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A-to-Z Intro
Preplanning
 Developing
a Business Plan
Finding Your
Location
Financing
Menu Planning
Design & Build-out
Alternate
Operational
Concepts
Learning About Coffee
What About Decaf?
Anatomy
of American Espresso
Making Tea Work
in a Coffeehouse
Coffee Equipment
Espresso
Equipment
Additional
Equipment
The Role of Accessories
Training
Successful Staff
Scheduling
Operational
Systems
Marketing
Measuring Up
Against
the Chains
Additional
Resources
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Learning About Coffee
by Willem Boot
Imagine you're a 22-year-old "green" rookie fresh from college, and with pounding
heart you show up for the first day of work at the local prestigious coffee importing
firm. The cupping room will be your stomping grounds for the next year, and your
senses already have a ball with the intense fragrance of some Indonesian beans
and the sweet aroma of a few African coffees that were just ground and cupped
by your new patrons. Innocently, you ask them where to start and all fingers point
to the dirty, slimy, brown liquid that has filled up the copper spittoon.
Many coffee professionals have learned the business the hard way—from
the bottom up. But if you ask these lucky people, most would say this is the best
way to get to know all the ins and outs of the coffee industry. If you are starting
your own business, whether it's a local café, a wholesale roasting company or
an office coffee service business (OCS), a solid preparation is top priority.
Successful entrepreneurs always know the relevant details of the business they
are going to pursue. The difficulty, however, is that there is no formal education
program for becoming a coffee professional.
The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) presents educational
programs throughout the year, but unlike the wine industry, the coffee sector
has never been successful in developing an industry-recognized curriculum for
the noble art and science of coffee tasting, blending, roasting, and processing.
You can, of course, enroll in coffee chemistry in Bologna (Italy) and obtain a
Ph.D. in the physics of coffee brewing, but this will not guarantee a fortune
in your coffee business.
If you're lucky, you're born into the coffee industry. My father
started my professional coffee training even before I became a devoted coffee
drinker. I was only 12 years old when I was studying for a classroom presentation
about coffee—the different botanical varieties and the taste profiles of arabica,
robusta and liberica. At age 14, while working in my dad's retail store, I was
already making a serious effort to convert 80-year-old ladies to freshly roasted
Guatemala Maragogype. ("Ma'am, I can recommend a freshly roasted, very mild and
mellow after-dinner, low-caffeine coffee that will make you sleep like a nightingale.")
But if you're not blessed with the heritage of coffee, you will
have to educate yourself, which can be just as much fun. Let's first review some
useful general tips if you are in the planning phase of your coffee business.
There Is No Limit to Your Potential Success
If you're planning to open a coffee café, start investigating what it will take
to become the best and most successful coffeehouse in town. If you are planning
to start a wholesale roasting business, study the two most successful local competitors
and do everything better, whether it's their product freshness, the ambience,
the customer service, or their sales techniques. Your success will be as big as
you want it be.
Be Creative and Dare to Be Different
Today's coffee consumer already has an abundance of cafés and specialty roasted
products to choose from. There are too many copy-cat companies that simply duplicate
the design, product listings and roast style of the local market leaders. By developing
a strong, original brand image, you can distinguish yourself and become the talk
of the town.
Taste, Taste, Taste
Train your coffee palate to become the best of the Western hemisphere. My personal
research has shown that coffee professionals who spend more time tasting will
be more successful than professionals who don't. During the years I was selling
my own specialty coffee in the Netherlands, I would maintain a strict routine
of coffee tasting and testing. As a result, I was always "sharp" when visiting
my customers.
One day, one of my customers served me (as a blind and unexpected
test) a cup of my competitor's coffee. The owner—a renowned chef—asked me, "How
do you like your coffee tonight?" I replied instantly, "I know how my coffee should
taste. If this is my coffee, I'd better give up my business!" I left a lasting
impression with this client. He vowed never to try a competitor's coffee again,
and this restaurant has become one of our most loyal clients.
Guerrilla Coffee Education
So, let's go back to the key question: You're starting a coffee business and a
thriving coffee career—how can you prepare for your golden future? You could,
of course, seek out a professional consultant, but let's assume you are, like
many coffee start-ups, on a tight budget. In this case, I recommend designing
a guerrilla-style education program incorporating the following steps.
Cupping & Tasting
Cupping and tasting comprises the systematic methodology of measuring, grinding,
pouring, sniffing, smelling, tasting, and spitting coffee. Call your local coffee
importer and invite yourself to his cupping sessions. Offer him a deal he can't
refuse: In return for his teachings, you will do the necessary set-up and cleaning
work (remember that spittoon?). Setting up the cupping table by itself is a great
learning tool; it teaches you the discipline of preserving consistency in the
cupping and tasting ceremony.
Try to complete at least 15 cupping sessions with local importers.
By now, you should be able to distinguish blindly between the complexity of a
Papua New Guinea Sigri A and the mellow tones of a Panama Boquete. Now it is time
to start a regular cupping routine at home (twice a week at least). Purchase a
cheap popcorn-popper-type sample roaster and start a systematic roasting routine
with color samples of the previous roast and roast log sheets with roast times
and tasting results. Soon it will be time to move on. Let's start the real thing.
Roasting Coffee
A skilled coffee roaster knows exactly what a given roast profile will do to the
taste of coffee. Try to connect with some local "artisan" roasting companies.
The purpose is to receive (free) training on their roasting machines in exchange
for help with packaging the coffee, cleaning and/or repair work. When you approach
these local roasters, be careful and diplomatic.
These days, small business owners get continually harassed with
propositions of all types. Make it clear that you can be of great help to the
roasting company by becoming a backup roaster operator. Hopefully you will find
a roastmaster willing to accept you as an apprentice. In all cases, be smart and
humble—coffee professionals usually have good hearts but large egos.
Barista Exercise
In North America, a barista is usually an entry-level position that pays somewhat
better than minimum wage. What a contrast to the Italian tradition, where the
barista fulfills such an important role in the coffeehouse! For you, the guerrilla
trainee, I don't expect any problem in finding employment with a local coffeehouse.
But before you start your barista career, make sure the company has a good record
of on-the-job training programs. You should be an experienced/skilled barista
after serving at least a few months in the barista regiments and then it is time
to move on again.
Equipment Knowledge
As a barista, did you ever have to do an emergency repair on a two-group espresso
machine while the café was filled with an angry coffee mob? Now is the time to
learn, so visit a local espresso and brewer repair service; become a trainee.
Equipment knowledge, if you start a coffee company, helps a great deal.
A Coffee Field Trip
By now, you can almost call yourself a beginning coffee professional. But one
important task is still to be done: picking coffee cherries. Book a trip to a
coffee-producing country and find out what coffee at origin is all about. Enjoy
the friendliness and warmth of your fellow coffee pickers, admire the remote scenery
of the coffee plantation, but most of all, understand the hardship of selectively
picking red, ripe cherries only. Work a shift on the wet mill, understand the
concept of fermentation and cleanliness, and, last but not least, observe the
hand-picking of green beans and/or the electronic sorting process.
So, what more is there to learn before you can successfully start
a coffee business? How about good bookkeeping, creative marketing, attractive
packaging, effective negotiating, and most importantly, superior quality management?
Once you have mastered all these areas, you should have more than a good chance
at becoming very successful. Always remember that a passion for your coffee will
drive your success. Have a good learning journey!
Willem Boot is president of Boot Coffee
Consulting & Training, a firm specializing in business development and quality
management programs for coffee companies. He can be reached at wboot@bootcoffee.com
or 415/380-1999.
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