coming back to try the latest and greatest.
Serving standards
The presentation of your drinks is just as important as the flavour in the cup. Coffee should not only be delicious but be presented beautifully.
Setting standards around latte art, filter presentation and prep time, goes a long way to creating a premium offering. Extras like a tasting card to accompany a single origin coffee can also be a nice touch.
It only takes one bad coffee for a customer not to come back. No matter how busy you might be, only serve coffee you’d be happy to pay money for.
How to talk about coffee
Coffee can be an intimidating topic for people. With so much information out there, we want to guide people along their coffee journey, no matter how far along they may be.
You should be able to talk to people new to coffee, as well as seasoned pros. It’s up to you to gauge how much knowledge a coffee drinker has and deliver as much (or as little) detail as they need.
At Allpress, we try not to be too overwhelming to new coffee drinkers, asking more general questions about what overall flavours they might like: “do you prefer a darker roasted coffee or maybe something lighter and fruiter?”. These conversations differ to the ones we have with seasoned coffee drinkers, where we might discuss more in depth flavour nuances: “Dry cocoa and bitter cooking chocolate vs dark chocolate flavour” – cater the conversation to the coffee drinker.
When it comes to recommending coffee, it’s good to have preferred brewing methods that you can guide people towards, but we avoid being overly prescriptive unless asked for advice.
Workflow and systems
Efficient workflow enables you to consistently deliver top-quality flavour and experiences to your customers. It also gives you space to evolve and grow your offering with the opportunity to introduce single origin filter or espresso options for customers looking to try something different.
It can be simple workflow adjustments like where milk jugs or saucers are placed on the bench, through to larger changes like where the grinder or milk fridge is situated. You’d be surprised at what you an unlock in your café with just a few tweaks.
Barista training
Having a great coffee offering relies heavily on the people who make it. A lack of training can be the difference between a perfectly balanced espresso and a sour mess in a cup.
Whether you’re starting fresh in the coffee world or you’re a seasoned coffee veteran, training is an essential tool to take your coffee offering to the next level. As an Allpress partner, you get unlimited access to our training workshops to upskill your team to ensure they’re making the best coffee possible. Take advantage of our in-house trainers and get your team brewing the perfect cup.
Equipment and machinery
Having high-quality, efficient equipment will enable you to deliver a coffee offering that is both consistent and delicious.
We’ve spent the last 30 years building a strong partnership with La Marzocco and recommend their equipment for any hospitality business looking to brew high-quality coffee. Coming on board with Allpress means you have access to the best machinery the industry has to offer.
All the milks
Over 70% of coffees sold in cafés are milk-based. The milks and alternative options you use require strong consideration.
Offering multiple options for customers is an easy way to keep them coming back. If customers know they can get their favourite milk with their coffee from you, they’re more likely to get their daily fix from your café. However, it’s important that the flavour complements your coffee, rather than overpower it.
Full-fat and skim dairy complement coffee flavours, so choosing a quality brand is up to personal preference here. With alternative milks, Oat is our preferred option with its reserved flavour profile blending well with coffee.
