Bike cafés: a questionnaire

[Richard Fairhurst]

Don't hang too much on Sundays - we (Charlbury Deli & Cafe)* couldn't make it pay and reluctantly stopped opening on Sundays. It might work where you are, but we found the cycling trade was very heavily tilted towards Saturdays. Sunday cyclists seemed to be more head-down than cafe trippers, though that might just be our area.

We invested in proper coffee equipment and it was 100% worthwhile. You can sometimes lease the equipment from local suppliers - our coffee comes from the Missing Bean roastery in Oxford.

* local community-owned deli & cafe - I was chairman for two years while we moved from our previous backstreet location into much bigger new premises. Stepped down a couple of months ago because "my work here is done"! http://charlburydeli.cafe

[keyboardmonkey]

Before deciding on a coffee supplier could I suggest this one in East Yorkshire:

https://www.theblendingroom.co.uk/shop/ ... a-pantano/

The link is to my particular favourite blend.

(On the website you can order a grinder for £100 - still expensive but not eye-wateringly so.)

Some cyclist-friendly cafes are listed here, together with a few reasons why they may be favourites with cyclists (longish read)...

http://www.yorkshirewoldscycleroute.co.uk/eat-and-drink

[slowster]

Will definitely contact Hasbean this week as we need to get the ball rolling and open for business in April latest.

Do that. Hasbean supply a lot of high end coffee shops, and doubtless have a lot of experience with new ventures and knowing what is and is not likely to work. I doubt they will want to spend hours on the phone to you, but I expect that in 10 minutes they could give you some very good pointers, e.g. it's possible that they might say that cafetiere is not the optimum choice, and if so I would take their advice.

I'd be up for organising wine tours by bike from the cafe, as I'm quite well connected with the local producers, and its a lovely day out and the cost to the project is zero. Wine tours are very popular here, but they are mainly conducted from behind polarised glass in a 7 seater which I think an absolute waste of a day. What think you?

I've never been on such a tour, and I'm unlikely ever to do so. That said, I can just imagine how something like that might work and have appeal:

- Breakfast at the cafe, say brie and bacon baguettes and a vegetarian option. Time it for a quiet period in the cafe, say 9.30am?
- Have different categories of tours: short distance/easy (5-10 miles?), medium (15-20 miles), long (30+ miles). Offer hire bikes, including e-bikes for the very unfit/infirm.
- Ride to the first vineyard, immersing yourself in the terroir as you ride through the valleys.
- Meet the owner by the vines. They give a short talk about the wine and the terroir, maybe taste a grape off the vine, and possibly also a very small glass of the wine.
- Cycle on to maybe a couple more vineyards for a similar experience but obviously with some variation, e.g. see the cellars etc.
- At the final vineyard stop for a lunch (probably a buffet type meal with bread, cheese, charcuterie etc. - showcase local produce as far as possible.
- Serve the all the various wines from that morning's tour with the meal.
- Tell people that if they want to order any of the wines, they can do so there and then and it will be delivered to the cafe by the time they get back, or they can order it via a local area tourism and produce website.
- Make sure the logistics includes planning for any problems, e.g. call out a sag wagon with a mechanic/spare bike, bad weather etc.

I could see how that might appeal to a lot of people, especially if it's marketed as being for anyone who can ride a bike, not just fit cyclists who can do evens and think anything less than 50 miles is not a proper ride.

(On the website you can order a grinder for £100 - still expensive but not eye-wateringly so.)

That is a grinder made for domestic use. I doubt it would last very long at all in commercial use, and it would be very, very poor value for money compared to a proper commercial grinder. The Mahlkonig EK43 is £2000+. It has a big commercial motor, and a set of very large burrs, which mean it will reliably do its job day in day out for years. When the burrs eventually wear out, you can buy replacements. A key point in commercial catering is that failure of major equipment can instantly mean you start losing trade and money. Hence why it is essential that an espresso machine is well maintained. If you use a low technology form of brewing, like cafetiere, not only is the equipment cheap, it's also a lot more reliable. Scour ebay for a second back up commercial grinder in good condition and you have a very simple resilient set up. Think of it being like the difference between, say, my planned new steel touring bike with 9 speed and no STIs versus, say, a high end ultra lightweight with, ahem, electric shifting

[Canuk]

Given that our only competitor in town uses the God awful Lavazza brand I'm not completely paranoid about sourcing good coffee, but nevertheless I'm not complacent about it. I think good coffee and cakes are the heart and soul of a good cafe (cycling or otherwise).

Our competitors do not make or bake any cakes or sandwiches or sweet things, it's all shop bought. Surely this is a mistake, is the greatest profit not in baking your own? Saturday is a big day here too, you can hear multiple freewheels whizzing through at 7.30am so maybe breakfast, or a mini breakfast is a good idea. Ham and salami and excellent cheese is readily available at good prices here (especially cheese), so maybe omelettes too? Ideally I couldn't recommend investing in a fully specced kitchen from the get go, but maybe I'm missing a trick?

