My Vietnam visit highlighted how quickly the Asian market is growing and how new trends of their own special culture are becoming fused into a global café model. Every country has their own coffee and café culture, and many times we can learn different brewing techniques, as we know it’s not all about espresso.

What I’m noticing in my frequent travelling is that quality service of product is still the leading marketing action for all smart hospitality businesses today. As mediocre businesses shut down, the quality cafés are still very busy and well patronised.

I’ve interviewed the smarter café operators over the last few months, to gain an understanding of what they’re seeing within their businesses as the growth areas. Most of this small group are staying above the trends through continuous reinvestment in new quality products and grasping technological changes in equipment and techniques.

The thing we often forget in the café industry is the café consumer has a fair amount of choice in the marketplace, and the smart operators are educating them very quickly. It is very hard to go backwards in your taste selection, so the good operators do attract the smarter, more discerning customer base. I get to visit many cafés throughout the year, and most of the busy cafés nationwide use very similar formulae for their success. A good tip is to grab a notebook and go sit in a busy café and write down what they are doing right. This might seem a bit much, but as an operator of a very competitive business, you need to strive for the best results continuously.

It is always wise to be a good purchaser, but buying decisions should be set around a quality approach. Buying quality products and selling them for the right price is a form of creating a point of difference. I believe café owners are getting much smarter around their core business of coffee, and I am seeing more quality coffee being presented and better espresso equipment in cafés.

From our recent Café Pulse survey, I was disappointed to see many cafés still using grocery store chocolate powders for their hot chocolates. This is a big area of beverage spend in cafés, so working on better quality chocolate and charging a bit more is a great way to look at the quality approach. There are so many great chocolates available, and café owners should consider having a few choices on the menu.

Another thing that irritates me is the same old menu structure in cafés. Yes, it’s great to have some generic items on your menu, but please use this space to show a bit of your business’ personality. Most people are looking for some excitement on a menu, and the café structure allows you to fuse different cooking styles together on one plate.

As long as you stick to the pricing formula of minimum sale price being 3.5 times the portion cost, you’ll make good profit. Changing a menu helps reignite the business, and customers love it. Like all products, menus have a life cycle, so it’s good to keep up with market trends.

I’ve fallen head over hills in love with tea again. Finally, some good cafés are treating their tea service equally as well as their coffee presentation. Good tea presentation means better revenue – and often more customers. Gone is the paper tea bag thrown into boiling water, with a $3 price tag attached. Good infused methods of fine quality tea are still very profitable and should have as much effort put into the process as a good espresso drink. Tea is around 7% of the beverage revenue spend, and I can see market trends pushing at this opportunity for more increased revenue. Tea service is relatively cheap to set up and maintain, and you need to get online and look at the latest tea trends to stay ahead of the market.

Café owners need to remember it was only twenty years ago that the swing from tea to coffee became trendy, and many of these tea drinkers are still alive and sitting on most of the country’s real wealth. So please do me a favour: take the cheap tea bags home and get some fresh, loose leaf teas and some nice brewing equipment.

Please enjoy this latest issue with our extensive Australian Café Industry Directory for fast reference to product and services, and thank you to all the industry suppliers whohave come on board for this special issue.