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Introduction

The Coffee Bar Business — What’s In It For You?

Coffee is the world’s most popular beverage with only water being consumed in larger quantities!

— McCoy and Walker

1. Coffee Worldview

The coffee business is an exciting industry, far-reaching in its economic impact and rich in history.

It is the world’s most popular beverage with over 500 billion cups consumed each year. It is produced in 70 countries with the top three producers being Brazil, Vietnam, and Indonesia. In 2010, the global coffee market was worth upwards of $80 billion USD with 25 million small producers relying on coffee for a living.

Coffee is indigenous to Ethiopia and was most likely discovered as a food before it became a drink. The most popular legend of how coffee was discovered involves an Abyssinian goat herder named Kaldi. Kaldi awoke one night to find his goats dancing around a tree speckled with red cherries. When he tasted one of the cherries, he too started dancing with his goats.

As interesting as this story may be, it is more likely that coffee was used as a food supplement by wandering Ethiopian tribesmen. The tribesmen are said to have squashed the coffee cherries and carried them on long journeys, eating them for nourishment as needed.

Later, the coffee cherries were soaked in water, possibly to make wine, but some historians say it was not until 1000 ad, when the Arabs discovered how to boil water, that coffee was served hot.

Coffee was also believed to have medicinal properties. Avicenna, an Islamic physician and philosopher of the eleventh century, said of coffee: “It fortifies the members, it cleans the skin and dries up the humidities that are under it, and gives an excellent smell to all the body.”

2. The North American Coffee Market

In North America, coffee was a $41 billion USD industry in 2009 and, despite the global recession, the market is expected to grow 14 percent in volume over the next ten years to $47 billion USD. The increase in volume reflects the growing preference for specialty or premium coffee including not only higher quality beans but also organic, Fair Trade and unique origin coffees.

In the United States, over half the population above the age of 18 are daily coffee drinkers with an additional 30 percent who drink coffee on an occasional basis. On average, Americans consume 3.2 cups of coffee per day with approximately 30 million Americans drinking specialty beverages on a regular basis.

In Canada, approximately 63 percent of Canadians drink coffee on a daily basis with Quebec having the highest percentage (70 percent) and the Atlantic region having the lowest (53 percent). The average number of cups consumed by Canadians per day is 2.6.

3. Coffee Trends

While coffee consumption worldwide is actually declining slightly, the market for two types of coffee — specialty or gourmet and organic — continues to rise. Specialty coffee represents approximately $14 billion USD in sales with organic coffee representing almost $1.5 billion USD in sales. The specialty market continues to grow due to a number of factors including an increase in home coffee consumption, new coffee venues and new coffee products aimed towards young people.

Organic coffee has seen the largest growth in recent years with an impressive rate of 21 percent in annual growth from 2004 to 2009. By 2010 the organic coffee industry was growing at approximately four times that of the conventional coffee industry.

By positioning your business to take advantage of the current trends in coffee, you help ensure that it will not only survive but flourish in the years to come.

3.1 Gourmet coffee

Gourmet coffee is made up of the arabicas, or high-grade coffee beans. Arabicas are much more flavorful and typically have less than half the caffeine of the robustas.

The term “gourmet coffee” refers to both the high-grade beans themselves (arabica beans) and the liquid coffee made from those beans. The low-grade robustas are used for blending (to help offset the higher cost of arabicas) and for instant coffees and mass-market drip coffees.

Part of the growth in gourmet coffee sales can be attributed to a general trend toward quality. Futurist Faith Popcorn has indicated that consumers are increasingly demanding higher quality products. She also notes additional trends in her best-selling book The Popcorn Report that help explain the move to gourmet coffee:

(a) Cocooning. People are spending more time entertaining at home and serving gourmet coffees.

(b) Small indulgences. This trend describes the movement away from spending large sums of money on expensive new cars and toward spending on smaller quality items such as gourmet coffees. This also helps explain why coffee is somewhat recession-proof.

(c) Fantasy adventure. People are looking for a fantasy adventure in their lives; gourmet coffee tastes from around the world help provide the coffee drinker with a sense of the exotic.

(d) Egonomics. People want unique items. Custom roasting coffee allows for just that.

(e) The vigilante consumer. People are becoming aware of socially and environmentally responsible practices including organic coffees. One need only look at the success of the Body Shop, with 2,400 locations worldwide, to see how profitable these socially conscious practices can be.

3.2 Organic coffee

Organic coffee is coffee that has been produced without the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, or other harmful chemicals that threaten the long range sustainability of soils, ecosystems, and groundwater supplies.

Not only is the planet demanding that we clean up our act but today’s consumers are demanding that companies be environmentally responsible and offer consumers environmentally friendly products. Recent studies have shown that approximately 65 percent of customers are willing to pay more for a company’s products and services if they believe the company is environmentally and socially responsible. Yes, that is 65 percent!

This means that if you are not committed to environmentally friendly practices in your coffee business, you will lose customers. Appendix 1 discusses in more detail organic coffee and environmentally friendly alternatives and programs you can implement in your coffee bar to help capture this market.

4. Coffee Bars

According to the Specialty Coffee Association of America, the US coffee bar industry includes about 25,000 stores with combined annual revenue of about $13 billion, or an average of $520,000 per coffee bar. This means there is an average of approximately one coffee bar for every 12,000 people. While some industry analysts predict saturation at the 10,000 mark, we believe the number to be significantly lower than that especially when compared to European countries such as Italy, where there is one coffee bar for every 300 people!

Coffee bars today tend to take advantage of two very distinct cultural trends, having two very distinct target markets.

The first targets are the on-the-go, hurry-up morning coffee crowd; people hurrying to work, rushing to drop their children off at school. These coffee bars recognize the increase in value we put on our time and focus on fast, efficient service. They are generally located in convenient, on-the-way-to-work areas with many offering drive-thru service. Keep in mind that with 65 percent of all coffee being consumed in the morning, large fast-food restaurant chains are now competing for that morning gourmet coffee dollar with companies like McDonald’s serving quality premium coffee at all their drive-thrus.

The second type of coffee bar takes advantage of the trend toward local cocooning. These community coffeehouses place importance on relaxation and conversation with the emphasis on warm, inviting, comfortable spaces; places where long conversations can be enjoyed over the perfect hot latte.