Social Media Madness

How many “friends” do you have? Do you “Tweet” reg­u­larly? What about “Yelp?” And when was the last time you “Pinned” an image? If you are scratch­ing your head about now, it’s time for Social Media 101.

But wait! Isn’t social media about sell­ing to con­sumers you ask? Remember, every busi­ness per­son to whom you sell is also a con­sumer! And, accord­ing to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2012 Report1, busi­nesses must broaden their def­i­n­i­tion of lead­er­ship to exe­cute on both the fun­da­men­tals of profit and soci­etal good. 2012 brought an unprece­dented nine-point decline in trust in gov­ern­ment, the report goes on to say. And As gov­ern­ment offi­cials are being seen as less cred­i­ble, so are CEO’s. More and more peo­ple are turn­ing to their peers. “A per­son like me” has re-emerged as one of the three most cred­i­ble spokes­peo­ple with its biggest increase in cred­i­bil­ity since 2004.

B2C vs B2B
So how do you use Social Media for your busi­ness? Simply put, busi­ness today is all about rela­tion­ships. Social Media gives busi­nesses large and small an even play­ing field to build con­nec­tions and cus­tomer loy­alty. Facebook is par­tic­u­larly use­ful to lis­ten to your cus­tomers’ needs, cre­ate trust, estab­lish author­ity, and con­nect on a more per­sonal level while remain­ing con­sis­tent with your brand. You can also use it to build new leads and even check out your competition.

Social Media makes us “real” to our cus­tomers. But remem­ber, if you want peo­ple to fol­low you and/or your com­pany, you must go beyond the lat­est prod­uct news and share your per­son­al­ity with them.

What is Social Media?
According to Wikipedia, refers to the means of inter­ac­tions among peo­ple in which they cre­ate, share, exchange con­tents among them­selves in vir­tual com­mu­ni­ties and net­works. The most used and well-known exam­ples include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+. However there are dozens of Social Media sites and tools out there with mil­lions of users. Though this list is not com­pre­hen­sive, here is a list of the most pop­u­lar with the num­ber of users as of January 30, 2013 from (where else) the internet2!
-    1.06 Billion – Monthly Active Facebook Users
-    800 Million – YouTube Users (4 Billion Views per Day)
-    500 Million – Total Twitter Users (200 Million Active Users)
-    400 Million – Registered Google+ Users
-    280 Million – Skype Users
-    200 Million – LinkedIn Users
-    100 Million+ – Dropbox Users
-    90 Million – Instagram Users

Other SM Fast Facts:
-    More peo­ple have dig­i­tal iden­ti­ties than pass­ports
-    Asia now has sur­passed Europe in Facebook users (278 mil­lion vs. 251 mil­lion)
-    The Google+ but­ton is used 5 bil­lion times per day
-    “Student” is the num­ber one occu­pa­tion of Google+ users
-    48 per­cent of Fortune Global 100 com­pa­nies use Google+
-    LinkedIn has 2 new signups per sec­ond
-    175 mil­lion Tweets are sent daily
-    4 bil­lion hours of video are watched monthly on YouTube
-    51% of peo­ple aged 25–34 used social net­work­ing in the office, more than any other age group
-    People con­tinue to spend more time on social net­works than any other cat­e­gory of sites—20% of their time spent on PCs and 30% of their mobile time
-    Social Media has over­taken pornog­ra­phy as the No. 1 activ­ity on the web
-    The pop­u­lar­ity of var­i­ous social net­works will change but the desire to com­mu­ni­cate within a social net­work will not
-    With grow­ing skep­ti­cism, rep­e­ti­tion has become even more impor­tant to estab­lish trust and credibility

So what does all of this mean to you and your busi­ness? The time has come to firmly estab­lish your company’s online iden­tity.  With that in mind, here are the top ques­tions mar­keters are (or should be) asking3:

•    How do I mea­sure the ROI of my social media mar­ket­ing?
•    How do I find my tar­get audi­ence with social media?
•    What are the best ways to engage my audi­ence?
•    How do I sell with social media?
•    How should I best use my time to max­i­mize my social media results?
•    How do I cre­ate a social media strat­egy?
•    What social media tac­tics are the most effec­tive?
•    What are the best social media man­age­ment tools?
•    How much time is required to main­tain an effec­tive social media cam­paign?
•    Where can I find the answer to these questions?

Watch for our series on Social Media Tools for Success in future issues!

1    Edelman Trust Barometer 2012 Report – http://trust.edelman.com/
2    http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use-the-top-social-media/
3    http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/report/

Digital Latte: Drinking Coffee with my Smart Phone — New Mobile Platforms Enabling Coffee Shops to go Digital

Look­ing back on 2012, there were many events that dom­i­nated the news cycles. Besides the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Hurricane Sandy and the state of the econ­omy, one of the most closely watched sto­ries by media of all stripes was Facebook’s IPO in May.

There were many rea­sons, but it had such great appeal because of how much Facebook has become a part of the daily lives of a sev­enth of the world pop­u­la­tion. More than half of Facebook’s 1.01 bil­lion users access their news feeds daily, and accord­ing to the com­pany in its most recent earn­ings report, the num­ber of users access­ing their feeds from mobile devices increased 61% from September 2011 to September 2012.  Another rea­son for the media inter­est is how addict­ing Facebook is to so many users: According to Edison Research, 23% of Facebook’s users check their account five or more times daily and the mean num­ber of daily log-ins by Facebook users is four.

The Facebook IPO, and sub­se­quent chron­i­cling of the path of its stock price high­lighted an even larger busi­ness story this year—the matu­rity of the social media mar­ket over­all. While the jury is out on Facebook, the IPO’s of other com­pa­nies like Groupon have said a great deal about the chal­lenge these com­pa­nies face prov­ing out their busi­ness models.

Social Media: The World’s Digital Mall
People don’t just use social media to post pic­tures of their kids or what they are hav­ing for lunch. In fact, more and more con­sumers rely on social media to influ­ence their pur­chas­ing deci­sions. According to the same Edison Research sur­vey ref­er­enced above, last year 32% of Americans using social net­works said that those net­works had an influ­ence on their buy­ing deci­sions. This year, 65% said that social net­works influ­enced their deci­sions.  Also, 47% say Facebook has the great­est impact on pur­chase behav­ior (up from 24% in 2011).

It’s not only Facebook that has an impact.
•    56% of con­sumers share pur­chases on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social sites
•    59% of Pinterest users have pur­chased items they saw on the site
•    33% of Facebook users have pur­chased an item saw on their news feed or a friend’s Timeline
•    79% of Pinterest users are more likely to pur­chase items they’ve seen on Pinterest

The Coffee Industry has always had a social and com­mu­nity com­po­nent; long before online shop­ping, social media or mobile apps, cof­fee shops were gath­er­ing places to inter­act with oth­ers.  The chal­lenge for us today is to extend our local cof­fee com­mu­nity through social media and mobile tools that allow us to drive busi­ness and increase con­sumer par­tic­i­pa­tion with our brands.  This explains the sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment made by Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts in par­tic­u­lar on social media mar­ket­ing cam­paigns and mobile apps. What these giants have shown is how to very effec­tively build a mas­sive social media fol­low­ing and tie it together with loy­alty pro­grams across plat­forms to drive business.

The linch­pin for both these pio­neers has been mobile. Starbucks’ mobile appli­ca­tion has pow­ered more than 29 mil­lion trans­ac­tions to date. The appli­ca­tion effec­tively ties together loy­alty and offers a mobile wal­let and pay­ment mech­a­nism that gives it even more vis­i­bil­ity into the habits and pref­er­ences of its cus­tomers. This in turn allows it to mar­ket in a more per­sonal way—including through social media—and con­nect emo­tion­ally with its cus­tomers through “feel good” posts that gen­er­ate an aver­age of 15,000 Facebook Likes. It also allows social media to be inte­grated into every one of its campaigns.

Take, for exam­ple, Starbucks’s December “12 Days of Gifting” cam­paign. The mobile app was one pro­mo­tional chan­nel that allowed cus­tomers to opt-in via text. Customers were then pointed to its cam­paign Web page and invited to con­nect to its Holiday Facebook app. On the same page, cus­tomers could access each of the “12 Days” offers.

