a few nights ago there was a wholesale
event that's where Mars roastery and as
part of it you had a bunch of customers
there and I gave a short talk and that
talk was very similar to the one that
I'd given in Dublin recently which a few
people have asked about seeing so I
decided I would record it and share it
now this event was very friendly it was
very relaxed and so this talk is
reflective of that it's a little less
serious in tone and content than the
talks I have given at bigger more
serious events and conferences I don't
think I say anything particularly
shocking in there but it's definitely a
lot more relaxed nonetheless I hope you
enjoy leave me a comment afterwards if
these questions I'll do my best to
answer them so how the past predicts the
future
I would argue and I wouldn't be the
first to argue this that a great deal of
what's going to happen can be kind of
discerned by what has happened in the
past you know I mean we we are doomed to
repeat our failures as a species and
we've proven that over and over and over
again so what I want to do is talk a
little bit about how we got to here to
see where that sort of sends us off as a
trajectory for where we go next make
sense all right so I'm gonna start a
long time ago to some people to me to
whoever 2005 there's a few people maybe
who were working in coffee in 2005 a few
others maybe one in the UK to the the
the coffee scene at that time could best
be summarized with this and this is not
me throwing shade on someone's coffee
machine or whatever
this is anyone know this manufacturer
Regina Regina Jo why it's called 40 no
it's a contraction of Frank's cappuccino
genuinely and this is a company based in
Birmingham and they were building like
this this style kind of just like boxy
classic espresso machines back then and
in the UK we didn't really know very
much about coffee to be honest these
this was the company that was sponsoring
the Bristol competitions back then and
the competitions were kind of
very much about like syrup chocolate and
like sweet sweet things and a bit of
bartending flair and that's kind of
where we were and the coffee scene was
not hugely advanced there were a few
people trying but really we were not
making good coffee even you know the the
top end of things it was not
particularly advanced and I started
working for a different machine company
then and my job as a training manager
and I would travel around the UK and I
would work with businesses and work with
coffee suppliers know the language their
coffee suppliers on education and
training because at that time no one no
one roasted their own coffee right I
would say that there were loads of
little coffee companies all over the UK
loads and loads of them and most of them
bought their coffee from masterís and
Lincoln in New York right these were
companies that were doing probably in
the region of about 4,000 tons each of
kind of private label coffee that that's
a lot just for context and you would go
and they would have these these kind of
computers full of people's preferred
blends that were all basically the same
with different packaging and you went
and you said I want coffee that I can
sell for like nine quid a kilo and
they'd be like yeah all right and then
you'd get a bag of coffee or a pallet of
coffee at the end of it and at that time
there were a couple of little sort of
starter P things has been James gourmet
coffee over and ross-on-wye these were
these tenant little weird anomalies in
the UK market these were people who
roasted their own coffee and that was
just weird now
I promise it was weird downstairs we
have two Roasters two roasting machines
we've got little 15 kilo in red then
there's the kind of the other one the
bath this if you go downstairs you'll
see it that used to belong to master
roast actually and it was bought by a
customer of theirs in Milton Keynes and
after two years he was like this
roasting business is a bit tricky
can you just roast my coffee again and
I'll put the roaster on eBay
which worked out for us so back back
then we sort of actually a little bit
later but around then we bought that
roaster on eBay for a disgustingly small
amount of money but it was in a
disgusting State back then not a lot of
love for coffee as it was then but this
was this was really the market you know
I mean like there were loads and loads
of coffee companies all over the UK
basically selling the same thing which
was kind of fascinating and weird and in
the UK we thought that everything
special came from outside and the
Scandinavians were really where it was
at this will make me feel old how many
people can tell me who that is he was so
famous to me he was the world breast the
champion in 2005 his ago called trolls
porcelain his from Copenhagen still
still in Copenhagen contra coffee if you
go those were in the t-shirt and at this
point the Danes just kept winning the
poster champs you know and I mean like
Fritz Storm would've won it before
Martin Hildebrand won it before he was
Danish - the year after him Klaus
Thompson won it it was just this it was
getting boring and the nice thing was it
got so boring that the Danish weren't
even interested in 2008 six people
competed in the Danish poster
championship because you know yeah we've
got champions who cares there's no
