Changing the world for better... at least the world of gas stations)

Tag: coffe

Is Your Cup of Coffee Worth Paying that Price?

How much should a cup of your favorite coffee cost? What key factors does the price include? Which coffee is cheaper? One will hardly find the exact answer to all those questions when considering a well-flavored aromatic drink, as we are speaking of a tasty one. 

Regularly proceeding with an in-depth statistics and analysis, coffee market experts are very unlikely to reveal the truth. They know that the average price may range from $0.5 to $1 per cup of your beloved espresso or Americano. Those drinks do not require additional ingredients like milk making cost price lower if compared with latte o cappuccino. Producers and marketers benefit from enormous revenues selling their products with up to 1000% markup. For this reason, the niche appears to have a great potential for businesses, which use all possible means to protect their segment keeping newcomers away. They established an average market price, which is about $1 per cup.

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McCafe vs Starbucks business models – a difference that does not exist!

RBC TV tried to find out whose coffee business is better – McCafe’s & Starbucks’? Classic children’s question: “Who is stronger, an elephant or a whale?” And a boring grown-up answer: “Two subjects must be compared on common parameters”. It is strange that none of those present in the studio have not identified these “common parameters”, having lost sight of that in the competition between the two world HoReCa market leaders we observe frontal confrontation between players using virtually the same automated technology of coffee preparation and not the difference in the “approach to the consumer”.

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Excise stamps for all food products

Rospotrebnadzor (Federal Service on Surveillance for Consumer rights protection and human well-being) has developed a “Strategy for raising the quality of food products in the Russian Federation by 2030».

It’s really a big deal they are about to start – after all it is necessary to create a single unified information system, which will track the movement of food products – from components to finished products. Plus, they’ll have to introduce compulsory state registration of the basic kinds of food additives. “Excise stamp” on the whole range of food production, cool, #whythehellnot!
Dealing with grand challenges is a profitable endeavour, because while you’re fighting for peace around the world no one will ask you about the devastation in your own WC. We haven’t yet figured out the simple issues, which one won’t have time to do within this large-scale project or vice versa, and now it is a good time to identify the specifics. For example, how do you enter the legislative amendments that will help to distinguish the coffee beverage prepared from the so-called “coffee material”?

Coffee anti-franchise or long live individuality!

The article on “anti-francise” became one of the most popular materials of www.vc.ru over the past week! Thanks to everyone who showed their keen interest and participated in the discussion in the comments. Below are a slightly abridged translation.

Coffee anti-franchise or long live individuality!

I got interested in the theme of the acquisition of various franchises after my close friends, whose children have grown up to the age of an earning money to live independently, several times invited me as a business consultant, waiting for an expert to answer the question: “To take or not to take the franchise? And if we take it, which one?”.

The younger generation which does not get disconnected from the social networks, found it a tempting offer to open a franchise as their own business – a “coffee to go” sales point. This idea has been picked up on the web-site “VKontakte. For parents, it is encouraging to hear that the children want to “develop their business by buying a franchise that guarantees success”, but our generation can’t be fooled by these tricks. Our “internal filter” was originally set up to fight the tempting offers from the category of “Pay me and become rich”, being affected by business experience in the 90s. It was curious to see what “VKontakte” had to offer. Alas, the more I studied the issue, the more i got turned away from the idea of such a franchise.

Gas stations’ non-core businesses processing – customer’s opinion

Pain-in-the-assLESS or “Three in a boat: men, poverty and dogs”*

 

 «I have known a Russian learn Chinese within six months. English! they learn it while you are talking to them. The children play at chess and study the violin for their own amusement.

The world will be glad of Russia when she has put her house in order»

Jerome K. Jerome

The soviet film “Three Men in a Boat” perfectly captures the spirit of Jerome’s novel, although there’s a little that’s been left from the original masterpiece. The road sets a special mood and genre of ironic travel writing is very close to my working mood. The irony is the best way to survive the road adventures both for a traveling person and for the host country. There’s no such thing as perfect road, car, gas station, caf? in this world.  Instead there are cozy and clean, minimalistic and heaped up, making part of a chain or solitary places. You want to go at one gas station, the other one you want to pass.

“When we got to Datchet we took out the hamper, the two bags, and the rugs and coats, and such like things, and started off to look for diggings. We passed a very pretty little hotel, with clematis and creeper over the porch; but there was no honeysuckle about it, and, for some reason or other, I had got my mind fixed on honeysuckle, and I said: “Oh, don’t let’s go in there! Let’s go on a bit further, and see if there isn’t one with honeysuckle over it”.

History repeats itself several times, and the characters of Jerome were nearly left on the street without an overnight stay. Do you think that drivers choose gas station somehow differently? I can talk about the “rational” choice of the people for hours.

Contemporaries did not accept Jerome’s prose as the “real literature”, and yet hundred years later readers are still smiling over the adventures of his characters: they have the charm of spontaneity. It would seem that the Russian people should feel closer to “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow.” By the way, I can describe the exact location, range and volume of fuel sales, call the management and staff by their names, remember caf?’s menu in almost all of gas stations located alongside the road which once was traveled by Mr. Radishchev. What Thames and adventure of the George, Jim and Harris trio mean to me? But it seems that the irony is closer to my heart and soul than social satire. I smile once again, re-reading the description of the process of packing the road basket, comparing it to the formation of commodity matrix of a store in gas station and “heroes” of economic reports are no longer extras in a sad play staged day after day, not understanding the overall meaning or their own role.

Remote coffee machines monitoring – Saving 2 billion. Part 3

Part 3. «Doing like everybody»

Dmitry Petrov: Me, as the top-manager who must make decisions, so far I’m just confused by your comments. To clarify the question: “Where do I begin to quickly improve the performance of my coffee business? What do the market leaders do in this matter?”

Alexander Kuzmin: A standard way for the Russian CEO would be “doing like everybody”, but, alas, it’s not always the right one. I can not advise you any approach from those that are currently used by the leading retail players of the fuel market of the Russian Federation (as of 2014).

Take, for example, the competitive selection of coffee beans, commonly produced in the largest Russian chains of filling stations. In my opinion, this is a clear indication of misunderstanding of the very essence of the coffee business in filling stations.

Now it looks like this: the organizers of the selection committee shall convene a tasting, which includes 5-6 casual office staff workers. Each of the contenders for the supply of coffee beans prepare drinks, the Commission is trying them and fills the scorecards. By the results Commission determines whose coffee is most delicious. Such a choice is still based on the criteria of “like – dislike” and on a small sample of unprofessional respondents. Often these random people have no idea about the rules and methods of coffee tasting. For example, one member of such “commission” had to call an ambulance after tasting as the “expert” seven cups of espresso cups and five Americano cups in a row. The man simply had a heart attack. And you want to rely on his assessment of thirteenth’s cup of coffee taste?

But the real absurdity of such tastings that you evaluate the taste of the drink obtained only on the coffee machine, which the applicant brought to you.

Even if you require applicants to use a machine, installed on your gas station, then any other coffee machine of the same model with a slight change of settings will produce drinks with completely different taste from the same coffee blend. And none of the managers is able to control what configuration has one or another coffee machine installed at the station. The stations are spread over hundreds of kilometers – who and how will check the identity of the machine settings and uniform flavor of coffee? How to assess compliance with the real taste with which bidder has won the competitive selection? So lots of coffee machines, lots of taste options for coffee drinks, and all these variations have nothing to do with the one that you tried during the selection and you have no means of monitoring the process, except to drive around the stations and try coffee yourself. What is the sense in such a tasting?

Now, about the criteria for selection of coffee beans. Typically, as the object of selection a vague notion of “coffee bean” is used, without specifying the parameters of the blend even by arabica-robusta ratio. Using this, cunning bidders from the “famous” coffee companies use a “premium” blend of 100% Arabica, which has the average market price of 1200-1400 rubles per kilogram, and after winning the tender they supply chain of filling stations with a blend containing 60% or more of Robusta with average market price of 600-750 rubles.

Dmitry Petrov: I agree, tenders are very often meaningless and are only used to “drag” the right bidder to win. So I’ll just ask – do I have to choose a supplier of coffee beans? If necessary, how to do it?

Ksenia Van de Kamp: Supplier of coffee beans has to be chosen. But you do not need to arrange any meaningless performances for that. You or your appointed managers should just select one of the possible suppliers of high-quality coffee beans, agreeing on the price of supplies. At the same time you should be aware that the “quality beans for the automatic coffee machines” is a special kinds of roasted coffee that are the same from year to year and the content of aromatic components is supported regardless of the constantly changing environment in which new crops are ripening in the regions of coffee growing. To do so, frying companies need to procure blends with regard to the content of aromatics in each acquired batch of coffee beans. I.e. company-applicant must have the volume of purchases equal to the thousands of tons of coffee per year – it’s the only way to provide the production of blends suitable for the use in automatic coffee machines without the need for constant adjustments to their settings.

With all the abundance of frying companies there are very few that can actually comply with this requirement – no more than ten in the whole world. First of all, it is the leaders of the world coffee market in terms of sales – Dow Egberts, Mondelez, Lofbergs Lila …

If you want to select a supplier of quality coffee beans – invite representatives of five world leaders to negotiate and define the supplier by a better quotation on the coffee beans for automatic coffee machines. For your network you must choose one, universal blend suitable for black coffee (espresso and americano) and coffee with milk (cappuccino, latte). Practice shows that the optimal composition of such a universal blend should have arabica-robusta ratio of 80/20.

Dmitry Petrov: Can I select from the Russian providers offering premium coffees at better prices? Or even change the vector, drawing attention to the so-called “fresh-roasted coffee”, widely represented in our market. Personally, I think fresh-roasted coffee is quite a good idea.

Ksenia Van de Kamp: Yes, you can. But then, the task of achieving the same coffee taste at all gas stations of your chain becomes impossible. Here in North America, it is not considered a “bad behavior” to show the consumer the weaknesses of your rival, so let me tell you straight – Russian suppliers of coffee in the HoReCa segment tend to offer their own brands of coffee blends masked as European trademarks and not-fitting for the use in automatic coffee machines. Non-fitting in terms of achieving the same taste of coffee drinks at all gas stations, regardless of their location.

(Note. In 2015 RusHOLTS made a special coffee blend for automatic coffee machines under our customer’s private label. 1,5 years before this round table we sought the development).

“The Secret” of ensuring the same fermentation of coffee beans – the purchase of a special blend from a major supplier. Uniformity of coffee machines settings can only be achieved with the help of remote monitoring – there’s no other way.

WMF coffee machines service – «To wash or not to wash»

Someone bought an exact same tennis racket like Roger Federer’s one, went to court, but the results were a bit different. “A strange man” you might think and it is unlikely that you will listen to his tennis-related advice. The cafe owner who bought some superautomatic-coffee machine and complains about the quality of the coffee is equally strange, and in no way he is an “expert”. Specialists are well aware of how the taste of coffee depends on the settings of the coffee machine and the quality of its service. It is foolish to complain about the racket, it is necessary to learn how to play. We will not be stepping on the territory of the baristas in this article focusing on the service matters.

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