As this exam­ple shows, Starbucks pio­neered the abil­ity to gain tremen­dous vis­i­bil­ity into the pur­chasers of its loy­alty and gift cards by bring­ing them to its mobile app, through which it can receive offers and make pur­chases (with a strong social media component).

Aside from major brands, most mer­chants have no vis­i­bil­ity into who pur­chased the gift or loy­alty card or who the ulti­mate recip­i­ent is. This lack of vis­i­bil­ity rep­re­sents sig­nif­i­cant loss of oppor­tu­nity for brands to dis­trib­ute tar­geted pro­mo­tions, incen­tives, dis­counts and spe­cial offers to their best cus­tomers. As these new mobile plat­forms emerge, smaller brands that take advan­tage of them will be able to make direct con­tact with the card buyer and the card recip­i­ent. This one to one rela­tion­ship increases brand aware­ness, ampli­fies con­sumer mind­share and engages cus­tomers in real-time.

These new mobile plat­forms will include a con­sumer mobile app that inte­grates shop­ping, gift­ing and loy­alty solu­tions with users’ real-time loca­tion, pref­er­ence and friend data. This empow­ers mer­chants to pro­vide rel­e­vant and timely infor­ma­tion to cus­tomers to help them get bet­ter offers and local­ize the expe­ri­ence. Merchants ben­e­fit from a direct-to-consumer mar­ket­ing chan­nel informed by rich data across retail­ers, gift lists cre­ated by the app user and their Facebook friends, past responses to offers and geo-location infor­ma­tion. Today, white label plat­forms that include a reg­is­tra­tion process are emerg­ing, so that gift card buy­ers and recipients—as well as loy­alty card holders—are no longer anony­mous, enabling brands to iden­tify and engage more of their customers.

Conclusion
Nearly all roast­ers and mer­chants under­stand the value of estab­lish­ing pro­grams to breed cus­tomer engage­ment and loy­alty while increas­ing rev­enues. They also under­stand that social media chan­nels have moved from “nice to have” to “must have.” The chal­lenge now is find­ing the tools that inte­grate the two together in a way that includes mobile mar­ket­ing as a very strong component.

Only through a white-label and inte­grated, func­tional plat­form can cof­fee retail­ers of any size effec­tively develop a mobile engage­ment strat­egy that gen­er­ates rev­enue with­out hav­ing to build it all from the ground up. This will help mer­chants and roast­ers real­ize the poten­tial of highly tar­geted, per­son­al­ized, local and action­able pro­mo­tional cam­paigns and mes­sag­ing to the indi­vid­ual consumer.

While the big guys got off to a great start in 2012, once the thou­sands of cof­fee shop com­mu­ni­ties around the coun­try unleash the dig­i­tal tools now avail­able, the smaller guys will be the ones to come up with the big ideas for 2013 and ‘14. What we’ll see in 2013 is the emer­gence of white-labeled plat­forms for all other mer­chants and roast­ers that want the same capa­bil­i­ties of the big retail­ers but lack bud­get, time and know-how.

Entrepreneur and Investor, The for­mer CEO of Swiss Farm Stores and Saxbys Coffee Company,  Paul Friel is pres­i­dent of Entourage Partners LLC an Angel invest­ment group located in Philadelphia that helps early stage com­pa­nies.  Entourage has invest­ments in the mobile pay­ment and retail POS categories.

POS Systems">Six Reasons Why Coffee Shop Owners Are Switching to iPad POS Systems

Decid­ing to use a cloud-based tablet POS sys­tem instead of an old fash­ioned cash reg­is­ter or win­dows based PC is becom­ing less of a trendy choice and more of a neces­sity for retail­ers look­ing to make smarter busi­ness decisions.

Because iPad point of sale sys­tems have sig­nif­i­cantly lower costs, are safer due to cloud stor­age and enhance the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, mer­chants that come on board using a tablet-based POS over tra­di­tional cash reg­is­ters will have sig­nif­i­cant retail­ing advantages.

iPad POS sys­tems pro­vide pow­er­ful fea­tures like real time sales report­ing that goes way beyond any­thing a tra­di­tional cash reg­is­ter can offer. iPad POS also allows mer­chants to con­trol every­thing from inven­tory man­age­ment to the col­lec­tion of cus­tomer infor­ma­tion for mar­ket­ing pur­poses, all in one place and in a small, sleek package.

Small busi­ness own­ers are busy peo­ple, and don’t have time to read through the hun­dreds of rea­sons why I, as a for­mer retailer myself, believe that iPad POS sys­tems are the best option, so I’ve included the top six. These were the points that really drove it home for me when I became so frus­trated with my expen­sive POS sys­tem that I was forced to cre­ate my own cloud-based system:

1. The Safety and Security of the Cloud: Anyone who spends a year run­ning a busi­ness can write a book about unex­pected dis­as­ters. Merchants know that prob­lems will arise, but it is impos­si­ble to pre­dict whether it will be a threat from hack­ers or Mother Nature. With an iPad point of sale sys­tem, all infor­ma­tion is stored in the cloud, reliev­ing the stress of stor­ing valu­able infor­ma­tion on com­put­ers sus­cep­ti­ble to any num­ber of inci­dents includ­ing flood­ing, being dropped or stolen. There is also no need to fret about the cost of upgrad­ing hard­ware or run­ning out of space as you store more cus­tomer and inven­tory infor­ma­tion on your sys­tem. Cloud-based data is encrypted and secure.

2. It’s Just So Easy: “Wait a sec, which but­ton do I press to open the reg­is­ter? And what if there’s no sale?” Anyone who has trained employ­ees on how to use a cash reg­is­ter has heard these ques­tions dozens of times. iPad POS sys­tems are as easy to use as, well… as an iPad. Training takes sec­onds, and ring­ing up cus­tomers is just as quick. With nearly unlim­ited cus­tomiza­tion, you can design your POS so that each inter­ac­tion can be just a few taps of a screen.

3. Freedom: There will be no more of those nights wak­ing up in a cold sweat won­der­ing how many lattes you sold that day or whether you’ll have enough ice cream cones for the Saturday rush. You can mon­i­tor your busi­ness from any­where with an iPad POS as long as you have a com­puter or a smart­phone. Check to see how the day’s sales are going or mon­i­tor and reorder inven­tory from the gym or, even bet­ter, the beach.

4. Customer Information: Through loy­alty rewards pro­grams and emailed receipts, you can eas­ily cap­ture cus­tomer email addresses at the point of sale by hav­ing them enter their infor­ma­tion on the iPad. This infor­ma­tion can be used to fur­ther develop loy­alty pro­grams and to keep cus­tomers in the loop on what is new in the shop.

5. Options: Most iPad point of sale sys­tems are about pro­vid­ing mer­chants the oppor­tu­nity to build their busi­nesses with no lim­its and choices rang­ing from which mobile pay­ment sys­tems to inte­grate to where they put but­tons on their cash reg­is­ters to which credit card pay­ment proces­sor they use. ShopKeep POS is always happy to rec­om­mend a reli­able and inex­pen­sive proces­sor, or you can shop around and pick the proces­sor that has the best rates and meets your needs.

6. Platform for the Future: An iPad POS sys­tem is not just about the free­dom of hav­ing access to real-time data from any­where, it is a plat­form that will con­tinue to be devel­oped and built on. Meaning the solu­tions will only get bet­ter and more pow­er­ful, con­tin­u­ally inte­grat­ing new fea­tures that will help mer­chants make smarter busi­ness deci­sions that grow their businesses.

Jason Richelson is founder and CEO of ShopKeep POS, a com­plete iPad POS solu­tion for high-volume small businesses.

In Memoriam

The cof­fee indus­try pays respect to and remem­bers with great admi­ra­tion the life of a man who played a very for­ma­tive role in the devel­op­ment and advance­ment of spe­cialty cof­fee. Salim Janna, or “Salo” as many of his friends called him, started his cof­fee career by join­ing the Colombian Coffee Federation in Bogotá in June, 1983. Shortly there­after, he received his first pro­mo­tion and was trans­ferred to the Colombian Coffee Federation in New York where a few short months later he was appointed President.

Salim was one of the pio­neers and pro­mot­ers of the 100% Colombian Coffee pro­gram. He led an adver­tis­ing and pro­mo­tional cam­paign which posi­tioned Juan Valdez among the most rec­og­nized icons in the US, and Colombian Coffee among the top qual­ity cof­fees in the world.