mystery about what would happen if you
win because there were just four or five
Danish people walking around Copenhagen
and not a big city who were world with
the champions so rolling around 2006 and
that's a year that stuff starts to
happen in the UK right little seeds of
things starts to happen and I guess I
would say that the competition vaguely
begins to professionalize it still looks
very different to how it does now
but this one company that I work for oh
there was a very smart guy that started
decided that it was worth trying to do
something in good coffee and it was
trying to grow a coffee culture and he
was way before his time we try to start
a barista guild in 2006
nobody came
there was no one to to turn up and
personally there for me that was kind of
a big year because I got involved in
competitions and I won the UK that year
and I don't know why I put these photos
up but that god it's the pink shirt
right it's so so this was what was today
just a very young less gray version of
me so so this was this wasn't just about
me you know going to compete in the
world but it was really about what
doesn't go important was was me and
Annette the co-founder here kind of
getting more immersed in like a global
community here's at that time I'd
started in coffee in 2003 and I just I
felt very lonely so I I had coffee
friends on the internet and not really
in London and that stayed that way for a
long time but getting involved in the
competition's you realise that this is
this big kind of global community out
there all these different cultures who
were way way further down the line of
good coffee than the UK was at that time
right which is quite inspiring quite
useful but also quite distant so it
brings this round it sort of 2007 and in
London at that time there were two
really interesting coffee businesses in
particular that I want talk about one I
hope is familiar to like a couple of
people here anyone quite right so hope
this guy can McClure lovely guy Flo
white was this interesting anomaly to me
along with the other business they'll
come next
which I'm as we'll bring up which is
Monmouth actually so flat were in
Monmouth right they're both they're both
very successful in 2007 and they're very
successful doing quite different things
fill out why it is successful doing
espresso in this whole new way where the
game was put as much coffee as is
possible into the basket and then get as
little liquid liquid out as possible on
the other side and if you want to be
weird
like when we started weighing espresso
we I went in and pour shots with can 28
grams into the basket right genuinely
astonishing and about 20 out which was
you know intense as an experience a
little kind of salty and whatever but it
you know it looked good to pour milk
into and they were smashing out drinks
they were having fun
they were super busy they were doing
like 110 120 kilos a week out of that
kind of peak times and they were doing
this thing that was quite new and then
you had Monmouth right started in 1978
but in 2007 they're really kind of
they're they're cranking as well Borough
Market is hugely busy and the thing that
they're doing that sort of bothers me
still it not there is a bad thing it was
that they were doing filter coffee right
they were doing lots and lots and lots
and lots and lots of filter coffee
hundreds of cups bruised order of filter
coffee and for years and years
afterwards everyone was like nah I don't
do filter coffee no one buys it you're
like but they do hundreds a day and I
was like yeah but no and they were just
outliers and and the thing that's
interesting for me was was clearly there
was this demand for coffee and if you
did something good and interesting
people really really responded to that
but it wasn't doing the thing that maybe
we've seen more recently where people
are like Oh coffee
there's money in that I'll just have a
go at coffee right people looked at this
one like oh that looks hard maybe I'm
not gonna do it I don't know but there
was all this success but none of the
magnetism for some reason people weren't
desperate to get into it the way that we
saw in the in the years that came later
and that kind of weirded me out for me I
that was also a year where we actually
travelled around the u.s. to try and
sort of see things anyone recognizing
this guy little hero moment for me it's
kind of a hundred
his name is David shoma he's fascinating
the coffee at his his shops tastes like
it did ten years ago because that's how
he likes it and actually that's
immensely impressive the other thing
that bothers me slightly is that he
still pulls bed
shots that all of his staff that's what
it like he they just like a little bit
better every time and his staff are
rigorously drilled you work in gear or
there's a barback before you get to
touch a coffee machine so the fact that
he let me steam milk was mostly down to
the fact we had a TV crew for us it felt
like specialty was kind of booming
around the world like San Francisco was
a big thing
Portland was a big thing Vancouver had
like a massive scene Seattle's still
doing its thing it felt like coffee was
gaining momentum everywhere which seemed
like a good thing for us starting
square-mile a decade ago in a railway
arch which some of you I know are
familiar with or visited us there and I
