beginning a Coffee Shop - tool Needs

So you have decided on beginning a coffee shop! Congratulations! In my coffee shop company plan package, I go into more information concerning equipment but due to space here, I am only going to give you some basic ideas of what to think when seeing at your equipment needs.

First of all, do yourself a favor and Do Not buy any used equipment unless you know the exact age, where it came from, who used it, and that maintenance records are verifiable. I am only referring to whatever with a motor or compressor. Used sinks, tables, counters, etc are fine as long as they are in decent shape. All other equipment, be Very careful!

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Even if you get it from a friend, you might be assured by them that the equipment was maintained properly and often, any way did they get it used and can they get that guarantee from whom they bought it from? And how old actually is it?

As you may have guessed, I fell into this trap and had things breaking down when I did not expect it shortly after I opened my coffee shop. Yes even my espresso machine. I was in a bad spot then! Luckily I had entrance to a one group motor for backup and a local guy was able to fix the other fast but you may not be as lucky.

I finally upgraded to mostly new equipment when, but this can be avoided by getting new equipment at the start. You will be glad you did it, trust me!

Equipment Needs

Cash register or Pos computer? - A computer Pos (point of sale) theory is good there is no doubt about it. These are the ones that have the touch screen monitors and such. However, they are probably (and arguably) best for analyzing your sales and inventory only, and not much more. They do not speed up your customer line.

If you want one of these guys, be prepared to pay about 00 for a base system. The price goes up for complicated terminals and printers, monitors, a kitchen printer, etc.

In my understanding though, a Pos fast food register that has price look ups (Plu) and agency categories is enough for most coffee shops. Try to get one that allows you to download the information to your computer. Most have this highlight today. It may, any way growth your manual inventory and sales tracking if you have to put this info into your accounting software and spreadsheets manually but it can be a big money saver. If you get in the habit of entering the figures daily, you will not have a huge amount of data entry to do at month's end. You can ordinarily get these types of registers for about 0 or so.

If you end up opportunity other stores, I think the touch screen computer Pos may be the way to go then because it will make your administration and inventory control much easier, and you can link all of your shop together and control them from one place.

Espresso Machine

This is the Mack daddy of the whole business, your life blood. Do Not Skimp On It! However, having said that there is the line of overkill you do not need to cross either. I say, two group maximum, if you need more power or want a backup, get a one group as well.

The feasibility of a three or four group is great but it's difficult to get more than one someone working on them due to spacing of the group heads, etc. Ordinarily, you do not need more than one someone pulling shots and manufacture the espresso beverages anyway. It is practically impossible for one barista to use all four groups at one time so you be the judge! any way that may be up to deliberate upon if you get actually busy. However, a two group is always my choice.

There are three basic types of espresso machines: Semi-Automatic, automated or Super Automatic. Well My choice is always the automated because you can agenda them to cut off a shot at 23 seconds, or whatever you choose but still do it manually. The semi-automatic requires manual shut off by the operator.

The super automated motor will grind the beans, tamp, pull the shot, shut it off and even discard the used grounds. Yes, I am serious. I believe you lose a lot of 'art' when you use one of these. You'd be surprised at the amount of people that love to see a barista set up and then pull a great shot. These super autos are also big bucks. But if all you want to do is move your cattle call through the line, this is the motor for you!

The boiler capacity should be large enough for a big rush, 9-14 liters should be sufficient. You do not want to run out of steam or hot water in a rush and with a smaller boiler that will happen! Trust me on this from experience!

Buy a motor based on the availability to get parts and assistance locally. Do not buy based on price alone, or 'coolness' or 'features' of a machine. They are all good these days. Features will not mean whatever if you cannot get local assistance on your machine.

As far as water softeners, the choice to get a whole water theory softener is going to depend on where you are located. In central Texas, the water is Very hard but I chose to not soften my whole water system, just for the espresso machine. If you are not customary with hard water, this is what causes lime build-up. It's a white, crusty seeing build up that will kill your 00 or 10,000 espresso machine. It clogs up the piping that in time, builds up to the point of the water not being able to get through. Then your motor needs to be thoroughly taken apart and de-limed. Not pretty and not cheap!