In 1995, he and his wife Marcela decided to move their fam­ily back home to Colombia. Salim wanted to con­tinue his career in cof­fee and decided to invest in Café Condor. In 1996, Salim became its CEO and major­ity investor and under his lead­er­ship the com­pany became a pio­neer­ing exporter of spe­cialty coffee.

Salim was actively involved with the SCAA where he par­tic­i­pated in the International Relations Committee as well as on the board of direc­tors. He was also one of the founders of the Colombian Specialty Association. His pas­sion for qual­ity showed in his many con­tri­bu­tions to the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI), where he served as respected trustee for a period of thir­teen con­sec­u­tive years, until he retired from the board two years ago. He was very instru­men­tal in help­ing CQI to attain many of its suc­cesses and his wis­dom and coun­sel were highly val­ued. He was a straight shooter whose com­mit­ment to qual­ity was unwavering.

Salim was a go-getter. He would break­fast in Bogotá, be seen at an after­noon meet­ing in New York, and later dine with clients in L.A before tak­ing the red-eye back to Miami or Barranquilla. His intrin­sic sense for oppor­tu­ni­ties com­bined with his tenac­ity and deter­mi­na­tion made him a suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neur at a very young age. He invested in the port of Barranquilla as well as in coal min­ing in Colombia’s inte­rior where he acquired a coal trad­ing com­pany, serv­ing as its CEO. He also served on sev­eral boards in the energy indus­try and health care sec­tor in Colombia. When Salim was engaged in an indus­try he com­mit­ted him­self to mak­ing it bet­ter, and to mak­ing a difference.

He had an insa­tiable appetite for learn­ing and would share with friends and col­leagues the case study learn­ings from his annual sojourns to Harvard Business School’s exec­u­tive edu­ca­tion pro­grams. He was very pas­sion­ate about the impor­tance of life­long learn­ing and to work­ing hard to achieve your goals. He cer­tainly mod­eled those values.

Yet, for all the accom­plish­ments of his career, the sin­gle most impor­tant focus of his life, and the only real mea­sure of suc­cess that was impor­tant to him was the love of his fam­ily. Salim’s wife Marcela and his three sons, Nicolas, Julian and Gabriel were the cen­ter of his uni­verse and the source of his joy and inspi­ra­tion. He beamed when he spoke of them and was so very proud of the life they shared. Salim was a devoted and lov­ing hus­band and father. He had a heart that was big­ger than his entire body and it over­flowed with gen­eros­ity and warmth and acceptance.

And so, we pay trib­ute to the con­tri­bu­tions of an indus­try leader who so many of us had the priv­i­lege of call­ing friend. Let us honor his mem­ory by our stead­fast pur­suit of qual­ity and in our under­stand­ing of what is really impor­tant in life. We shall carry him our hearts always.

& Sales">Roasting Accessories — Increasing Efficiency, Quality, & Sales

Master­ing the art and sci­ence of roast­ing is not an easy task. There are many vari­ables to take into con­sid­er­a­tion. How will you best accen­tu­ate the idio­syn­cratic char­ac­ter­is­tics of the beans? How will this cof­fee be brewed? What are con­sumers look­ing for? All these fac­tors are under the Roast master’s dis­cre­tion. However, what about the equip­ment, tools and acces­sories that can aid the roast­ing process? Are there any tools that can help you increase effi­ciency, ensure qual­ity, and main­tain consistency?

Increase Efficiency
Improving effi­ciency should be a con­cern of every Roaster regard­less of the size. However, for a medium size to com­mer­cial roaster, effi­ciency, or the lack thereof, has a sub­stan­tial impact on oper­a­tional costs. One of the biggest con­cerns as a grow­ing roaster becomes ‘how can we move things from point A to point B using the least amount of energy, time, and labor?’ This is when installing con­vey­ors is opti­mal. According to Jeff Dudas, CEO of Spiroflow “Some of the main ben­e­fits of automat­ing con­vey­ing are the decrease of labor costs; improve­ment of san­i­tary con­di­tions; dust con­trol; improved effi­ciency; and reduced energy con­sump­tion.” In addi­tion, “Conveyor’s will avoid repet­i­tive stress injuries employ­ees may suf­fer dur­ing the oper­at­ing process,” says Dudas. According to Karl Seidel, Marketing Manager at Cablevey Conveyors, “Getting effi­cient means con­stantly exam­in­ing and improv­ing upon processes. Getting a grasp of what those effi­cien­cies are for your unique brand is what build­ing a busi­ness is all about. A con­veyor is one small part of the mix – but it’s a busi­ness deci­sion based on effi­ciency, safety and your abil­ity and will­ing­ness to grow your business.”

Moreover, many roast­ers are try­ing to diver­sify by pro­vid­ing not only dif­fer­ent ori­gins and roasts, but also fla­vored cof­fees for con­sumers. One of the lat­est trends Dudas sees is “Companies are inter­ested in adding fla­vors and vit­a­mins.” For this, “Spiroflow pro­vides Flexible Screw Conveyors that will auto­mate that process by adding the mixed ingre­di­ents to the ground coffee.”

Increase Quality
To increase qual­ity, as well as ensure con­sis­tency, the Agtron scale or tiles are essen­tial. Carl Staub, President of Agtron says, “We want to make peo­ple aware that they can have more con­trol over the roast­ing process.” Staub con­tin­ues to explain; “The M-BASIC II does not look at the color of the cof­fee or the light­ness or dark­ness of a sam­ple. Instead, it mea­sures the amount of near-infrared energy at spe­cific wave­lengths reflected from the sur­face of a sam­ple. The wave­lengths selected relate to com­pounds that directly cor­re­late to the devel­op­ment of sol­u­ble organ­ics.” Since the fla­vor of cof­fee is related to sol­u­ble organ­ics, by ignor­ing color and con­cen­trat­ing on the devel­op­ment of organic com­pounds, the M-BASIC II is capa­ble of iden­ti­fy­ing sub­tle changes intro­duced by var­i­ous roast­ing strate­gies. It also pro­vides a much more accu­rate and repeat­able method for mon­i­tor­ing roast consistency.

The Agtron scale is not tar­geted only to big com­mer­cial roast­ers. It is designed for any roaster that wants to cre­ate an excep­tional cup. According to Staub, “We were sur­prised to learn that 40% of Agtron scales are sold to spe­cialty roast­ers that roast around 12 kilos” Roasters that are moti­vated by more than con­sis­tency but achiev­ing excel­lent qual­ity should be look­ing to use this device.

Another impor­tant step in ensur­ing qual­ity, as well as cre­at­ing dif­fer­ent roast pro­files is sam­ple roast­ing. Sample roast­ing allows you to deter­mine the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the bean and qual­ity, while exper­i­ment­ing around with roast degrees. Some of the most widely used sam­ple roaster brands are Probat and Sample Pro by Coffee Direct Pro. Nevertheless, sam­ple roast­ers can be expen­sive. A good and cost effec­tive option is using a home roaster that will still give you a good impres­sion of the cof­fee. According to Marisue Drumm, National Sales Manager at Nesco, “The Nesco Coffee bean roaster is designed to roast small batches of raw cof­fee beans…Warm air com­bined with a pow­er­ful agi­ta­tor cre­ate an even roast and uni­form color.”

In addi­tion, Drumm sug­gests diver­si­fy­ing income sources “By offer­ing a home roast­ing prod­uct, roast­ers also have the abil­ity to sell raw beans directly to con­sumers, which can expand their sales.” Be aware of your con­sumer; deter­mine what they are look­ing for and find ways to expand your prod­uct offer­ing accord­ing to their needs.

Increasing qual­ity, effi­ciency, and sales is a con­stant effort our indus­try is look­ing to achieve. However, it is not an easy task to ensure your roast­ing busi­ness is con­stantly thriv­ing to achieve these goals. “Roasters respond best to offer­ings that pro­vide them with the flex­i­bil­ity and con­trol needed to achieve a con­sis­tent high-quality prod­uct,” says Matt Cook, President of LBP Manufacturing, Inc.  “As a solu­tions provider, we under­stand that it’s all about stay­ing true to the integrity of the bean because – now more than ever – that’s how cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion is built and main­tained.” Having the right tools and equip­ment is an invest­ment that will help save time, money, and energy while improv­ing your processes and meth­ods. Not only is this essen­tial to be a prof­itable busi­ness, but also to guar­an­tee cus­tomer satisfaction.