think that one of the lessons we learned
back then was the value of community
right the the people that used to come
to these weird events that we did that
I'm very proud of I know some of you in
this room that came to this event and
probably this event if you're not in
this photo there's a few people that you
might recognize if you work in coffee
too long
community was was it turned out to be
this really powerful and interesting
thing in London the early kind of coffee
community here was a very coherent very
together coffee community right I'm
looking at giddy up and dose in the back
and kind of been like you a great
example of those businesses right
because for a long time the news now the
news now is depressing broadly speaking
but for a lot growing up the way that
the news worked on TV was they would do
big headline news depressing depressing
boring and just before the summary they
would be like and here's the crazy weird
person we found this week right and they
would pan over to some guy in a potting
shed in the middle of England and he'd
be talking about breeding rabbits would
be like what a crazy freak and then we'd
hear the news again and we'd finished
sad and what I worried about was that
people who are extremely passionate
about quality tend to sound crazy right
especially in a market that has no
quality so if you're they're going no no
no coffee is all terrible
an effect can be amazing and can be
interesting it can be sweet and can be
complex if you're just one person you're
a crazy person
but if you have a community of people
all saying the same thing
this becomes a whole other thing and
what's interesting is the media treats
you really differently to being a crazy
person you become a trend worth talking
about with writing about and back at
there in this time timeout or actually
the magazine that were kind of
influential and interested and if they
wrote about your coffee shop you were
busier next week for sure
that doesn't really happen anymore but
definitely happened back then
and it was the beginning I think of
something really interesting for London
so 2009 as we take a long and if I'm
tell me if I'm right on this one that is
that the right year was a 2009 Jewry a
few businesses style in 2009 this is
where I get into tricky water right now
I'm gonna ruffle some feathers probably
mostly because the next slider looks
really weird a bunch of businesses
started that became quite a comic for
the London coffee scene there's more on
here is more than are on here but I
think it began to spread what would turn
out to be quite a difficult idea and I
don't know why it looks like this I can
type I promise the idea that if you have
great quality then you will be
successful right this was an idea that
really began to gain traction around
this time and in tiny letters down here
it says men because I don't think that's
true I don't think the simple statement
of quality equals success is true or
correct
I think advantage equals success right
and at that time quality was an
advantage no question right there was
not a lot of good coffee and having
great coffee gave you an advantage in
the marketplace really did people would
travel and you know I mean like you
could leverage your advantage to be
successful at that time but I think it
sort of told a story that was probably
further compounded by
I coffee roasters that good quality
coffee equals success and I think did
disservice to the rest of the hard work
that goes into success that's about more
than just serving a nice cup of coffee
and I think it's something that's become
even more true now where good quality
coffee is not particularly hard to find
sure some parts of the UK shop some
parts of London not as easier than
others but certainly there are bits of
London where it's very easy very easy to
find good coffee and just because you
have good doesn't mean success it's a
it's the kind of Red Queen theory of
evolution right which is a book by who
and and simply summarized as we talk
about survival of the fittest right
let's say you have a bunch of animals
the ones that can run faster don't get
eaten right typical example all you have
left are fast animals right once the
slow ones are gone no one has an
advantage anymore and that's true in
business with everything and what we
would turn to our advantage would very
quickly be co-opted by others from that
year Starbucks announced the flat white
you know mean there they are like oh
that's a thing people buy we should do
that this was this was done by a really
nice guy called Darcy he was the MD of
Starbucks UK and he was so nice they
fired him because he did things like
closed stores where people didn't want
to Starbucks and sort of listened to
local communities and sort of tried to
be sympathetic and how they opened
places and the US head office were like
that's losing and you will go and we
will put someone new in who just was
like we're gonna open more stores
everywhere and they did and it worked
fine but this was yeah this was 2009 I
think what dates missing up here cos
they did the same thing with their weird
like 13 ounce blah way or somethin
made no sense you've seen the new Costa
flat menu right have you seen this
everything is flat and it's part of the
flat family who lets them say this out
