Roasting in Korea – Stepping up to the quality challenge

Walk­ing down the streets of Seoul, Bussan, and other cities in Korea, one is amazed at the num­ber of cof­fee shops. On one city block in Seoul you might pass more than 10 if you are look­ing. In Seoul the retail stores are at street level, base­ment level and often the sec­ond story of the build­ing. The other thing you might be shocked to see is the num­ber of shops that have 1kilo or smaller roast­ers in their shops and roast­ing every day. The ques­tion is, “Are they doing a good job roasting?”

At an event some years back, Ric Reinhart, Executive Director of the SCAA, spoke to a group of indus­try pro­fes­sion­als that had gath­ered to do the good work of the asso­ci­a­tion. He said (and this is NOT an exact quote) “If some­one get­ting into the indus­try asked me what they should do when open­ing a cof­fee shop I would tell them to open a roaster-retail store.” The roast­ers in the room were not amused by this as they made a liv­ing roast­ing and whole­sal­ing to new cof­fee shops. Was he try­ing to kill that business!?!

Upon reflec­tion one could see the sub­tlety of what he was say­ing, and fig­ure out that what has always been true in the indus­try; there is enough busi­ness for every­body as long as we make qual­ity a pri­or­ity. If new shops open and roast, they will drive more and more con­sumers to qual­ity cof­fee and away from the mediocre cof­fee. If there are more cus­tomers demand­ing it, there will be more cus­tomers for qual­ity whole­sale cof­fee as those that don’t roast try to upgrade.

The true chal­lenge is this: Just because a com­pany is roast­ing their own cof­fee does not mean it is a supe­rior prod­uct. If you are not pro­vid­ing qual­ity cof­fee it will con­fuse con­sumers even more and could send them back to reli­able and pre­dictable coffee.

So there are sev­eral chal­lenges to this new phase of in shop roast­ing. A great case study is to look at what is hap­pen­ing in Korea and learn­ing from their suc­cesses and fail­ures. Let’s take a quick look back before we look forward.

United States: We roasted cof­fee in our homes in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. We moved away from that expe­ri­ence in the mid 1900’s with the indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion putting cof­fee in a con­ve­nient can on the gro­cery store shelf. In the 1960’s and mov­ing for­ward, some cof­fee extrem­ists found qual­ity in a cup by small batch roast­ing and started the spe­cialty cof­fee mar­ket. People and shops were resis­tant to roast­ing their own and were happy to have an indus­try pro­fes­sional do it for them and deliver fresh roasted cof­fee each week. Consumers now enjoy cof­fee all day but it is dom­i­nated by our grab and go ‘need cof­fee’ men­tal­ity instead of an ‘enjoy cof­fee’ one.

Korea: Drank tea for 6000 years, and got infil­trated by the West’s craze for cof­fee about ten years ago; Deciding to imi­tate and improve on our prod­uct. Coffee houses sprang up every­where pro­vid­ing a social place to enjoy each other’s com­pany over a deli­cious cup. Coffee is con­sumed as a means to gather. Seldom are shops open at 6:00am for the com­muter but more often until 11:00pm for the late night meeting.

Challenges for the small roast­ing oper­a­tions are sim­i­lar between our two coun­tries, but addressed differently.

Challenge 1: Roasting in the City and Putting Out Smoke.
In the United States most shop roast­ers are above 5 kilos (likely 12 kilos and up). Depending on where the store is sit­u­ated it is often required to put on after­burn­ers or sweep­ers. This adds instal­la­tion costs, pro­duc­tion costs, per­mits and inspec­tions and often square footage costs.

In Korea the roast­ers are often 2 kilos or less. Cheap vent pipes exhaust the smoke and neigh­bors think it smells great.

Challenge 2: Training and Labor for Roasting staff.
In the US there is a com­mu­nity of roast­ers that help each other. If you are just start­ing out you can join the Roasters Guild and access the tal­ents and skills of other roast­ers. There are also con­sul­tants out there that will help write pro­ce­dure manuals.

In Korea it is tougher to find a men­tor group. There are labs pop­ping up every­where that you can go and buy knowl­edge, although a lot of it is ques­tion­able. The SCAA licenses Roasters Guild classes to part­ners in Korea so they can actu­ally get cer­ti­fied with the SCAA.

Challenge 3: Supply of Quality Green Coffee
In the US many of the roast­ers offer a range of cof­fee. They will offer ‘the house blend’ for the grab and go cus­tomers. They also offer ‘high end’ cof­fees for those cus­tomers that will sit and enjoy it or that want a pound for home. Many also whole­sale blends to other restau­rants and cof­fee shops. This means that US roast­ers buy grades 1–3 and carry more inventory.