Impacting Coffee NGOs Worldwide

Contact Name: Darryl Blunk

Website: www.apffels.com
Location: Various Coffee Growing Countries
Email Address: darryl@apffels.com
Phone Number: 562−309−0447

Project Description

Apffels Fine Coffee has a rich his­tory in sup­port­ing not only our local com­mu­nity but also our industry’s efforts to sup­port our busi­ness part­ners in the cof­fee­lands. For years we’ve sup­ported the cof­fee NGOs, and have con­tributed what we could. But we wanted to do more and wanted to broaden our reach. Rather than just choos­ing a sin­gle NGO or two for a dona­tion, we wanted to engage our employ­ees and even our clients.

President and CEO, Darryl Blunk recalls being inspired to take the first step, “I was lis­ten­ing to the Marketplace show on pub­lic radio and the CEO of Patagonia was shar­ing how they started to give back and now he finds him­self help­ing oth­ers under­stand the strate­gic nature of their phil­an­thropy. I was struck by one com­ment, ‘It’s never per­fect, but just start.’ And so we have.”

Now using the Profits 4 Purpose soft­ware tool, we have a plat­form to intro­duce our employ­ees to ways to directly ben­e­fit cof­fee work­ers in ori­gin. We are orga­niz­ing Webcasts so that every­one in our com­pany gets a chance to meet rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the NGOs and learn how just a few dol­lars can make a huge impact on a cof­fee fam­ily. This per­sonal con­nec­tion will empower them to sup­port the causes that speak to their hearts. Profits 4 Purpose lets them go to our plat­form and donate directly to that cause.

The project will be broad­ened to include our clients and sur­round­ing com­mu­nity mem­bers as well. Afternoon cof­fee gath­er­ings will allow us to show­case our impact and hope­fully will inspire our guests to take action as well.

Who Benefits From This Project?

The most obvi­ous ben­e­fi­cia­ries from our project are those who receive ser­vices from the cof­fee NGOs. Our employ­ees will be bet­ter edu­cated on how we can make a dif­fer­ence in ori­gin in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent ways. Rather than Apffels Fine Coffees being the sole decider of what pro­grams we sup­port, each employee will have their per­sonal voice in mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. We are going to sup­port more NGOs and thus their clients than we could with our old way.

Apffels ben­e­fits too. Our already loyal employ­ees feel pride in our impact and their abil­ity to con­tribute to it. Including their input and par­tic­i­pa­tion, boosts employee morale.

It’s good for sales too. Social impact strength­ens a company’s integrity and cred­i­bil­ity. If busi­nesses help their com­mu­nity, in turn, the com­mu­nity will want to help the busi­nesses – it is a cycle from which every­one prof­its. According to research done by Cone Inc., 85% of Americans would rather do busi­ness with a com­pany that is cause-related, and 74% of peo­ple are more likely to rec­om­mend to oth­ers a com­pany that gives back to the community.

One final ben­e­fit is that Profits 4 Purpose pro­vides a sim­pli­fied sys­tem to man­age com­mu­nity involve­ment and mea­sure, track, and com­mu­ni­cate our social impact with their city. “For decades we’ve been sup­port­ing the John Tracy Clinic, founded by Spencer Tracy in LA, but nobody except the founder really knew about it,” explains Darryl Bunk. “Now we can share that story and count­less oth­ers like it.”

How Can I Help?

Join Apffels Fine Coffees in the effort to work together and col­lab­o­rate. If we join forces rather than work in indi­vid­ual silos, and if we engage our employ­ees and clients we can really make a difference.

“You may uncover poten­tially some­thing that you didn’t even know existed.” says Darryl. In the words that inspired him, giv­ing back has strate­gic sig­nif­i­cance, and your imple­men­ta­tion will never be per­fect, but just start! Start by con­tact­ing 
www.tracktheimpact.com.

“Kick the Can” – Coffee Packaging Innovations">“Kick the Can” – Coffee Packaging Innovations

Roast­ers metic­u­lously select the green beans and then care­fully roast them to bring out the aro­mas and fla­vors, so that ulti­mately their cus­tomers can enjoy a per­fect cup of cof­fee. However, as we all know, these prop­er­ties degrade over time. Oxygen and mois­ture affect the qual­ity of roasted cof­fee, and after a cou­ple weeks, your mas­ter­ful cre­ation will become stale. For this rea­son, select­ing the right kind of pack­ag­ing can guar­an­tee that your cus­tomer will get a high qual­ity prod­uct. However, with the plethora of pack­ag­ing options out there, what type of pack­ag­ing should you select? And what are the best prac­tices and meth­ods involved in the selec­tion and label­ing of packaging?

Why Packaging Matters

According to Mark Howley, Chairman and CEO of PBi (Pacific Bag) “Coffee is adversely affected by oxida­tive ran­cid­ity. It is gen­er­ally believed cof­fee taste will degrade within 10–14 days after roast­ing if cof­fee is exposed to oxy­gen. Packaging has a huge impact or effect on qual­ity if dis­tri­b­u­tion time extends beyond a week or so.” In addi­tion, Guy Wray, Marketing Manager at MOCON Inc. says “Launch a prod­uct with­out ade­quate pack­ag­ing and you’ll see the per­me­ation of water vapor and/or oxy­gen in or out of the pack­age, and that can rob the prod­uct of fla­vor, color, and taste. In this case the prod­uct fails, not because it wasn’t a good, but because it was poorly pack­aged and had too short a shelf life.”

“The selec­tion of the proper bar­rier pack­ag­ing for the expected shelf-life is crit­i­cal since the fla­vors can be lost by using the wrong type of pack­ag­ing” Says Robert Pocius pres­i­dent of TekPak. So the first and prob­a­bly most impor­tant fac­tor you should deter­mine with your sup­plier is the bar­rier level of the pack­ag­ing (from oxy­gen and moisture).

Types of Packaging

There are var­i­ous pack­ag­ing styles to select from: Bags; metal cans; glass jars; and in the past cou­ple of years we have seen the rise in demand for the sin­gle serve, and in cor­re­spon­dence the pack­ag­ing for it. In the bag sec­tion, the main styles are: Stand out pouch, Paper tin tie, Side gus­seted bag, or Quad seal bag.

When select­ing the type of pack­ag­ing you want to use it is impor­tant to take the fol­low­ing fac­tors into con­sid­er­a­tion: Barrier level; resis­tance of the mate­r­ial so that it can endure any ship­ping and han­dling; pro­tec­tion from exter­nal odors; heat seal strength; and FDA approval of the pack­ag­ing. According to Joy Weedon, Sales and Marketing Manager for Pack Plus Converting “If you are pack­ag­ing freshly roasted cof­fee, you def­i­nitely need to go with a foil bag with a one-way degassing valve to extend the shelf life and allow the roasted cof­fee to de-gas. Unlike a tin tie paper bag, a foil bag can be heat-sealed mak­ing it air tight and tam­per proof.” In addi­tion, Jeffrey Teich, Vice President, of North Atlantic Specialty Bag says, “A multi-layer struc­ture, as well as the use of a one way degassing valve, will give cof­fee the fresh­est flavor.”

Another impor­tant fac­tor to con­sider when select­ing pack­ag­ing is fla­vored cof­fee. “Some ingre­di­ents in fla­vored cof­fees can affect pack­age integrity, so it is impor­tant to select pack­ag­ing that is par­tic­u­larly designed to han­dle these prod­ucts” says Heather Beaubien, Sales Manager at Printpack, Inc. In order to get opti­mal results, it is essen­tial to com­mu­ni­cate to your sup­pli­ers all the aspects regard­ing your cof­fee, and the goals and expec­ta­tions you have for your product.

Depending on the size and quan­tity of your pro­duc­tion, you might decide to auto­mate the pack­ag­ing process. As your com­pany grows, you may want to con­sider automat­ing parts of this process if you are seek­ing to increase out­put by 2 to 3 times. According to Bob Kelly, President of General Packaging Equipment Co. “As a pack­ag­ing machin­ery man­u­fac­turer our task is to sup­ply equip­ment that will form fill seal pack­ages reli­ably. That is, the machines will run with a min­i­mum of atten­tion, accu­rately meter the prod­uct into the pack­ages and make attrac­tive pack­ages with seals that do not leak.”