You will most likely have to have a complete de-liming performed several times over the life of your machine, any way if your water is very hard and you do not soften it for your espresso machine, you will most likely have to have it de-limed at a minimum of once per year. This will get time-consuming and expensive, even if you learn to do it yourself. I had my one group de-limed for about 0 so do the math. Avoid lime scale build-up by getting a water softener.

Espresso Grinders

You will need one for decaf and one for regular espresso. There are several manufacturers and models. I will tell you though to be sure it's automated and has a doser/coffee hopper. They make a doserless model that grinds right into the portafilter and though this is freshly ground espresso, it does not work well in a rush! The units with a hopper allow the hopper to fill with ground espresso and have a lid to keep out the air. The bigger units have a bigger hopper and vice versa. Also, these have a bean hopper that you can get about 2 lbs of espresso beans in.

Bulk Coffee Grinder

These are the types you see in the food store bulk coffee aisle. Be sure to get the full scale version, not the shorter one. The only incompatibility I can see is the taller one is easier to get a bag under to grind beans for customers. The shorter one is not! Try to have one polisher for regular and decaf, and an additional one for flavored coffee if you will serve it. Using the same for all three will make the regular and decaf coffee taste like the flavored coffee. This polisher will need allowable maintenance and burr change after so many hours as well. Corollary the manufacturer's recommendations on this.

Coffee Maker (drip)

Be sure to buy for your volume. Automatics are best as they are plumbed to a water line. Pour over units will you need to fill manually! The air pot brewers are the good fits because they brew the coffee directly into the air pots. There are singular unit models and double unit models. You will save a lot of time especially in a rush, with a double brew unit.

Pastry Case (refrigerated and non)

There are several separate sizes. Take your floor space into notice but also buy for capacity and optic display. A nice, thoughprovoking unit that holds and displays a nice array of pastries is key for merchandising. Dual zone cases are a good idea because they let you have part cold, and part room climatic characteristic (dry case) pastries that do not need to be refrigerated.

Blender

There are several models to choose from but some have features you just won't need. Be sure to get a market blender. Buyer units do not have the heavy duty types of motors that market units have. That means they will break down a lot faster than a market one! I would propose you give Vitamix a look here.

Sandwich Prep Unit

These come in single, double and triple door units. Of course, plan for your unabridged room but your needs as well. The larger units have more capacity inside the unit, but the bigger plus is the prep top area that has more compartments to put meats, vegetables, etc in. If you are planning on a regular deli and Panini service, I would say the double door unit would be good. You may even get away with the smaller one!

Under Counter Refrigerator

Do yourself a favor and get a double door unit. These are basically like the sandwich prep units but without the top compartments. The inside capacity should be big enough to hold a good part of your dairy, as well as opened soy cartons, smoothie mix, bottled water and soda (if you do not have a larger unit or merchandiser for water and soda. Plan accordingly.

Storage Refrigerator

This is for the back of your shop. This will be your market refrigerator in the back area to house your back stock of refrigerated items such as milk, as well as your baking ingredients, food items, etc. There are double and singular door units.

Ice Maker

Getting an ice maker that can make an midpoint of 600-1000 lbs per day is good. It will give you enough and still be able to make more within 24 hours. In a busy shop, you'd be surprised how much ice you can go through: sodas, fruit smoothies, frappes, frosty chai.

Freezer

You will need one of these to keep your ice cream, and other food ingredients that can and need to be frozen.

Oven

Get this based on your baking level. A 1/4 size may be too small and a full size may be too big. The midpoint unit is a 1/2 size and has 3 racks.

Convection oven? Most pastries, pies and other baking can be done well in a convection oven. That is an oven that has a blower wheel that disperses the heat evenly and faster throughout the oven. Therefore your baking time is ordinarily cut in half.

