Go Your Own Way
Taking Calculated Risks for Better Business By Shanna Germain In the coffee industry—and in other industries as well—we hear about the successful risk-takers and innovators all the time. They’re the ones that make the news, the ones that get interviewed in the New York Times and in the best food magazines, and the ones that …
A Context for Competition
By Tracy Ging Competition within the coffee industry is intensifying. At least that is what some roasters and retailers (21 percent) are reporting, according to the most recent SCAA sector report. Interestingly enough, this is the first time that comment has popped up. While it seems likely that the pressure has been building for a …
The experience of Specialty Coffee: Engaging the heart, the mind and the senses
By Peter Giuliano I’m not alone in this. There is a whole generation of people who live to eat, and who are immersing themselves in food culture every day. For these people, good food provides a thread that runs through their entire lives. A meal in a restaurant or a trip to the farmers’ market …
Symposium Explores the Single-Serve Market
By Lily Kubota In issue No. 6 (2009) of The Specialty Coffee Chronicle, Mark Inman of Taylor Maid Farms outlined the discussion of single-serve brewing methods that have been sweeping the world in the café setting, a topic that was recently explored in more depth at SCAA’s 2nd Annual Symposium in the session Single Serve …
Meeting & Greeting: A Q&A with Mike Ebert
If you’ve ever met Mike Ebert, sales representative for Alterra Coffee, then you know why he’s the man to talk to when it comes to meeting and greeting customers. Whether he’s working the farmers’ markets, giving consumers a bit of talk-education, or creating long-term partnerships, Ebert understands the importance of making connections on a person-to-person …
Tips & Tricks for Teaching Consumers
At Your Counter • Don’t just rely on your baristas to educate consumers. Roasters, counter staff, managers and everyone else can play a role. Make sure they know their stuff—or they know who to ask for additional information—and that they understand that they are welcome to interact with customers in a teaching environment. • Have …
The Teaching Triangle: 3 Ways to Educate Consumers
Imagine a class called Coffee 101. Now imagine that you are the teacher of said class, tasked with imparting coffee information to a classroom full of consumers. As you teach, you notice some of them are reading from their textbooks, many are looking out the window, a few are doodling in their notebooks, at least …
Coffee in Cyberspace: Bridging the Gap Through Digital Engagement
By Jennifer Gyllenskog While this can be a great opportunity, it also comes at a cost, precisely because people do act different when they’re online. They have a shorter attention span and higher expectations. If you don’t connect them with what they’re looking for in the first few seconds, they bail. Not to mention that …
Getting the Story Straight
Communicating what is Special about Specialty Coffee By Tracy Ging You know that famous quote, the one that says imitation is the sincerest of flattery? Well, if that’s the case, specialty coffee should be flattered because we have certainly been imitated. Most coffee—whether it’s specialty or not—now carries descriptors like gourmet, premium, coffeehouse-style, and others. …
Denomination of Origin
Creating Geographical Indications for Coffee By Laura Everage In this Symposium session, Paul Songer of Songer & Associates, Inc. and Luis Fernando Samper of Colombian Coffee Growers Federation presented two separate approaches to creating geographical indications. In Rwanda, the analysis was made purely on a cup basis, while in Colombia extensive lab testing and verification …
Coffee Slingers and Cheese Mongers
Learning from The Cheese Model By Ric Rhinehart Recently, I was listening to an interview with cheese monger Gordon Edgar in which he explained how critical it is to be able to educate his customers about cheese, while at the same time recognizing how difficult it is to impart the entire story of cheese to …
Connecting with the Consumer
By Peter Giuliano In coffee, everything that we do leads up to one single, important moment: when someone drinks a cup of coffee. This is the moment that we all work towards—it’s when the flavors we seek to reveal are appreciated, savored and celebrated. The economic activity that occurs in anticipation of this moment is …