Finally, for the test­ing and analy­sis of your pack­ag­ing, “Use MOCON’s MultiCheck sys­tem to reduce your pack­age test­ing costs by using just one pack­age to cover all 4 tests” says Guy Wray, Marketing Manager at MOCON Inc.
This is a great way to avoid dis­tri­b­u­tion of inad­e­quately pack­aged coffee.

De-gassing Coffee

After roast­ing, cof­fee releases CO2, up to 1000 cc per pound. Fresh whole beans will release gases for sev­eral weeks after roast­ing. While many Roasters might allow their cof­fee to de-gas in stor­age by let­ting it sit for 72-hours before pack­ag­ing, valves allow you to pack­age your roasted cof­fee right away. The main pur­pose of a valve, such as the one-way degassing valve, is to allow these gases to escape, with­out allow­ing any exter­nal gases, such as oxy­gen, to come in. According to Nick Greco, Business Development Manager, at Avery Dennison Designed and Engineered Solutions “The Avery Dennison Flexis™ Air for Coffee valve, for exam­ple, helps elim­i­nates the brick­ing effect that occurs when pack­aged cof­fee trav­els over high ele­va­tions, such as the Rocky Mountains.”

On the other hand, Modified Atmospheric Packaging (M.A.P.), refers to a Roaster who within a few hours of roast­ing, evac­u­ates the bag of all oxy­gen, and flushes it with inert gas such as nitro­gen (to fill the voids that used to be taken up by air), and then ther­mally seals the bag. This is all done by spe­cial­ized food-processing equipment.

Packaging As a Marketing Tool

As a roaster you may not have a huge bud­get, if any, set up for mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tional pur­poses. Therefore, pack­ag­ing becomes your pri­mary medium of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with your cus­tomers, and can play fun­da­men­tal role in how you get your mes­sage across. “Use pack­ag­ing as your bill­board to get the mes­sage out about your prod­uct” Says Teich. In addi­tion, Joy Weedon says, “A great shelf appeal gets you that first pur­chase and hope­fully the great cof­fee inside cements a repeat purchase.”

According to Rodrigo Sanchez, Vice President of Masipack “’There is no sec­ond chance to make a first good impres­sion,’ so choos­ing the right label­ing for your prod­uct is an impor­tant step to take into con­sid­er­a­tion.” When select­ing the col­ors, mes­sage, images, mate­r­ial, etc. for or your pack­ag­ing, ask your­self, what mes­sage do you want to com­mu­ni­cate to your cus­tomer? What do you want peo­ple to per­ceive from your cof­fee? “The qual­ity of the cof­fee can also be equated with the qual­ity of the visu­als – high qual­ity graph­ics indi­cate to a con­sumer that there is a high qual­ity prod­uct inside” says Beaubien.

There are many cre­ative ways you can mar­ket your brand through your pack­ag­ing, Beaubien from print pack sug­gests: “2-D scan codes, which con­sumers can scan with their smart­phones for more infor­ma­tion. This adds an extra dimen­sion of expe­ri­ence for the con­sumer that can lead to repeat pur­chases.” In addi­tion, Chris Burger, Coffee Market Manager at Fres-co System USA, Inc. adds, “It is easy to inte­grate pro­mo­tions, and con­nect with your con­sumers through social media beyond the cup of cof­fee; and get their feed­back to improve your prod­uct, pack­age, ser­vice, and gain insight from your con­sumers.” Find ways to be cre­ative with your pack­ag­ing, and make sure to engage your cus­tomers as part of your brand­ing strategy.

When label­ing, Burger sug­gest tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion “The guide­lines and require­ments estab­lished in the mar­ket by reg­u­la­tory orga­ni­za­tions.” In addi­tion he also rec­om­mends the usage of “High qual­ity print­ing that will allow the cof­fee pro­duc­ers or roast­ers to com­mu­ni­cate their brand iden­tity. Printing up to ten col­ors in rotogravure, using lac­quer fin­ish­ing, and adding reverse print­ing, gives them the oppor­tu­nity to trans­form their pack­ag­ing in a great mar­ket­ing tool.” However, the CEO of PBi com­ments on the fact that many small roast­ers can­not afford the cost of cus­tom printed pack­ag­ing “A 12oz. cus­tom printed bag typ­i­cally requires a min­i­mum run of approx­i­mately 20,000–25,000 bags and artwork/set up costs… The solu­tion for the smaller roaster is to use a pres­sure sen­si­tive label applied to one of the solid color stock bags sold in sin­gle case quan­tity (i.e. 500‑1000 bags)” says Howley.

Your pack­ag­ing should tell con­sumers the story of the cof­fee inside. Where is it from? Is it organic, Fair Trade, or Direct Trade? Is a cus­tomer indi­rectly sup­port­ing a cause buy pur­chas­ing your cof­fee? Consumers like to know what is behind the prod­uct they are con­sum­ing. Make sure to max­i­mize your bill­board space through your pack­ag­ing, since this might be the only way you are reach­ing a customer.

Trends

Sustainability and earth-friendly prac­tices have been a pop­u­lar topic in the past years, and this men­tal­ity is here to stay. “In today’s world that is a major fac­tor to con­sider because we need to think about the future gen­er­a­tions and not only about what ben­e­fits us now” says Sanchez. In cor­re­la­tion, Sherry Gorsich, Director of Marketing at LBP Manufacturing says, “Packaging has a life­cy­cle – man­u­fac­tur­ers and oper­a­tors should be aware of raw mate­ri­als sourc­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing processes, and dis­posal.” Robert Pocius from TekPak Solutions rec­om­mends, “Using a Packaging that is ver­i­fi­ably Home Compostable and Biodegradable in Landfills, Forests, Rivers, Lakes and Oceans, this will show the cus­tomers that the Roaster is con­cerned about the health of the Planet.”

Various inno­va­tions and tech­nolo­gies are con­tin­u­ously being devel­oped in the Packaging world, “The recent devel­op­ment of the Biotre® lam­i­na­tion by PBi received the Best New Product – Packaging award at SCAA 2012. Biotre allows cof­fee roast­ers the first oppor­tu­nity to pro­tect their cof­fee while also pre­serv­ing the envi­ron­ment. It’s a great step for­ward!” Says Howley.

In a recent ses­sion at the SCAA in Portland, Packaging 201, Bill Walters from PBi dis­cussed some of the trends he sees in pack­ag­ing. He men­tioned the rise in use of the Block Bottom Bag (BBB), which is a solid bot­tom bag that allows the pack­age to stack well. Furthermore, Walters men­tioned the increas­ing aware­ness of the impor­tance of ade­quately pack­ag­ing green beans, and the recog­ni­tion of Vacuum seal pack­ag­ing for Green Beans, specif­i­cally in the Specialty Coffee Market.

Selecting the per­fect pack­ag­ing will allow you to add value to your prod­uct. The right kind of pack­ag­ing should extend the shelf life of your prod­uct, pre­serve the qual­ity, and deliver freshly roasted cof­fee to your cus­tomer. A qual­i­fied sup­plier should be able to ade­quately answer your ques­tions, and direct you to choose the pack­ag­ing that will best meet your goals and needs. Moreover, make sure you are using your pack­ag­ing as a mar­ket­ing tool, as it might be the only way you are reach­ing your cus­tomer. Do not risk the integrity of your prod­uct by fail­ing to select the right kind of packaging.

& E">Getting from Point A to Point B, C, D & E

How often have we heard that, “The short­est dis­tance between two points is a straight line”? But in cof­fee we ask, “What is the gen­tlest way we can get from point to point?” We move tons of cof­fee in our shops no mat­ter how big or small. It is just a scale of tons that deter­mine the method to be used.

We’re lucky we have roast­ers to lis­ten to – they’ve told us what’s impor­tant to them – gen­tle con­vey­ing + low break­age rates = happy cus­tomers – they’re refer­ring to their cus­tomers of course! But we rec­og­nize a bit of pride in the processes they’ve nailed down in-house.
Karl Seidel, Marketing Manager

Cablevey Conveyors

This arti­cle will explore the prob­lems that need to be solved in mov­ing prod­uct in a cof­fee plant. When you think it through there are a dozen places or more that you have to move the prod­uct. The next log­i­cal step then is explor­ing solu­tions to the prob­lem by dif­fer­ent con­veyance systems.

