The 2 Most Common Questions New Cafe Owners Forget to Ask Their Coffee Supplier

Opening Adelaide’s Best New Cafe?

We get it; you’re busy juggling a million ever-changing lists, tight deadlines, hiring new staff, legals, financial forecasts and so many unforeseen headaches. It’s easy to forget to ask these two simple questions.

How you can help support my business as we open?

Good quality roasters want to see your business succeed. It’s in their best interests if you have every opportunity to grow to be a thriving cafe serving really great coffee and huge amounts of it.

They generally have a network of baristas around them that they can speak to to help you find your next star barista. They can usually offer training and support to make sure your coffee program is not only delicious, but also streamlined and efficient. They’ve likely supplied a whole cohort of other busy cafes and can offer you some pointers and examples of things that have worked for them. They might be able to point you to other suppliers that compliment their offering and save you money.

In short, they live and breath coffee and have a vested interest in watching you succeed.

Red Flags:

• Only wanting to talk about how much coffee you’re ordering
• Not asking any questions about your business and your goals
• Giving advise that when you think about it, serves them far more than it serves you

How many days “off the roast” does your coffee taste best?

While there’s no hard and fast rule to answer this, any decent coffee roaster should know how their coffee is going to taste at a particular number of days after it’s been roasted, and there will always be a sweet spot. For some coffees that sweet spot might be something like “day 8 is heaven” or maybe more of a range like “any time between 4-15 days”.

With Hardy’s Rd for example we love it on days 7-14 where as Black Sheep Blendcan handle even two weeks aging so day 16-17 can be prime. There are many factors that can alter this but your roaster should be able to talk confidently and knowledgeably about what those are and what that means for you cafe, based on what your customers want.

It’s not unlikely that great quality coffee is going to taste pretty fantastic right off the roast up until many weeks or possibly months later. However given all the chemical changes of coffee’s hygroscopic nature, degassing large levels of CO₂ and a host of other variables there will be a peak point and your roaster should know this.

RED FLAGS:

• Vague Answers
• Promising outrageous values (“oh, our coffee is always great!”)
• Nieve about the freshness of coffee (“roast date??! nah, you don’t need that”)

Whether you’re just wanting to open a small little passion outlet or if you’re opening Adelaide’s best new cafe, make sure you’re coffee roaster is aligned to help you with your goals. Get in touch with us today to talk about yours.