Panini Grill

Cast iron (non-ceramic) with ribbed plates are the good units. With the ribbed, rather than flat plates you will get the 'grill marks' on the bread and that always looks impressive. I propose a double plate unit so you can effectively grill up to four Panini at once if you have a large order.

Three Compartment Sink

This will be valuable per most health departments for wash, rinse and sanitize. If you have a market dishwasher, it ordinarily overrides the 3 bay sink. However, most restaurants have both. You don't need a big one, just one big enough to get your biggest 'washable' piece of baking or cooking hardware into.

Hand Sink(s)

Check your health agency requirements because you may need a hand sink every so many feet or based on how many employees you have, or based on your floor plan. These are sinks only big enough to wash your hands in and that is it. That is why they are so small.

Furniture

Pick and choose what is in in the middle of comfortable and not. This will help you avoid squatters that love to stay all day. Ordinarily, people in your store is a good thing but not if they are taking up space and just being comfy! This will include your tables and chairs, as well as couch, wing hairs, etc. If you are an eclectic coffee house, good finds can be had at Goodwill and other resale shops.

Phone

Just get one that you can hear when it rings! A cordless phone is a great idea.

Radio System

If u can, get extra speakers and have one in at least all four corners for best sound quality.

Credit Card Machine

This is the swiper w/pin pad - If you accept credit and debit cards, this is essential. ordinarily they are purchased from your credit card processor. Leasing one of these is ordinarily a rip-off. Try to buy it outright.

Prep Tables

These are stainless steel or aluminum and great to make a kitchen prep area. They clean actually too. They come in various heights and widths, with or without a backsplash and ordinarily have a shelf underneath.

So there you have some information to get you started on planning your equipment needs for staring a coffee shop. Be sure you take your floor space into inventory when figuring the sizes of your equipment. Also be sure you inventory for your thinkable, customer volume. Early planning is key to having the right equipment to begin with.

beginning a Coffee Shop - tool Needs

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The Coffee Culture in the Usa

It wasn't until I moved to the Us that I started drinking coffee usually and became what they call in the Netherlands a 'koffieleut', which translates truly into 'coffee socialite.' Although the average European drinks more coffee per year than the average American, the cultural importance and its effects on the average European seems to me smaller than that on the average American. After all, coffee is a cultural obsession in the United States.

Chains with thousands of branches like Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks dominate Us daily street life. Especially in the morning (90% of coffee consumed in the Us is in the morning), millions of white foamy cups with boldly imprinted pink and orange logos bob across the streets in morning rush hour and on the train. Coffee drive-ins are a rescue grace for the rushing army of helmeted and tattooed construction workers. While lunch break, men and women in savvy firm suits duck into coffee shops.

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Students chill out from early afternoon till late evening on comfy couches at coffee lounges around campus. Police officers clutch coffee cups while guarding road construction sites on the highway. In short, coffee drinkers in the United States can be found just about anywhere you go.

This mass-psychotic ritual causes Americans to associate Europe above all with cars that oddly do not consist of cup holders (to an American this is like selling a car without tires), or with the unbelievably petite cups of coffee European restaurants serve, so small that my father-in-law had to all the time order two cups of coffee. It is my strongest conviction that the truly agitated and obsessed nature of the 'New Englander' can be blamed on the monster-size cups of coffee they consume. Not without infer is the word 'coffee' derived from the Arab 'qahwa' meaning 'that which prevents sleep.' Arabs have cooked coffee beans in boiling water since as far back as the 9th century and drank the stimulating passage as an alternative to the Muslims' forbidden alcohol.

These days coffee is second only to oil as the most significant (legally) traded good in the world with a total trade value of billion. Interestingly, only billion reaches coffee producing countries. The remaining billion is generated as surplus value in the consumption countries. Small farmers grow 70% of world coffee production. They mainly grow two kinds of coffee beans: Arabica and Robusta. About 20 million population in the world are directly dependent on coffee production for their subsistence.