No mat­ter what the scale of your shop, you have to move prod­uct for the same rea­sons. This chart shows the basic flow of cof­fee from green to ship­ping in a cof­fee plant. As a plant oper­a­tor you will make con­veyance deci­sions based on the fol­low­ing criteria:

Initial Investment
It would be awe­some to start an oper­a­tion com­pletely scaled for your busi­ness over the next 10 years and have unlim­ited funds to put in the ‘per­fect plant.’ But in the real world we start up, chase the busi­ness, grow, and make plant deci­sions based on where we are and where we think we might grow. This can lead to an inter­est­ing selec­tion of dif­fer­ent systems.

Operating Cost
Running the con­vey sys­tems requires man­power and energy con­sump­tion. The best sys­tem is one that requires the least amount of man­power and the least amount of energy to run. If you still have to man­u­ally feed a con­vey sys­tem then you only save the man­power of the actual trans­port. It is bet­ter to also auto­mate the feed­ing of the con­vey sys­tem. As far as energy goes, it comes down to how many motors and how much horse­power is required to run them. With today’s energy prices, that can be a huge oper­a­tional consideration.

Reliability
When your plant relies on con­vey sys­tems to do the work of strong backs, it is impor­tant that the machine oper­ates with­out down time. Most plants have to come to a screech­ing halt if a con­vey sys­tem any­where in the plant fails because every­thing backs up. You will also prob­a­bly no longer have the man­power in place to do the work that the con­vey sys­tem does. So hav­ing the sys­tems vig­or­ously main­tained is cru­cial for long-term success.

Effect on cof­fee qual­ity
In spe­cialty cof­fee, we are con­cerned about coffee’s phys­i­cal appear­ance as well as cup qual­ity. Certain con­vey sys­tems like bucket ele­va­tors, and load sys­tems that drop from tall heights can cause a lot of bro­ken beans and affect the appear­ance of the cof­fee. While this might not affect cup qual­ity Jeremy Raths of The Roastery in MN says, “Broken beans shows a lack of car­ing for qual­ity.” Darryl Blunk of Apffels Coffee points out that some pneu­matic con­vey­ors can release a lot of the volatiles of cof­fee, espe­cially ground cof­fee so another method is preferable.

Choosing a sys­tem based on your size, and scal­a­bil­ity for fore­casted growth is impor­tant. I had a small roast­ing plant. I used the ‘Rocky-vey’ sys­tem and it worked for me. I lost weight and did not need big expen­sive equip­ment. I would prob­a­bly use a dif­fer­ent sys­tem next time because it cost me in time. That was time I could have used to grow my business.

A dif­fer­ent approach was taken by Apffels cof­fee when build­ing a new roast­ing facil­ity for their nearly 100 year old roast­ing com­pany. “We wanted to con­trol dust, reduce labor, have flex­i­bil­ity, speed and a sys­tem that would not harm the qual­ity of the cof­fee,” said Darryl Blunk, CEO. They installed a ver­sa­tile Cablevey sys­tem to trans­port cof­fee from the mul­ti­ple pro­duc­tion sta­tions. “From the time we open the bags of green cof­fee until it leaves the ship­ping dock, the cof­fee is never touched by human hands.” Says Blunk.

Jeff Dudas, CEO of Spiroflow Systems Inc. has to deal with all sorts of prod­ucts that need con­vey­ing besides cof­fee. All plants how­ever express sim­i­lar needs. “One of the big requests we get is to reduce dust in pro­duc­tion.” Spiroflow Systems con­tin­ues to work on their cable pull sys­tem to machine the puck size to min­i­mize dust. These sys­tems also have dust col­lec­tion areas to help in that regard.

Spiroflow Systems also cre­ated a ‘super sack’ loader that con­tin­u­ously lim­its the fall height of prod­uct to elim­i­nate both dust and break­age of beans and thereby main­tain­ing the qual­ity appear­ance of the coffee.

So, con­sider your options care­fully when build­ing upon your plant’s equip­ment and lay­out. There are lots of ways to get from Point A to Point B, but hope­fully you have a basis to at least start to make an informed decision.

2012 Trends for Frozen Beverages — Time to get Creative!

Many restau­rants and Cafés have focused on adding dif­fer­ent foods to expand their menu hop­ing to draw more patrons. Beverages have become the lat­est medium for oper­a­tors look­ing to drive sales and increase prof­its. Many fast food chains have seized this oppor­tu­nity, and are exper­i­ment­ing by enlarg­ing their bev­er­age menu and offer­ing fun and cre­ative drinks. “McDonald’s touts its new frozen straw­berry lemon­ade while Steak’n’Shake and Sonic shout about their “happy hour” deals on milk­shakes and frozen drinks, avail­able dur­ing the mid-afternoon snack period.” 1. For this rea­son, we will be look­ing into some of the trends for 2012 and what peo­ple are demand­ing this year, specif­i­cally in the cold and frozen bev­er­ages market.

As the cof­fee lovers that we are, the first thing that I should point out is that Iced cof­fee is on the top of the list; and this topic could be an entire arti­cle by itself. “Consumption of this cold caf­feinated bev­er­age in restau­rants has heated up 20% per­cent in the last five years.”1 According to an inde­pen­dent sur­vey con­ducted by Dunkin’ Donuts, “an over­whelm­ing major­ity (84%) of iced cof­fee drinkers claim they are drink­ing more iced cof­fee this win­ter com­pared to last win­ter.” 2 Not only the inter­est in pre­mium and spe­cialty beans, but also all the advances in the cold brew tech­nol­ogy, has influ­enced the grow­ing demand. Everywhere, from McDonald’s to the local Café’s, oper­a­tors are offer­ing iced and frozen java drinks; even Starbucks with its new Via Iced Coffee is giv­ing cus­tomers the means to make their own at home. As a café, it is impor­tant to focus on the qual­ity of your brew­ing method, and make sure you dif­fer­en­ti­ate your iced or frozen cof­fee from those of the big chains.

Next, con­sumers have become increas­ingly health con­scious, and this trend will con­tinue to be fol­lowed for years to come. Individuals are look­ing at labels that con­tain “Free-From,” “All– Natural,” and “Low-Calorie.” Consumers, espe­cially women, are extremely aware of this last one. Therefore, when select­ing what fla­vor­ings, syrups, and prod­ucts to offer in your café, look for these labels. According to Brenda Weldon, Marketing Coördinator for Weldon Flavorings “We believe at Weldon Flavorings that health con­scious cus­tomers are demand­ing
 more qual­ity from all their bev­er­ages. They want their frozen treats to be health­ier for them and have less sugar, fats, calo­ries, sodium, and arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers. Frozen treats made with Weldon Flavorings can increase the fla­vor of any drink with­out adding these unwanted ingredients.”

From enhanced waters and drinks, such as vit­a­min water, to made-to-order frozen bev­er­ages, con­sumers are look­ing to get extra vit­a­mins and sup­ple­ments from their thirst-quenchers. Specifically ones that will give a boost of energy; hence, the pop­u­lar­ity of “5-hour” and other energy drinks. David Gross, CEO of Smoothie Essentials says, “Our prod­uct line includes twenty assorted blends that indi­vid­u­ally and together encom­pass the broad spec­trum of what­ever par­tic­u­lar ben­e­fit a cus­tomer would be look­ing for. Whether for energy or for rest­ful sleep; for pro­tein or for fiber; for recov­ery from one too many drinks the night before or for an extra boost to the brain func­tions before school, the Smoothie Essential prod­uct line has a prod­uct to meet the benefit.”

According to an inde­pen­dent sur­vey con­ducted by Dunkin’ Donuts, “an over­whelm­ing major­ity (84%) of iced cof­fee drinkers claim they are drink­ing more iced cof­fee this win­ter com­pared to last win­ter.” 2

While many may think that offer­ing sugar-free and low-calorie prod­ucts will affect the taste of their bev­er­ages and limit their cre­ativ­ity, many sup­pli­ers have cre­ated great tast­ing fla­vor­ings, sweet­en­ers, and syrups in order to meet this demand. Your frozen bev­er­ages can be unique and healthy at the same time. Gina Costello, CEO of Costellini’s says their most cre­ative fla­vor is “the cin­na­mon bliss, it’s a show grab­ber every time, peo­ple are shocked when they taste it; then even more shocked when they learn it sugar free and fat free.”