loud you can get a flat rocker a flat
back you can i'm not even that's not a
joke
anyway it was strange times in 2000 2009
so 2010 i hate myself for this next
sentence capitalism sort of it sort of
likes a certain state of order a certain
state of being and it does not abide by
deviation from that state what it will
do as a system is drag everything back
to some kind of capitalistic order I
will explain that promise you that
and I say in some ways 2010 was a year
of kind of peak rebellion of coffee
trying to get as far away from what it
was as it possibly could right pushing
as far as we could into weird into new
and I would define that by how we made a
bunch of really interesting helpful
mistakes which we didn't know where
mistakes at the time but hindsight is a
is a powerful and cruel thing we here
did a thing called penny University
which was like this temporary cafe that
had six ish seats no espresso drinks
just built a coffee three different
filter coffees no milk no sugar that was
it everything was brewed to order in
front of you what we were trying to do
at the time was trying to make full -
coffee expensive and valuable because
filter coffee still had that kind of
greasy hangover of being a thing that
was given away at hotel conferences
there was just a pot of dark filth that
was caffeinated and necessary and and
like pret do this thing that still just
irks me pret sell filter coffee and they
sell espresso and they used the same
coffee blend for both because who cares
and
an espresso a pret certainly was the
last time I checked I'm good for a while
one pound 25
bargain so that's for one ounce of
liquid or filter coffee 99p because
espresso special it's my magic to luxury
I don't know but like this myth that
espresso was somehow better and filter
coffee was somehow worse was really a
thing in a problem and so we did a thing
where were like well that's just sort of
celebrate for two coffee a little bit
and what we what we learnt in about
three months and probably didn't
communicate was pouring water on coffee
is slow and annoying and painful hard
work without a huge amount of a reward
to it you know I mean it takes a long
time to make a pour-over but paurav is
kind of boomed around this time and it
wasn't just in the UK that we were doing
weird things anyone recognized this cafe
couple people recognized this cafe this
is intelligences cafe in Venice Beach
this was kind of peak madness in a way
so this cafe has five espresso machines
in it this is this is this is how far we
got down the path of crazy so you come
in easy you come in here and you line up
to a central point and at that point you
are collected and taken and hosted by a
barista who takes you to one of the four
- group machines around the cafe for
like a personal interactive experience
right we just you know that's like four
cafes all in one
they had like a custom old La Marzocco
redone with some strangeness inside it
and a slow bar for tea and that kind of
stuff so like five little mini cafes and
then here what you can't see is like
stadium-style seating like bench seating
so you could sort of sit and watch the
spectacle of this thing it got a bit
weird and this is also coincidentally
saying yeah the pressure profiling bit
became a thing right it's the same thing
well like we just must explore and do
new stuff and experiment because we're
just going to find the promised land of
deliciousness and we'll just unlock
something that that when we serve it to
a customer like a light bulb going on in
their head
they'll get it right they'll get that
coffees amazing if I can just find how
to brew this espresso or serve them this
drink or give them that experience
they'll get it and that's not really how
people work that's not how people drink
their coffee but we were full of a great
deal of hope and enthusiasm and I think
when that didn't pan out the way that we
wanted it to it led in some ways to this
kind of period of stagnation and if
you've worked in coffee in London for
more than five years and you think there
hasn't been some stagnation let me know
anyone maybe you just haven't worked in
coffee for five years at all right
things the ideas have slowed down and
this is the bit where capitalism's
grubby little fingers stick into you and
start to pull you back to the mainstream
like what it was before so if that's
what's gonna happen
well the question is what can we learn
right what can we learn from where we've
gone if we if we plot that point out we
sort of deviated out from this the
normal we got weirder and weirder and
weirder and then we stopped we are gonna
get to some of them pulled back in again
and we know this because forgive the
clipart everything is cyclical right
there is loads of different cycles you
could talk about - about the hype cycle
that's kind of an interesting one if you
want to google it there's the straight
innovation cycle right you have a boring
industry so passionate people do some
interesting stuff they gain some success
some of them become quite successful and
begin to acquire other companies to
maintain their growth they consolidate
and you end up with not many companies
in quite a boring industry again beer in
the UK has done this before right in the
70s and 80s loads of breweries know into
breweries and then 90s 2000s five
