Coffee systems

There is always conjecture on what exactly makes the most profit over cost in the catering industry. Candidates include post-mix carbonated drinks, water, chips and even the £1.50 charged for bread and olives. But while a winner in this poll is never likely, coffee - in its various dispensed forms - must be in the final count.

What makes it even more attractive to caterers is that while there might be grumbling by customers and a hounding in the press about the cost of water, bread and carbonated drinks in pubs, there is hardly a murmur about the 95p charged for a product that has a food cost of 14p at most.

It's glib to say that any caterer wanting to serve good coffee should look no further than a semi- or fully-automatic espresso machine. The desire to serve a good coffee has to be balanced with consumers' diverse tastes for coffee in the UK and the quantity and speed of service demanded. That is why at Hotelympia there is such a wide range of coffee-making equipment.

For anyone in search of such equipment, however, the advice is to enter Earls Court armed with the facts about what your customers expect from their coffee. Here we give the main coffee systems on show at Hotelympia and the business situations they are most suited to.

Pour-and-serve is the familiar balloon-shaped glass jug unit. There are usually two jugs to a unit: one being filled and the other being held warm on the top of the machine. This system is cheap and provides a good cup of coffee, provided the coffee is not allowed to stew on the heat pad for too long. Pour-and-serve systems are ideal for catering operations such as pubs and small restaurants where the demand for coffee is steady, but not huge.

Bulk brewers are designed for hotels or staff restaurants where a lot of coffee is needed at short notice, such as in conferences and banqueting. They are plumbed-in systems that, in simple terms, are high-speed pour-and-serve. With a good ground coffee and short standing time, they can deliver a good dinner table or conference-break coffee.

Espresso machines are either semi-automatic or fully automatic, and the best of the European-made machines can deliver high-quality single or double espresso, cappuccino or speciality coffees in seconds. This system is ideal for restaurants and pubs, café-bars, coffee shops or any venue where the quality of the coffee is deemed important.

Soluble coffee machines work on freeze-dried ingredients - the type of coffee granules seen on supermarket shelves. Coffee made from these machines lacks the distinctive flavour you get from bean-to-cup fresh-ground espresso machines. However, they are convenient, relatively cheap and suitable for places where there is not a high demand on coffee, or where coffee is not the main selling feature, such as fast-food outlets, pubs, offices and leisure catering.