December 2014 - Golden Bean 2014, Xmas Trading Hours, Roasters Rant

Date Posted:1 December 2014 

Xmas Trading Hours

The mycuppa store will remain open 24x7 for accepting orders throughout the entire Xmas and New Year period.

However, please be aware there are NO  freight services operating during this period.

Last Parcel dispatch : midday Tuesday 23rd December 2014.

First Parcel dispatch : Monday 5th January 2015.

Orders placed after midday 23/12/2014 will be sent on the first available dispatch - 5/1/15.

Note, we will stop roasting on the morning of the 23rd December and resume again on the 1st January.

 

Golden Bean 2014

	Milk-based Espresso Suuweet
	Single Origin Ethiopia Yirgacheffe

 

We picked up a couple of medals at the recent Golden Bean coffee roasting competition.

Bronze medal in the Milk-based Espresso for our eponymous Suuweet and another Bronze medal in the Single Origin for our Ethiopia Yirgacheffe.

Both these categories are perhaps the most contested sections of the competition. 

Australians love their milk-based espresso as around 92% of all espresso beverages have milk added. 

Similarly, the fascination with single origins ensures there are hundreds of entries.

Overall, the competition attracted more than 1000 entries - testament to the fact it remains the most competitive coffee roasting even in the world - there is nothing like it in terms of scale.

We already knew Suuweet was a top performer - it is without doubt our most popular coffee and the same coffee we always put forward to new customers as a recommendation.

Suuweet has exceptional balance - clean, rich caramel with a very long syrupy toffee and vanilla finish. It's a very rewarding coffee.

There have been 10 different Yirgacheffe's arrive in our warehouse throughout 2014. This has been part design and part symptomatic of the chronic shortages for good Yirgy's. 

We set out again this year to play around with some natural Ethiopians - they provide such intense flavor, sweetness and cup character but at the same time they can be quite challenging to roast. 

Of course, we continue to purchase many quality washed Yirgy's as the staple for our customers.

The natural Yirgy's were delivering wild apricot an fruit notes unseen previously. 

For this reason, we loved those naturals and some of our Roaster's Choice customers were fortunate enough to enjoy these fruit bombs.

Supply lines for Yirgy's remain tight and prices are very high.

 

So, what's going on with coffee prices ?

2014 has seen some big recoveries in the price of raw coffees. Not quite hitting the peaks of mid to late 2010, but still dramatic jumps rollercoaster rides.

Earlier this year we experienced that type of "perfect storm" with coffee pricing spiking up 64% in the space of 3 months on the back of supply challenges in the world's largest producing origin Brazil.

Combined with a Roya (coffee leaf rust) outbreak in Central America and a 3rd straight crop of lower yield harvests in Sumatra we are now seeing the effects of a falling Aussie Dollar playing out as further price increases are enforced by the importing brokers.

Just this week, the brokers decided to add $0.40 a kilo to the price of all coffees due to currency weakness - all coffees are traded in US dollars, so we are facing a price spike of $400 a pallet.

For us, this means our general consumption rate of around 2x pallets per week adds another $800 per week to the cost of our coffees. Despite a competitive domestic market in Australia, this cost increase will play out in the form of revised retail coffee pricing.

It is rather interesting to note that the retail price of roasted coffee beans is largely disconnected from the actual cost price of raw coffee. Some of this is inventory lag but the majority is simply competitive forces - an over-supply of sellers all fighting for the customer's order/$$.

In terms of forecast, you can expect the price of coffee to rise at least $1 a kilo in 2015.

 

Roaster's Rant

We are moving a lot of coffee every day.

It's quite amazing to see more than a pallet getting loaded into the freight vans each afternoon. We also have many cafes and private label customers to service that take another pallet every day. Everyone is important and the volumes we are turning over are quite high considering the 900+ brands of coffee available in Australia and the saturated market we participate within.

To be honest, I'm exhausted from roasting till midnight 6 days a week and it's quite stressful in the afternoons when the team come to me and say "we have run out of this and that again".

In the last few months, we have run out of many single origins every day......which is just astonishing to be honest. Originally, we budgeted on roasting each coffee once or twice a week, not 6 times a week.

The reason it is stressful to me is not the fact we need to roast more, but because our primary KPI is to send out more than 99.5% of coffees on the day they are ordered. Lately, this KPI has been getting stretched as we simply have not had adequate stocks to coffee orders.

One good effect of this volume is that our freshness promise target is so easily achieved - barely anything is more than 16hrs old when it leaves our roaster and nothing more than 48hrs old.

For blends, I understand because we roast these every night, but for single origins it means we must be kicking some goals.

What makes it worth the late-night efforts are the wonderful customers we have @ mycuppa.

Every day, we have people place a nice "thank you, we love your coffee" note in our order comments area. That makes us happy and gives us the energy and enthusiasm to achieve more.

Over the last 14 months I have been through a very intensive review period. As a roaster, you never stop learning - new beans, new thinking, new ways.

We have implemented a lot of improvements to the way in which we roast coffee. 

I have been using both of our roasting platforms to exploit what is "best" on each of those platforms. It's never about churning out brown beans - every batch needs to be a winner and you are only as good as the last batch of coffee beans roasted. In many respects, we have gone back to smaller batch sizes as a way to generate higher qualities - this costs more, but the end-result is genuinely worth it.

We have purchased another new roaster - #4. 

After a very detailed 12 month evaluation period our new roasting platform is currently being built overseas and we will commission the new system during March - May 2015. 

The reason we have purchased another roasting platform is because we need to move premises (which is also another major 6 month project) and the only way we can achieve a relocation is to install a new plant and become operational before we move in - such is the challenge of a 24x7 business like mycuppa. We can't schedule downtime.

In our new premises, we have considered the idea of customer collection for orders. This concept has been weighing on my mind for 2 - 3 years - specifically, how do we solve it.

Every day we receive requests by people to come and pickup from our roastery. Currently, we don't allow this practice for many reasons that make sense - no parking, no safety, no access, etc.

Nobody likes to pay for freight and if you need to know, we also hate the freight systems with a burning passion - I have many staff tied up each day dealing with freight issues - delayed parcels, lost or damaged items, etc. Honestly, if there was an easier way, we would do it. We also run through thousands of cartons each week, whilst these are made new from recycled pulp, it's not ideal for the environment.

The freight concept is about ensuring customers from all over Australia can enjoy fresh roasted coffee - which is why we roast more than 160x batches of coffee each week and send out coffee that is super-fresh.

The majority of our competitors just take the easy way out - buying larger capacity roasters and roasting fewer batches, less often. 

Sure, this keeps their cost and hassles lower, but it does not provide fresh roasted coffee to their customers all of the time.

I have many friends in the coffee roasting industry and I continue to be amazed at how they can get away with roasting just once or twice a week. 

Maybe their businesses are mature and static, not dynamic and evolving like mycuppa.

Our new facility will raise the bar in terms of product quality as we are implementing some systems that are not being used by our competitors. These are substantial investments that we know will return the benefits over the long term.

Will it be possible to collect orders from mycuppa in the future ?..........watch this space !