[thirdcrank]

You need that sticker saying it's rated 5/5 for hygiene.

[Canuk]

That is a grinder made for domestic use. I doubt it would last very long at all in commercial use, and it would be very, very poor value for money compared to a proper commercial grinder. The Mahlkonig EK43 is £2000+. It has a big commercial motor, and a set of very large burrs, which mean it will reliably do its job day in day out for years. When the burrs eventually wear out, you can buy replacements. A key point in commercial catering is that failure of major equipment can instantly mean you start losing trade and money. Hence why it is essential that an espresso machine is well maintained. If you use a low technology form of brewing, like cafetiere, not only is the equipment cheap, it's also a lot more reliable. Scour ebay for a second back up commercial grinder in good condition and you have a very simple resilient set up. Think of it being like the difference between, say, my planned new steel touring bike with 9 speed and no STIs versus, say, a high end ultra lightweight with, ahem, electric shifting

We just missed out on a Mahlkonig grinder in a local depot vente for 300 euros because the person viewing it had no idea what it was and thought 300 a massive amount for a grinder. I was pulling my hair out, I arrived 20 minutes after it had been sold, but it was well away.

All good advice about the wine tours. I think we could really do something there, but how to market it to a British /American audience on a very limited marketing budget is my first hurdle. The established businesses here spend a fortune on online and print advertising in posh magazines but we simply can't afford that. I thought about selling 'Airbnb experiences' as wine tours, but I've heard they really only get traction in very popular holiday destinations and large European cities and our village is neither of these...

This project has to pay for itself after the first year or is dead in the water. I think its important for us to think out of the box to bring in revenue, because the deal we have with the council is that eventually we'll replace the volunteers with local young unemployed people from the area. That's something I'm keen to do, as the exodus of the young from these small villages is a problem which mostly goes unnoticed, but which is ironically killing village life off at source.

[Richard Fairhurst]

Our competitors do not make or bake any cakes or sandwiches or sweet things, it's all shop bought. Surely this is a mistake, is the greatest profit not in baking your own?

It's not necessarily the kitchen itself that's the issue, it's the ventilation requirements. For us that'd be a five-figure sum even assuming the landlord agreed to it. We do have our own cakes, but only because the manager makes them at home, which in turn means her kitchen needs to be maintained to commercial standards and hygiene-tested accordingly.

(Turbochef/Merrychef convection ovens can offer a way round ventilation issues and this are worth looking into.)

[mjr]

The reason for the sludgey nature of most caferiere coffee and the fact that it's usually not considered the best of the brewed coffee methods, is partly down to the grinders.

It may have been ruined by bad grinders but I'm not sure it matters. As soon as you plonk a cafetiere down, hearts will sink. If they see any through the window, some may not come in if there's another cafe in a few miles.

[slowster]

Saturday is a big day here too, you can hear multiple freewheels whizzing through at 7.30am so maybe breakfast, or a mini breakfast is a good idea. Ham and salami and excellent cheese is readily available at good prices here (especially cheese), so maybe omelettes too? Ideally I couldn't recommend investing in a fully specced kitchen from the get go, but maybe I'm missing a trick here?

Pannini press? Needless to say, you aim to make the best panninis you can buy for miles around.

Our competitors do not make or bake any cakes or sandwiches or sweet things, it's all shop bought. Surely this is a mistake, is the greatest profit not in baking your own?

It's very similar for your argument for the technical superiority of Trek etc. by virtue of their size and relentless investment in R&D and marketing. Makers of desserts for the food service sector have a lot of advantages going for them: economies of scale and efficiencies in labour costs, overheads, ingredients, and the ability to constantly refine their recipes to get just the result they want and to drive their costs down. Like the steel master framebuilder, small specialist bakers can compete, but they have to be very good. It's not enough to make a cake that is as good as one from a factory, because it will probably cost more than the factory's. Instead it needs to better, superb even, so that a premium can be charged for it.

I think we could really do something there, but how to market it to a British /American audience on a very limited marketing budget is my first hurdle. The established businesses here spend a fortune on online and print advertising in posh magazines but we simply can't afford that. I thought about selling 'Airbnb experiences' as wine tours, but I've heard they really only get traction in very popular holiday destinations and large European cities and our village is neither of these...

I think for something like a half day wine tour, you need a potential market of British, Americans, Dutch, Germans etc. (are your volunteers multi-national/multilingual?) on your doorstep. If you are not already in or close to a tourist area, I doubt people are going to travel a long distance to you for a half day wine tour. I would focus on identifying where Brits etc. holidaying in your area are staying, and target them that way. For example, flyers/leaflets at camping sites, advertising to/contacting the owners and occupants of gites etc.