Table 1: production in 2002/3

country % 70% Arabica

30% Robusta

Brasil 42.03% Arab/Rob

Colombia 8.88% Arabica

Vietnam 8.35% Robusta

Indonesia 4.89% Rob/Arab

India 3.74% Arab/Rob

Mexico 3.54% Arabica

Guatemala 3.1% Arab/Rob

Uganda 2.53% Rob/Arab

Ethiopia 2.44% Arabica

Peru 2.24% Arabica

Table 2: consumption in 2001/2world consumption % kg per capita (2001)

Usa 30.82% Finland 11.01

Germany 15.07% Sweden 8.55

Japan 11.47% Denmark 9.71

France 8.89% Norway 9.46

Italy 8.59% Austria 7.79

Spain 4.90% Germany 6.90

Great-Brittain 3.63% Switzerland 6.80

the Netherlands 2.69% the Netherlands 6.48

Although the consumption of coffee per capita in the world is decreasing (in the Us alone it decreased from 0.711 liter in 1960 to 0.237 liter presently), world consumption is still addition due to the population explosion. Inspecting that coffee consists of whether 1% (Arabica), 2% (Robusta) or 4.5%-5.1% (instant coffee) caffeine, the average American consumes at least 200 to 300mg (the recommended maximum daily amount) of caffeine a day through the consumption of coffee alone.

The place I frequent to down a cup of coffee is the Starbucks in Stamford, Connecticut. The entry can be found on the angle of Broad street and Summer Street, to the left to the main collective library with its plain pediment and slim Ionic columns. The location right next to the library harmonizes with Starbuck's marketing plan. At the entry of the coffee shop a life-size glass window curves around to the left, providing superb voyeuristic views of pedestrians on the sidewalk. As you enter, you step directly into the living room area with stacked bookshelves against the back wall. Velvet armchairs face each other with small coffee tables in the middle, creating intimate seating areas. The velvet chairs near the window are the prime seats, which population unfortunate to score a wooden chair prey upon. At the back of the long rectangular room is the coffee bar and a small Starbuck's gift shop. There is a dark wooden table with electrical outlets remarkable for spreading out laptops and spreadsheets, dividing the living room area from the coffee bar.

Since I have been cranky for weeks I hesitate to order a quarterly black coffee. It is very easy to get cloyed with a beloved food or drink in the Us because of the super-sized portions served. The smallest cup of coffee is a size 'tall' (12oz.=0.35l.), after which one can select between a 'grande' (16oz.=0.5l.) and a 'venti' (20oz.=0.6l.). Half a liter of coffee seems a bit over the top, and it sounds truly absurd to my European mind. I ultimately end up selecting a 'solo' espresso.

Sitting in one of the booth-like seats against the back wall, unable to collect a prime seat, I feign to read my book while eavesdropping on conversations around to me. Three middle-aged men sit in three ash gray velvet chairs and converse loudly. A vivid dialogue develops, exchanged with half roaring, half shrieking, laughter. They mock a colleague in his absence and then clench their brows in concern while discussing the teeth of one of the men's daughter. Two African-American women sit at a small table opposite the reading-table in the murky light, one of them with a yellow headscarf with black African motifs. Close to the entrance, in the seating area next to the intriguing conversation, a vagabond is playing solitaire. One by one he places the creased cards with rounded backs over one another, as if he attempts to stick them together. He rendered a concentrate of dollars in replacement for a small coffee to feel, in the warmth of the front room, nostalgia for a cozy living room and relives a sense of intimacy of having your own house.

It's a bright, sunny, early autumn day, a typical New England Indian summer. Sunbeams radiate through the coloring, flickering foliage, and throw a puzzle-shaped shadow into Starbuck's window. Autumn's hand turns her colorful kaleidoscopic lens. The green ash tree near the sidewalk resembles, with its polychrome colors, somewhat a bronze statue: its stem sulphur bronze, its foliage intermittently copper green and ferric-nitrate golden. On the other side of the cross walk the top of a young red oak turns fiery red. These are the budding impressions of the autumn foliage for which Connecticut is 'world famous' in the Us.