In Korea the small shops roast to order for their shops and cus­tomers. They are all com­pet­ing to buy the new 90+ cof­fees and to cel­e­brate them as sin­gle serve drinks. At Square Garden Café, Sung Hui Park will even hand roast cof­fee over the open flame of the stove while you wait. This puts pres­sure on importers to hunt for, and con­tract for, grade 1 cof­fee that scores high. Not a lot of cof­fee is con­sumed in the home as it is a social drink rather than the morn­ing fuel.

Challenge 4: The Big Chains
In the US, spe­cialty cof­fee is dri­ven by the chains. They are often seen as the mar­ket­ing depart­ments of the small roast­ing shops. The best thing that the chains do is to move peo­ple from the gro­cery store canned cof­fees to a bet­ter cup. Then a sub­set of those peo­ple go on to demand great cof­fee and find the local roaster.

In Korea, the chains are attempt­ing to be large ver­sions of the small shops and tend to still offer hand pours and focus on roast­ing their own as a sell­ing point. They tend to be much more direct com­pe­ti­tion for the ‘lit­tle guy’.

Challenge 5: Differentiation in a Saturated Market
In the US you can still dif­fer­en­ti­ate just by the fact you are roast­ing. The next thing you can do is sin­gle serve or hand drip the coffee.

In Korea since they already roast and hand drip, dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion comes with inte­rior design and food pair­ing. The chains don’t do this very well so the small shop still can have a com­pet­i­tive advantage.

Challenge 6: REALLY Understanding Quality
In the US we get together, share ideas, train each other and try to make the indus­try stronger. We inno­vate things like the SCAA scor­ing sys­tem and the CQI Q-Grader cer­ti­fi­ca­tion so we can improve the entire sup­ply chain. The US also believes in the value of prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence and trial and error.

In Korea, if imi­ta­tion is the best form of flat­tery, then the US should be VERY flat­tered. Koreans are com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion but gen­er­ally try not to share ideas amongst them­selves. They look for for­mal school­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions like those offered through SCAA and CQI. This is why Korea has about 4 times as many Q-Graders as the US. First year baris­tas are get­ting cer­ti­fied. They want to know how to do things right up front, the first time.

There are some absolutely stun­ning exam­ples of qual­ity in both coun­tries. In the US how­ever there is a higher like­li­hood that a new roaster is going to pro­duce a high qual­ity prod­uct as the indus­try will make sure they have they knowl­edge to do so. In Korea there is ‘book learn­ing’ but some­times the per­son that wrote the book was not a cof­fee pro­fes­sional. As the SCAA con­tin­ues to spread the knowl­edge around the world, coun­tries like Korea will con­tinue to improve. In Korea there is also a desire to be BETTER than the com­pe­ti­tion, and a resis­tance to shar­ing infor­ma­tion. This desire com­pen­sates for the cul­tural dif­fer­ence of non-collaboration.

The bot­tom line: Both coun­tries are com­mit­ted to qual­ity. Neither coun­try will tol­er­ate small roast­ers doing a bad job. In the US we will edu­cate them and make them bet­ter. In Korea the poor roaster will solve the prob­lem by going out of busi­ness. Either way, the qual­ity will hope­fully stay high and drive more cus­tomers to desire great coffee.

Rocky can be reached at rocky@INTLcoffeeConsulting.com

AHA! Moments in Coffee">The AHA! Moments in Coffee

No mat­ter what your expe­ri­ence level is in our indus­try, you should always try to stretch your­self fur­ther. When you do this you are often met with an AHA! moment. In the begin­ning, they come more often. Later in your career, they are fewer, but are often shak­ing your belief system.

An AHA! moment is that instant when clar­ity occurs. Sometimes, like with chil­dren learn­ing a new math con­cept, just fig­ur­ing it out for the first time can be an AHA! moment. Other times you will find some­one says some­thing that ties together loose ends like “The rea­son your back is hurt­ing is due to your strained knee which is mak­ing you stand awk­wardly. Fix your knee and you fix your back.” Still oth­ers are the ‘real­ity movers’ that undo a known fact. Examples here might be when your daugh­ter dis­cov­ers that Mickey Mouse at Disneyland is just a guy in a suit. (Yeah it’s true!)

The AHA! moment is impor­tant for the cof­fee indus­try for two main rea­sons. The first is per­sonal; it proves you are still grow­ing and learn­ing. The sec­ond is finan­cial; shar­ing these expe­ri­ences and pro­vid­ing your clients with their own AHA! moments builds a bond. You are an expert will­ing to give away your expe­ri­ence. A deeper bond with clients means more loy­alty and more word of mouth advertising.

Where you are in the sup­ply chain also effects your AHA! moments. Listed below are moments that peo­ple shared for this arti­cle. The moments will be clas­si­fied in seg­ments of the sup­ply chain. Some are ‘entry level’ that we all have had. Some much deeper.