[Eyebrox]

We have a local cafe which is very popular with the big clubs. It's well named - Rendezvous.
The business attracts cycling groups because:
- they can be in and out in 30 minutes
- each chair is numbered individually to ensure that the orders are dealt with efficiently without any serving mix-ups
- a junior assistant collects, fills and returns each rider's water bottle.
The demand is such at weekends that the clubs phone in advance to negotiate their own time-slot.

[RickH]

One option that seems to be proving popular in the Chester area is a sandwiches (usually a mixture for individuals to choose themselves) & chips lunch deal* that is pre ordered by groups (group phones numbers & ETA at the start of the ride plus updates if, say, the group gets delayed, etc.). That way the food for the whole group can be on the table very quickly once they arrive.

There's little worse than a group arriving & the first served have finished their food but have to wait a further half hour or more for the last ones to be served.

(*Your local choices of options can be substituted here)

[mattsccm]

I bet you a quid that most cyclist won't care a toss about fancy coffee if its priced right and the place is warm.

[keyboardmonkey]

I bet you a quid that most cyclist won't care a toss about fancy coffee if its priced right and the place is warm.

I would agree on price and warmth, but based on my personal experiences I'd take that quid, if I understand what you mean by fancy coffee (FWIW I've yet to taste a decent coffee from a cafetiere - always too gritty - and filter coffee isn't worth stopping for IMHO).

When I used to ride with my local group the little joke was that CTC stood for 'café to café', but they were still a discriminating set. One of my favourite cafés - in Lincolnshire - draws folks in with its superior coffee...

On the broader matter of things to attract cyclists, apart from good coffee, I'd echo those who mention a rack or something suitable to hang the bike on - provided there is space; a dual-head floor pump placed where customers aren't likely to fall over it; signage, framed photographs/posters etc - cycle maps even - that makes it obvious that cyclists are welcome; special offers, and I like a loyalty card, too.

Oh, and on the matter of positioning, the best place for a very good café is the Yorkshire Wolds, of course

[slowster]

I bet you a quid that most cyclist won't care a toss about fancy coffee if its priced right and the place is warm.

Fancy coffee is not always good, and good coffee is not always fancy. Moreover, expensive coffee is not necessarily good coffee, and inexpensive coffee is not necessarily bad coffee.

The best example of this is Costa's 'flat whites' with the frothed milk poured to make a 'fancy' pattern on top of the coffee. They started to offer flat whites because that was one of the most popular drinks in the best independent coffee shops, especially in London. Flat whites contain less milk than a cappuccino and consequently have a stronger flavour. Costa decided it needed also to offer flat whites, but its version contains something like twice the amount of milk. There are two reasons for that: its belief that its customers value quantity over quality, and the fact that the espresso in most of the big chains and probably many smaller independents is poor, and often I suspect is so bad that it's undrinkable. Which partly explains why they sell overwhelmingly drinks in which the (not very nice tasting) espresso is diluted by a large quantity of milk. Costa simply aped the appearance and the name of the very good coffee you can buy in many of the good independent shops. Rather than actually improve the quality of the coffee they serve, they reckoned all they needed to do was train some of their staff to pour the milk in fancy shapes, and they were probably right.

It's odd how so many British people are such inverse snobs about coffee. Rather than just having an opinion about it, they feel a need to voice their opinion and dismiss it as fancy coffee or say that instant coffee is good enough, with the spoken or implied assertion that anyone who disagrees is pretentious or a snob. I don't think I've ever seen similar attitudes so forthrightly expressed about good quality beer, e.g. 'You can keep your fancy belgian beer, Watneys Red Barrel is good enough for me'. Which I suspect points to degree of double insecurity: feeling a need to dismiss 'fancy' coffee, but not daring to do likewise with beer because appreciating good beer is generally seen by men as a fairly normal masculine trait. Beer connoisseurs can be very particular about which pubs they go to, based not only on what beer the pub sells, but also how the pub stores and serves the beer.

The quality of food and drink available in the UK has improved immeasurably in the last 30+ years, and I think that is a process which has an unstoppable momentum. Once people have become accustomed to 'the good stuff', they rarely want to give it up.

I doubt that the cyclists who are Canuk's potential market 'won't care a toss about fancy coffee if its priced right and the place is warm'. It's southern France: a warm place to stop isn't going to be much of a selling point, and I also suspect that they will be more discriminating about food and drink than in the UK.

[thelawnet]

Before deciding on a coffee supplier could I suggest this one in East Yorkshire:

https://www.theblendingroom.co.uk/shop/ ... a-pantano/

The link is to my particular favourite blend.

That's not a blend, it's a single origin...

(On the website you can order a grinder for £100 - still expensive but not eye-wateringly so.)

At that price a hand grinder is really the only way to go.