Get Creative!

Creativity is crit­i­cal to dif­fer­en­ti­ate your café; and of course fla­vor. People are now demand­ing not only unique and excit­ing bev­er­ages, but cus­tomiz­able. Consumers want the do-it-yourself expe­ri­ence by being able to pick and choose from an array options. Syrups and fla­vor­ings will allow you to offer vari­ety, while main­tain­ing a high-profit mar­gin. “There is high demand for frozen fruit based bev­er­ages. Lemonade and teas are very pop­u­lar. Again, adding fla­vor offers a com­plete range of drinks. In fact, a café can cre­ate ter­rific tast­ing lemon­ade sim­ply by using Monin Lemon as the base fla­vor.” Says Bob Hager, Vice pres­i­dent of Marketing at Monin Syrups.” While fresh and local is cur­rently a big trend; using only fresh prod­ucts can be expen­sive, and can limit your cre­ativ­ity. Combining syrups and fla­vor­ings with a few sea­sonal fruits and botan­i­cals will allow you to mix fla­vors while keep­ing costs low, and also dis­tin­guish your Café with inven­tive drinks.

According to Jillian Hillard, Marketing Manager at PreGel AMERICA, “ Slushes, frappes and smooth­ies aren’t the only play­ers any­more. Soft gelato and yogurt prod­ucts (affogatos), excit­ing alcohol-infused drinks and more will all greatly expand the frozen bev­er­age cat­e­gory.” Diversifying your prod­uct line does not only mean offer­ing dif­fer­ent fla­vored bev­er­ages, but also dis­tinc­tive and orig­i­nal styles of cold drinks. “PreGel’s Caféttone, Fruittone and Yogurttone lines eas­ily incor­po­rate into an exist­ing café model for a num­ber of rea­sons. The con­cept blends well with the exist­ing offer­ings of many cafés i.e. cof­fee, espresso, juices and fruits – mean­ing you can incor­po­rate Caféttone, Fruittone and Yogurttone within a café’s cur­rent prod­ucts (Salted Caramel Caféttone swirled with espresso).” Adds Hillard.

Quality

When a cus­tomer is pur­chas­ing a frozen or cold bev­er­age they will expect it to be tasty; that it is well blended; and that the fla­vor lasts until the end. The type of blender you use will play an impor­tant role in the out­come of these fac­tors. According to Tony Ciepiel, COO of Vitamix, “Our cus­tomers’ rep­u­ta­tions are built on qual­ity. Whether our prod­ucts are being used in a cof­fee house, smoothie bar, or one of the finest restau­rants in the world, we’ll con­tinue to cre­ate value and ver­sa­til­ity to help ensure suc­cess… Vitamix offers oper­a­tors the abil­ity to deliver a wide vari­ety of supe­rior blended bev­er­ages to their cus­tomers through a vari­ety of fea­tures and ben­e­fits, includ­ing its pro­gram but­tons with 34 opti­mized pro­grams found on The Quiet One.”

Something that is iron­i­cally often neglected, con­sid­er­ing it is the most promi­nent ingre­di­ent, is ice. According to Michael Rice, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Follett Corporation, “Studies have shown that peo­ple pre­fer Chewblet ice, gener­i­cally known as nugget or extruded ice, by over 2:1 com­pared to con­ven­tional cube-type ice.” He con­tin­ues by adding, “All Follett ice machines pro­duce Chewblet ice. More than 50% of the pop­u­la­tion likes to chew ice and con­sumers pre­fer the tex­ture, size, shape, and appear­ance of Chewblet ice. They often think Chewblet ice makes their drinks taste bet­ter and will go out of their way to get drinks with this type of ice.”

Frozen bev­er­ages are not just a sum­mer trend. People enjoy frozen drinks as a snack drink; some as a meal replace­ment, or sim­ply as a func­tional drink that allows them to get their daily fruit intake and other sup­ple­ments (which helps jus­tify the calo­ries); oth­ers drink them because of the tex­ture and because they are just plain fun! Regardless of the motive, the demand is present. Frozen Beverages are high-margin menu items that sell well, and they are easy to add to the menu with min­i­mal invest­ment and inven­tory. Do not miss an oppor­tu­nity to diver­sify your menu and increase rev­enue; fol­low the indus­try trends.

1 www.foodchannel.com/articles/article/top-ten-beverage-trends-2011/
2 www.sacbee.com/2012/01/24/4210780/iced-coffee-drinkers-running-on.html

Going Green: Tips and Tricks That Can Make a Difference

Over the past few years, research and facts regard­ing the effects of global warm­ing have become a con­cern; var­i­ous stud­ies have emerged that sup­port the neg­a­tive effect of green­house gases on the envi­ron­ment. Individuals, as well as cor­po­ra­tions, have cho­sen to sup­port, pro­mote, and fight for the reduc­tion of man’s impact on the envi­ron­ment. Eventually, the nat­ural resources we depend on will become scarce; and cli­mate change could affect the very com­mod­ity we base our busi­ness on: Coffee.

In an indus­try as large as cof­fee, there is a lot of waste. For this rea­son, it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize the role that busi­nesses play in lead­ing the way for social change. A busi­ness adopt­ing the green ini­tia­tive will affect it’s cus­tomers actions on a daily basis, because they will be “going green” along­side. As a cof­fee shop owner, you have the abil­ity to reduce the car­bon foot­print of hun­dreds of indi­vid­u­als (at least in one aspect of their daily lives); which in con­se­quence will save trees, dimin­ish the amount of harm­ful gases emis­sions, decrease waste, and reduce the growth of land­fills. Even if you are skep­ti­cal about the “Greenhouse effect” and it’s impact on cli­mate change, invest­ing in mak­ing your prac­tices more sus­tain­able can sub­stan­tially cut down oper­at­ing costs for any busi­ness. Simple actions like turn­ing off lights or appli­ances when they are not being used can make a dif­fer­ence. As a busi­ness, you have the power to gen­er­ate change; but it all com­mences with some­one that is will­ing to take ini­tia­tive. So here are tips & tricks that can make your café more sus­tain­able and reduce your car­bon footprint:

Tip # 1 – Encourage cus­tomers to bring their own mugs to your café every morn­ing.
Encouraging cus­tomers to bring their own mugs to the café every morn­ing is one thing. Getting them to actu­ally adopt the habit is another. When your cus­tomer finds the per­fect design to fit her per­son­al­ity, she’ll bring it in every day. We call it: “The Art of Hydration™.”The way that our prod­ucts improve sus­tain­abil­ity above alter­na­tives is very sim­ple; peo­ple find a piece of their per­son­al­ity in the design they choose for them­selves. That alone makes it easy to remem­ber to take it with them in the morn­ing.
Submitted by Erez Toker, Owner of OneVessel by Vessel Drinkware, 
www.vesseldrinkware.com

Tip # 2 – Use and pro­mote reusable fil­ters for Keurig brew­ers.
By offer­ing alter­na­tive devices, like the Ekobrew, to heav­ily used and eco­log­i­cally dam­ag­ing prod­ucts, the cof­fee retailer can gain new cus­tomers and have access to oth­er­wise untapped rev­enue streams. The Ekobrew is a reusable fil­ter that works in almost all of the Keurig brew­ers. Not only can the cus­tomer now use their own favorite cof­fee in their Keurig machine, they can save sig­nif­i­cant money over the cost of K-Cups. Over 5 bil­lion K-Cups will be sold, used and thrown away in the next cal­en­dar year. The Ekobrew can be used hun­dreds of times and every time it is used, one less non-biodegradable, plastic-and-foil K-Cup goes in our land­fills.
Submitted by Ron DeMiglio, President, Eko Brands, LLC. www.ekobrew.com

Tip # 3 – Market your brand with single-serve pods.
Soft paper pods are the green solu­tion to sin­gle cup brew­ing, and are more envi­ron­men­tally friendly than throw­ing a plas­tic K-cup into the land­fills every time you brew a cup of cof­fee. Spent pods from brew­ing cups of cof­fee are com­postable. Simply break the soft paper pods apart and spread them around your gar­dens and flowerbeds.
Submitted by Tom Martin, Executive Vice President /COO of Pod Pack International, LTD. www.podpack.com

Tip # 4 – Start using eco-friendly pack­ag­ing for your roasted cof­fee.
With many Organic, Fair Trade cof­fee brands look­ing for the right solu­tions, ours is the only one rec­om­mended by the Environmental Biology Department of the University of Milan, Italy. It is Omnidegradable, in that it will com­post in a back­yard, and Biodegrade in any land­fill, river, lake or ocean. 5 years of test­ing at Case Western University showed it will not harm plants, insects or soil. It leaves behind, Water, CO2, and a small amount of Organic Biomass; all ben­e­fi­cial to plant growth. It is the only Bio Film that will not break down on the store shelves or cus­tomers homes.