In the world of marketing and entrepreneurship, Starbucks is a success story. It is one of those stories of 'excellence' taught as a case study at firm school. Founded in 1971, it truly began its staggering increase under Howard Schultz in 1985, and presently has 6,294 coffee shops. But what does its success truly consists of? A large cup of coffee at Starbucks is much more expensive than at Dunkin' Donuts: .69 compared to .40 for a Starbucks' 'venti'. But while Dunkin' Donuts offers only a petite assortment of flavors like mocha, hazelnut, vanilla, caramel and cinnamon, you will find exotic potential beans at Starbucks like Bella Vista F.W. Tres Rios Costa Rica, Brazil Ipanema Bourbon Mellow, Colombia Nariño Supremo, Organic Shade Grown Mexico, Panama La Florentina, Arabian Mocha Java, Caffè Verona, Guatemala Antigua Elegant, New Guinea Peaberry, Zimbabwe, Aged Sumatra, extra support Estate 2003 - Sumatra Lintong Lake Tawar, Italian Roast, Kenya, Ethiopia Harrar, Ethiopia Sidamo, Ethiopia Yergacheffe and French Roast. So Starbucks offers luxury coffees and high potential coffee dining, reminiscent practically of the chic coffee houses I visited in Vienna.

Every now and then, I grin shamefully and think back at my endless hesitation selecting between the only two types of coffee available in most Dutch stores: red brand and gold brand. Even up to this day I have no clue what the actual unlikeness is between the two, apart from the color of the wrapping: red or gold. Not surprisingly, Starbucks appeals to the laptop genre of people: consultants, students, intellectuals, the middle class, and a Starbucks coffee is a white-collar coffee, while a Dunkin' Donuts coffee is a blue-collar coffee. In Dunkin' Donuts you will run into Joe the Plumber, Bob the barber, and Mac the truck driver. But what is it exactly, that attracts the white collared workers in the Us to fall back into the purple velvet chairs?

I fantasize their working days filled with repetitive actions and decisions within a playing field of truly defined responsibilities. How many of the players in these fields get through the day with its routines for naturally no other infer than being able to enjoy their daily 30 minutes-escape into the Starbucks intimacy where, for a brief moment in the day, you collect the illusion of human warmth and exotic associations of resisting the coldness of high finance?

For 15 minutes you fall back into the deep, soft pillow of a velvet chair and randomly, and alas how prominent is that moment of utter randomness, pull a book from the shelves. While, in the background, soothing tones resound of country blues, with its recognition of deep human suffering, a blaze of folk with the primary connection with nature and tradition, or of merengue reviving the passionate memories of adventure and love, you gaze out the window and ponder about that simple, volatile reflection in the moment, strengthened by the bodily consequent of half a liter of watery coffee that starts to kick in and the delight of chewing your muffin, bagel, cake, brownie, croissant or donut.

It is, above all, that bodily ecstasy caused by a aggregate of caffeine, sugar and the salivating Pavlov effect. You remember the struggling musician behind the counter taking your order, the amateur poet as you pay her for the coffee and give a full dollar tip, feeling a transcendental bound in your flight from reality. You stare with a fastened throbbing of the first gulps of coffee at the advertisements and poems on the bulletin board, and dauntlessly you think: They are right, they are so right! and what do I care? Why should I care?

But then you look at your watch and consideration you truly have to run again. 'Well, too bad, gotta go!', or population will start gossiping for being so long away from your desk. And while you open the door, an autumn zephyr blows in your face, the last tunes of the blues solo die out as the Hammond organ whispers: 'I throw my troubles out the door, I don't need them anymore'.

Coffee in the Us is a subculture that massively floated to the surface of the consumer's society. Starbucks is more than coffee, it's more than just other brand on the market, it is a social-political statement, a way of perceiving how you would like to live, in other words it is a culture. Starbucks is the alternative to Coca-Cola and so much more than just coffee: it's chocolate, ice-cream, frappuccino, voyage mugs with exotic prints, cups and live music, Cd's, discounts on exhibitions and even support for volunteer work.

The Coffee Culture in the Usa

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