breweries kind of owned everybody right
the industry massively consolidates all
these little startup breweries get
absorbed by the giant evolve breweries
and
what that led to was the craft beer
movement here in London what happened
again people are restless and annoyed
and they want better and they could
start doing interesting stuff and they
grow and they grow in the growths and
get a bit more successful and then lo
and behold I was at a B&B of come and be
like hmm
Camden I'll have you and this you and
the acquisitions have started with great
speed in beer an increasing speed in
coffee right we're starting to see it
very clearly on a much much larger level
you've got like Jay a B and we familiar
with Jerry B this this kind of weird
private equity thing out of what are
they from Austria no no Jerry from some
one time anyone no one dealer no so
there are things that have happened
before that we can expect to happen
again coming back to coffee this one's
going to be interesting in a poset away
tall roasting white-label roasting we're
going to start to see more and more
coffee companies that don't roast coffee
anymore it seems kind of weird but right
now there are so many Roasters in the
market that roasting your own coffees no
longer an advantage you know I mean
actually in a very aggressive
marketplace if you could go cheaper and
still make money that's an advantage now
I'm not interested in this but lots of
people are and the easiest way to get
cheap coffee is to have a very big
company roasted for you with all of
their scale put your brand and logo on a
bag and you can turn around to cafe X be
like hey buy my coffee it's whatever it
is but it's cheap it's none of this
overpriced local crap this is just good
honest value for money and that's that's
going to be a thing I'm not saying we're
gonna start we're not gonna white label
roasted people I shouldn't be clear
about this I have never judged in doing
this we have noticed we're doing this
for other people it would be a terrible
business to do that but this is coming
back no questions about it and you'd be
surprised by the number of Roasters
already doing it as they look to grow
with just through volume and as
this is inevitable we can be sad about
it we can be sad that big companies are
going to buy little companies bigger
companies are going to buy big companies
and giant companies are gonna buy big
Asian companies it's just it's going to
happen
[Music]
we can't stop it Pete you know
capitalism demands growth right your
capital you must leverage it to decrease
your costs and make more money it's
going to happen I don't like it none of
us really like it it makes the whole
situation boring but actually that's not
necessarily the worst thing in the world
if we're trying to be interesting so it
kind of brings us to the question what
if we what if we want a different future
right if we don't want to go back into
exactly the same loop how do we splinter
off and spin off to the side away from
where everything's going to go well I
would argue that we're going to have to
have a little bit of patience right now
it's really really hard to stand out as
a high quality coffee place in London
because there are loads of high quality
coffee places in London that's not going
to be the case in a few years time
they'll just be less some will have
consolidated some one have sold
themselves to coaster cost we're going
to buy somebody I've no doubt I suspect
I know who they want and there are
companies trying to be bought by Kosta
right now but yeah that's a definite
exit for somebody out there but if we
don't want to do that if we continue to
plow the path that we want to plow then
we can be like some of the beer
companies in the US this started in the
70s right there have been through this
cycle once and have grown and have
persevered by continuing to go the way
they set out to go in the first place
because the temptation is always going
to be now well how do I compete maybe I
cut costs maybe I go cheaper maybe I go
more mainstream right which is going to
be an increasingly crowded in difficult
place and I think staying true to what
genuinely inspired us in the first place
that will keep us deviant from
capitalism I think is the way to go we
have to have a really strong idea of
what we're trying to achieve you have to
have strong vision we have to
people behind it but it's about not
caving to the increasing pressure
I think I'm not saying that we should
try and run their businesses or ignore
our costs or ignore rising rents or
ignore or rising people costs and all of
the challenges that we face but we've
got to choose where we're going to
compromise and if we compromise in our
quality in and our brand and our vision
then we become stuck in the massive
competition we don't stand out anymore
and we have no advantage if we go like
everyone else is going so it's really as
far as I'm concerned about remaining
different to everyone else and accepting
what's going to happen in the
marketplace you can try and fight it or
you can try and take advantage of it you
know and I would rather surf the wave
then drown under it which is how I see
it it's going to happen I'm gonna stop
talking now
and I'll say thank you and if you have
any questions I would love to answer
them
[Applause]