Submitted by Robert Pocius, President of TekPak Solutions,
www.tekpaksolutions.com

Also…

At PBi, we under­stand the chal­lenge with pack­ag­ing has been offer­ing a true sus­tain­able option that offers a bar­rier pro­tec­tion. Our Biotre film and stock Biotre side gus­set bags will do just that. Made from 60% wood pulp that will biode­grade in about 90 days and the other 40%, by weight, is made up of a treated plas­tic that will biode­grade within 4–5 years, sig­nif­i­cantly less than stan­dard plas­tics and bar­rier bags. Additionally, tins and com­postable paper tin-tie bags make great reusable options for retail stores and often many retailers/roasters will offer a dis­count to cus­tomers for reusing the packaging.

Submitted by Kelle Vandenberg, Director of Marketing, PBi. www.pacificbag.com

Tip # 5 – Offer a com­postable cof­fee cup to serve your next cup of cof­fee.
Compostable cof­fee cups per­form the same way a con­ven­tional cof­fee cup does but with out any of the draw­backs. Compostable cof­fee cups elim­i­nate the use of any petro­leum based mate­ri­als that are not sus­tain­able, and in some instances can take up to 100 years to com­pletely break down. Conventional cof­fee cups are non– recy­clable, mean­ing they end up in our land­fills, parks, and oceans. With Americans con­sum­ing over 20 bil­lion cof­fee cups, can you imag­ine the impact that could make if cafés would switch to com­postable cups that will fully break down in less than a year? Leave the old in the past, com­posta­bles are the future.
Submitted by Alonso Ortega, Sales Manager at Pacific Green Products, 
www.PacificGreenProducts.com

Also…

When we did our study for Carbon Trust cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, we found that despite what would seem to be a com­mon sense answer to avoid­ing sin­gle use table­ware, like using a ceramic mug and rewash­ing it, the car­bon foot­print of the mug was much higher in terms of car­bon emis­sions. Once you cal­cu­late in how much energy is being con­sumed to first make the ceramic or steel mug at the fac­tory, which is a very large amount; then the repeated wash­ing with the req­ui­site energy for water pump­ing, heat­ing the water, clean­ing the water; and the man­u­fac­tur­ing of the soaps and the trans­port of them; the car­bon emis­sions for a 100% pct biobased or bioresin com­postable hot cup was much, much lower. It even sur­prised us.
Submitted by Buzz Chandler, President of Asean Corporation (Stalkmarket, Planet+ and Jaya brands), www.stalkmarketproducts.com

Tip # 6– Don’t set­tle with only the cup – offer a com­postable lid to go with it!
Ask your­self, does it make sense to serve your cus­tomer a com­postable hot bev­er­age cup topped with a poly­styrene lid? Avoid the petro­leum alto­gether! Biodegradable Food Service offers an attrac­tive kraft cup lined with a bio-based inner coat­ing, capped with an equally attrac­tive bam­boo fiber lid, all of which com­prises a 100% com­postable drink pack­age. We call it the Earth Cup.
Submitted by Kevin Duffy, CEO of Biodegradable Food Service, LLC, www.Earth-To-Go.com

Tip # 7 – Reduce power con­sump­tion and save money with a Green Line espresso machine.
Let’s face it, we all know you’re sup­posed to leave your espresso machine turned on, but what about your power bill? The first born of our Green Line, Plus 4 You, dra­mat­i­cally reduces power con­sump­tion with its standby and night­time shut­down modes. The self-learning soft­ware can opti­mize the energy sav­ings by pow­er­ing down part of the machine dur­ing slow peri­ods as well. Compared to a tra­di­tional espresso machine, the Plus 4 You grants energy sav­ings from 30% to 47.6%.
Submitted by Courtney Baber, Sales & Marketing, Astoria/General Espresso Equipment, www.usa.astoria.com

Tip # 8 – Create your menus, gift cards, brochures, sig­nage, and busi­ness cards out of recy­cled mate­r­ial.
As a highly vis­i­ble and tac­tile prod­uct, Kona Paper offers many easy and sim­ple ways for cafés to cre­ate more mean­ing­ful mes­sages about the envi­ron­ment that really res­onate with cus­tomers. Since the paper is made out of recy­cled cof­fee bean bag fiber, the mere men­tion of Kona Paper’s “story” as a tagline on a menu, table tent, gift card/gift card­holder or bag vis­i­bly demon­strates your café’s com­mit­ment to going green. More impor­tantly, using Kona Paper pos­i­tively repur­poses a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the cof­fee industry’s waste stream in a fresh, new way.
Submitted by Greg Johnson,Sales & Marketing Vice President of Kona Paper, 
www.konapaper.com

Tip # 9 – Acquire the ade­quate ice­maker to reduce util­ity con­sump­tion.
Use Chewblet® ice­mak­ers to reduce util­ity con­sump­tion. In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing consumer-preferred ice, Chewblet ice­mak­ers will con­sume up to 25% less elec­tric­ity and up to 40% less water com­pared to tra­di­tional cube-type ice­mak­ers, depend­ing on the size of the machine. Upgrading, old inef­fi­cient ice­mak­ers to cur­rent stan­dards is usu­ally a good choice from a util­ity con­sump­tion per­spec­tive.
Submitted by Mike Rice, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Follett Corporation, 
www.follettice.com

Tip # 10 – Seek to make part­ner­ships with pro­duc­ers and pur­chase green cof­fee from farms that sup­port sus­tain­able prac­tices.
A green cup of cof­fee starts with the grower. Supporting farms that pro­mote green agri­cul­tural prac­tices, and pay­ing farm­ers a bet­ter price for their cof­fee will not only have a ben­e­fi­cial effect on the envi­ron­ment, but on com­mu­ni­ties and fam­i­lies as well. The Doi Chaang Coffee Company has a unique part­ner­ship between the Akha hill­side tribe of Doi Chang Village, located in the Chiang Rai Province of Northern Thailand, and a small Canadian group of cof­fee enthu­si­asts. The Thai farm­ing fam­ily co-operative cul­ti­vate and process 100% Arabica, organic, single-origin cof­fee beans while the Canadian experts roast, mar­ket and dis­trib­ute the cof­fee.
The cof­fee is cul­ti­vated in small fam­ily gar­dens with every­one com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and hav­ing min­i­mal impact on the nat­ural habi­tat. Doi Chaang Coffee is labeled “Going Beyond Fair Trade” because the farm­ers are paid in excess of the price rec­om­mended by the Fair Trade Organization for their green beans. In addi­tion, the Thai farm­ers have a 50% reg­is­tered own­er­ship in the Canadian com­pany, Doi Chaang Coffee Company, which is funded 100% by the Canadian Group.
Submitted by John M. Darch, President and CEO of Doi Chaang Coffee Company, www.doichaangcoffee.com

Taking the nec­es­sary steps to “go green” will have pos­i­tive effects not only on the envi­ron­ment, but on your prof­its as well. Inform your cus­tomers about your efforts on going green; you might be sur­prised by the pos­i­tive response you get from the pub­lic. While this should not be your pri­mary moti­va­tion on sup­port­ing the mat­ter, it can be a ben­e­fi­cial side effect. People are always look­ing to sup­port a cause, and going green is one that is widely rec­og­nized. By offer­ing eco-friendly prod­ucts and show­ing con­sumers your efforts, you will strengthen your cus­tomer loy­alty and enlarge your clien­tele. Furthermore, engage your employ­ees in you efforts to go green. Ask them for ways you can reduce waste, use resources more effi­ciently, and save money. Every com­pany should con­stantly strive to improve not only their busi­ness prac­tices but their com­mu­nity and envi­ron­ment as well. Make a dif­fer­ence, one green cup at a time.