To have or not to have two grinders in your café
BEER... OR RATHER COFFEE SHOP
Let's take for example another type of business, but also in the field of gastronomy. Let's say a pub. There are beer experts behind the bar. We Czechs are said to be a nation of beer drinkers. Pubkeepers are therefore trying to exploit this predilection of the locals. Often on their tap you have a selection of several types of this popular drink. You can decide whether you want a ten, a twelve or a special from a nearby microbrewery. Some pubs are more like pivotés. With a wide range of beers on offer, these establishments set themselvesapart from the competition. They entice customers to try different beers and then perhaps stick with the one they like best.
As the saying goes: 'a hundred people - a hundred tastes'. In this spirit, therange of the main product is expanded to include more variants, so there is something for everyone. You can apply exactly this advantage in your café, not with beer, but of course with coffee. Today's young generation is spending more and more time not in pubs, but in cafés. The response to this trend is the rapid growth of coffee shops. I mean, your competition. If you want to successfully counter the growing competition, you need to have something to lure them in, and having a choice of what coffee to make your drink from is an elegant and interesting solution to this problem.
THE ETERNAL COFFEE DILEMMA AND THE FEAR OF COFFEE DRINKERS
When new coffee shops open, especially in smaller communities, their owners worry about a lack of customers. They assume that local people may not be ready for the third coffee wave, which is associated withcoffees with higher acidity. It seems to them that if they offer interesting and fruity coffees, it will be too radical a step and local customers will not be interested in such coffees . Therefore, although they respect the standards of the third wave of coffee, they remain more conservative in their choice of coffee for their espresso. For fear that acidic coffees will not find their customers, they prefer to rely on chocolate certainty and choose coffees with minimal acidity. Often it is the coffees from Brazil that promise that much-loved taste - nutty chocolate. Or they reach for an espresso blend with a similar flavour profile.
Buying a second grindercan help with this uncertainty and worry about what espresso coffee to choose for your customers . Two grinders mean two types of coffee, and you can cater to both sour and more conservative coffee lovers. By giving people a choice of two coffees, you expand your target audience. This, of course, means agreater chance of profit. If your cafe is located in an area where the locals are not very familiar with modern espresso, but are only slowly learning torecognize the fruity flavors in coffee, your cafe will become a big help to them.
A CAFÉ THAT BROADENS HORIZONS
In the event that you leave the more conservative espresso blendon one grinder , you will create confidence in your customers' minds that they can get the coffee they are used to on every visit. Simply good coffee. The moment they want to try, for example, coffee from Africa, which is known for its higher acidity, they can experiment anytime, since that's what you'll have on your second grinder. You can entice new things to try and change the coffees on your other grinder maybe every day, week or every month, it's coffee from a different country. This will give your guests the opportunity to tomore interesting coffees over time. You become their guide in the coffee world and maybe eventually, under pressure from local coffee drinkers, you'll switch the coffee in your first grinder too from a more traditional espresso blend to a more dynamic single-origin coffee.
WILL IT PAY OFF?
If you're selling more than just "a few coffees" a day, yourinvestment in another grinder will soon pay for itself. Count us in: you buy a grinder, such as the very popular Nuova Simonelli MDJ, which we sell for under 34,000. The cost of one espresso will cost you +/- about 10 CZK. If you sell an espresso with a margin of 25 Kč, then 1,360 of these coffees will pay for the cost of the grinder. That's 113 coffees a month, 28 coffees a week or 4 of these coffees a day. Plus, just by expanding your offerings to attract more customers, you will increase your profits and your competitiveness. With two grinders on the bar , you willdifferentiate yourself and draw attention to yourself. You'll also confirm that you reallyknow your coffee.
Operating two grinders, with the coffee on the second one being more complex in both taste and preparation, needs a truly professional approach. Espresso blends with traditional flavours make the barista's job easier. It's not that hard to tweak a recipe with a simple conservative taste. Whereas theflavor profile of coffees with higher acidity is more interesting and alsoneeds more care. Your barista will be adjusting not one, but two grinders every day . Likewise, he will need to check both during the day and then clean one more grinder than usual in the evening . Simply having an extra machine adds extra work, but it doesn't outweigh the benefits of having an extra grinder in the coffee shop.
DECAFFEINATED COFFEE. QUALITY.
You can dedicate your next grinder to decaffeinated coffee, for example . This product is most often sought after in coffee shops by people sensitive to caffeine, pregnant or nursing mothers, or evening patrons who want coffee as the day ends but don't want caffeine to affect their sleep. This group of coffee shop customers is mostly out of luck. They depend on pre-ground coffee. I mean, stale and old. Because, as we know, ground coffee ages really fast. Often, they also use what's called PODs, which is actually pre-ground coffee that's cut up in little packets that you put right into the lever. The packaging of the individual portions, however, can't prevent the coffee from aging and by inserting a POD into the lever you have absolutely no control over theextraction of such coffee. The result, when ordering a decaffeinated lungo, is almost always not very good coffee. To avoid this, baristas often remove decaffeinated coffee from the menu altogether. Alternatively, they replace it with a coffee drink such as Melta or Caro. With freshly ground, high-quality decaffeinated coffee, you will impress all those who seek out such coffee. You'll also have something extra over the competition.
ENOUGH ARGUMENTS
So let's recap. Another coffee grinder means aquick return on investment to expand your range. You won't just have one of many coffee shops, you 'll have acoffee shop. You'll save yourself the hassle of making decisions, and you won't feel tied down by worrying about customer preferences. Your target audience will grow and you have the chance todevelop coffee culture and awareness of the third wave of coffee with all that goes with it in a gradual and non-violent way . Another grinder on the bar gives you theopportunity to experiment and try coffees from all over the world. You will attract new customers and delight the "regulars" with interesting new products on the grinder. You'll cement your position as a place where coffee is truly understood. You'll tap into the potential of your coffee machine and, more importantly, your employees. Your barista will welcome the variety in the preparation of drinks. With an additional grinder, you have the chance to reach out to a group of people who are searching in vain for good quality decaffeinated coffee.