coffee business strategies

The June 2010 issue of Specialty Coffee Retailer features the article “The Harmonious Brand,” which discusses basic elements of retail branding and includes a short quote by me about Gwilym’s disloyalty card as a brand statement. Unfortunately, my more substantial comments on branding were not included in the article, so I have included a transcript [...]

[Read more →]

Bangalore (October 6, 2009) – Coffees from Kaapi Royale Coffee of Magundi, India received three of the four highest cupping scores awarded in the October 2009 edition of Coffee Review. “India provides some of the world’s most valuable coffee types for espresso blends, yet these same exotic coffee types are seldom offered as single origins,” [...]

[Read more →]

The September Fresh Cup Magazine includes a comprehensive feature article titled Your Board Room that discusses simple strategies and tactics for successful menu positioning in retail coffee shops. “A good menu design educates your customers about your products and creates some expectation about the experience they will have,” says Andrew Hetzel, managing director of Cafemakers, [...]

[Read more →]

The SCAA sustainability committee today released (though dated 4/14/09) a comparison matrix of major coffee certification programs: Organic, Fair Trade Certified, Rainforest Alliance, Smithsonian Bird Friendly, Utz Certified and 4C Common Code. Although making no value judgements or analysis of the ultimate effectiveness of these programs, the matrix does objectively evaluate the structure, history and [...]

[Read more →]

In Specialty Coffee Retailer Magazine’s Ten Trends for 2010 this August, my comments on overseas expansion of the specialty coffee industry have ranked an impressive E-L-E-V-E-N. Rock on! “The majority of our company’s work has come from Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe in the past 2 years,” says coffee industry consultant Andrew Hetzel [...]

[Read more →]