AHA! Moments in the Coffee House
If you want to cre­ate loy­alty with your retail cus­tomers, do this: Brew a nat­ural process Ethiopian, an earthy Sumatran and a flo­ral, bal­anced Guatemalan and put them on a self-serve table in your shop. Put down some forms and ask your cus­tomer to vote for their favorite. Here are the AHA! moments you will be pro­vid­ing for your customer:

• Not all cof­fee tastes the same. In fact they can be VERY different!
• I can taste the dif­fer­ence! Maybe I am bet­ter at tast­ing than I thought!
• I NEVER drink cof­fee with­out stuff in it. Maybe I hide the taste when I do that!
• If these taste dif­fer­ent, what do OTHER cof­fees taste like?
• 
Maybe cof­fee can be enjoyed rather than just consumed.
• I really like this taste and not that one. Are there more that taste like this one?

Here is another good one you can do. Get a sequen­tial pic­ture array in the fol­low­ing order: Coffee tree with flow­ers, green cher­ries, yel­low cher­ries, red cher­ries, cof­fee being picked, cof­fee being car­ried to the mill, cof­fee being pre sorted, cof­fee in hold­ing tank, pulp­ing cof­fee, fer­men­ta­tion tank, dry­ing patio, rak­ing, dry stor­age, hulling, screen sort­ing, grav­ity sort­ing, defect sort­ing, cup­ping table, green cof­fee in bag, bags in con­tainer, con­tainer on ship, cof­fee in ware­house, cof­fee near roaster, green bean, yel­low bean, three more roast lev­els, cup­ping table, brewed cof­fee in a cup with a bis­cotti. The customer’s head usu­ally starts spin­ning at this point! Here are some moments:

• Coffee is grown on trees!
• It’s not a bean, it’s a pit!
• It’s green not brown!
• It can be dif­fer­ent shades of brown!
• 
It’s roasted!
• 
SO MANY HANDS! SO MANY STEPS! What if one per­son screws it up!

Assuming a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, that is about 30,000 words with­out your staff say­ing any­thing! If you do this for your cus­tomers, you ele­vate the con­ver­sa­tion beyond cost and focus on qual­ity con­trol points. This solid­i­fies a cus­tomer for life! This is a cus­tomer that will want to share this infor­ma­tion with oth­ers and thereby be ‘the expert’ to their friends. That’s more cus­tomers for you!

AHA! Moments at the Roasting Facility
Whenever you are dis­cussing cof­fee with a prospect, put out a dis­play with four dif­fer­ent roast styles of a sin­gle ori­gin cof­fee on it. Also pre­pare four pots of cof­fee made from the beans of the dis­play. Ask the prospect to pick their favorite. Also show a roast pro­file spread­sheet and graph for each one. This is what is going through their mind:

• You can roast the same cof­fee dif­fer­ent ways!
• There is a dra­matic taste dif­fer­ence due to roast!
• Roasting is an art AND a science.
• The skill of the roaster adds value to the product.
• Which roast style is right for my customers?

You can do the same thing with blends. Take a prospect through an actual cup­ping. You get a spe­cial bond when they try this for the first time and:

• I learned a new skill to eval­u­ate cof­fee I never knew existed.
• I am smarter than my friends about cof­fee because I know how to cup.
• Is there a com­mon lan­guage between cof­fee pro­fes­sion­als that use this tool?
• I can speak this lan­guage with prac­tice but it is not an easy skill.

AHA! Moments with the Exporter / Importer
Different com­pa­nies do dif­fer­ent things to pre­pare, move, buy, track and ware­house cof­fee. The aver­age roaster really does not under­stand the logis­tics involved, let alone the com­plex­ity of a com­modi­ties exchange and inter­na­tional con­tracts. There are things you can do to have the roaster appre­ci­ate your role even more. Start with a descrip­tive break out of a con­tract describ­ing the main points: type, quan­tity, place, and qual­ity. For the first time your roast­ers will be thinking:

• Risk man­age­ment is crucial.
• There are more than only ‘ship­ping costs’ involved in this.
• Maritime insur­ance? Who knew?
• Price fluc­tu­a­tions against 37,500 pounds of cof­fee are SIGNIFICANT!
• That is why my spot price changes!
• Price fix­ing has sta­bil­ity AND risk associated.

Once that con­ver­sa­tion ensues you can move to a con­ver­sa­tion about hedg­ing, mul­ti­year con­tract ben­e­fits / pit­falls, and dis­pute res­o­lu­tion. Your cus­tomer should walk away with this:

• I will not attempt this on my own unless I have pro­fes­sional help. I love that I do not have to deal with this!

AHA! Moments at Origin
As a farmer you know that what you do requires sci­ence, expe­ri­ence, finan­cial risk, luck of nature and the kind­ness of God. The aver­age roaster or retailer can con­cep­tu­al­ize what you do but do not feel it like you do.
Some of the things they will expe­ri­ence are: