Coffee culture

At the heart of any good coffee service is the right equipment. Choosing the right system begins with recognising the coffee expectation of the customer, the volumes and the price the customer will pay. There is blurring of market segmentation in coffee, but there are still sound guidelines on matching the right beverage equipment to each business. Here are some typical examples:

Neighbourhood café or pub with a low demand for coffee or small coffee shop within a retail environment but having a commitment to coffee quality.

Demand is not going to be high, and profits from coffee will be modest, but if there is a wish to deliver a quality coffee and not just reach for a jar of freeze-dried granules, then a pour-and-serve system ranks high in the shopping list.

This is the familiar balloon-shaped glass jug unit, usually two jugs to a unit, one being filled by hot water run through coffee grounds held in a filter in the machine head, while the other - already filled - is held warm on a heat pad on top of the machine.

The machines are simple to use, the coffee often comes in a pre-measured perforated sachet, and cleaning is relatively simple. They are not normally plumbed in and work off a standard 13amp power supply, making them easy to site and move about.

This system is cheap to buy and provides a good cup of coffee if the coffee is not allowed to stew on the heat pad for too long. One hour is considered the maximum time to hold coffee in this manner. It is quite common to find a coffee supplier which gives out these machines on a free loan in return for buying an agreed amount of coffee.

High-volume, grab-and-go unit such as a fast-food restaurant, a roadside stop, a busy food pub or a trayline restaurant in a retail environment.

The first option to look at is an automatic machine that works on soluble ingredients. Soluble means freeze-dried coffee granules of the type every supermarket sells. This machine delivers a hot drink within seconds of pressing a button.

The best of the soluble ingredients produced for food service deliver an excellent cup of coffee, but it is a different drink from the coffee made with fresh roast and ground coffee beans. Soluble machines are able to offer coffee combinations such as latte and cappuccino, and hot chocolate, and will have a hot water option for brewing tea.

Café-bar where coffee quality is core to the business, or restaurant which wants the coffee to match the quality of the food and where the customer is prepared to pay a premium price for a premium product.

Semi-automatic espresso machines are the first option to consider. These are the traditional espresso machines where the coffee grounds are tamped into a screw-lock holder through which hot water is forced under pressure. The espresso can be served as it comes or used for making popular variations.

This is the machine for an operation that wants to offer the very best in coffee service. Like fully automatic espresso machines, this type of machine forces a calibrated measure of very hot water at high pressure through a single shot of freshly ground coffee. The semi-automatic machine requires the coffee to be loaded into the twist-and-lock coffee head and a certain amount of staff training is necessary. For many coffee lovers, this system delivers the best cup of coffee, with its intense, high-caffeine shot of black with the golden crema on top.

Espresso machine suppliers, or the coffee supplier, usually offer dispense training programmes for those who buy their products, which may be part of the supply package or an extra cost. Proper staff training on using semi-automatic espresso machines is an essential part of customer satisfaction. If there is not already a fully trained member of staff, then without external training the investment in this expensive system could fail.

High-throughput coffee-based café, city centre restaurant or hotel lounge where there is a skills issue for coffee dispense.

If espresso-based coffees are core to the service and there is a high throughput of speciality coffees, then a fully automatic machine is needed. These machines perform all the functions of a semi-automatic espresso machine, but coffee production is done at the touch of a button.

Often referred to as a bean-to-cup machine, it will have a hopper on top that contains coffee beans. When the button is pressed, the correct weight of beans is dropped into a grinder, and then into the coffee-making chamber, where a measured shot of hot water is forced through into the waiting cup. The machine then disposes of the used coffee grounds and prepares itself for the next dispense. This sounds like a protracted procedure, but is not. Many machines are capable of producing upwards of 200 espressos an hour.

As with semi-automatic machines, there will be a steaming wand for heating milk, though some machines have a refrigerated internal milk reservoir. Being automatic, there are warnings when stock needs replenishing, waste bins need emptying or automatic cleaning is needed. The most hi-tech of machines will record drinks served by type and warn when a service engineer needs to make a call.

Busy hotel with high breakfast demand, conference and banqueting.

A bulk brewer is the first choice. These are aimed at any catering operation that needs a large volume of coffee to be available in a very short time. Typically, this would be a hotel for breakfast service, refreshment periods during conference breaks, or for after-dinner coffee in banqueting, but bulk brewers can also be useful for staff restaurants, roadside catering, universities and hospitals. They are plumbed-in systems which will brew the coffee, usually from fresh coffee grounds, and hold it in an internal tank so it can be dispensed to customers through traditional table-top coffee pots, airpots or vacuum jugs.

Peak practice

It's a mistake to look at daily coffee sales as a 24-hour figure. Coffee is not sold like that. There are sales peaks and troughs throughout the day. A high-street caf‚ will see a surge in coffee sales between 11.30am and 3.30pm, so the production levels of the coffee equipment need to meet peak demands, not the average over the day. Restaurants may see a peak demand between 9.30pm and 11pm. If you buy a machine based on your daily average of, say, 40 coffees in an hour, you won't cope with lunchtime when you are doing 80 an hour. Always choose a machine based on peak demand periods.