The International Institute of Coffee Tasters will organize a new edition of Caffè Italia, the Italian Espresso event, at Foodex 2011, the most important food exhibition in Japan (Tokyo, Makuhari Messe, Hall 3, booth C01, March 1-4).

The second edition of Caffè Italia will give visitors the opportunity of tasting six different Italian Espresso blends and evaluate them. For the first time visitors will have to judge the espresso blends using a tasting card. Caffè Italia will also host training sessions held by Chihiro Yokoyama.

Carlo Odello, member of the board of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters and communications manager of the Italian Espresso National Institute, will be at Caffè Italia, too. "We aim at spreading the culture of the real Italian Espresso and Caffè Italia is a great opportunity for us – Mr Odello said – Japan proved to be very sensitive to Italian Espresso, we now have more than 300 tasters in the country. We recently launched the Espresso Italiano Tasting classes in China and are looking for partners in other Asian countries such as Korea and Thailand".

Caffè is organized in cooperation with the International Institute of Coffee Tasters – Japan, the Italian Espresso National Institute and the Italian Trade Commission.

For more information: info@coffeetasters.jp, carlo.odello@italiantasters.com.

The first Espresso Italiano Tasting courses will be held in China in Guangzhou (December 27-28), Shanghai (December 30-31) and Beijing (Jan 1-2).

Carlo Odello, trainer and member of the board of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, will teach the classes. Mr Odello will also attend the Coffee Expo in Guangzhou (December 23-26).

The courses are organized in cooperation with Coffee Secret Company. For more information please get in touch with Mr Darcy Sun Kai: +86 (20) 62352855, darcysunkai@gmail.com.

The International Institute of Coffee Tasters, in collaboration with Caffè Umbria, will bring its Espresso Italiano Tasting seminar to Seattle this fall. Carlo Odello, board member and trainer of the Institute, will explain the characteristics of a true Italian espresso and the correct methods of evaluation. The seminar will open with an introduction to sensory analysis of Italian espresso through the analysis of the main stages of evaluation: visual, olfactory, gustatory-tactile and aftertaste. In the aroma portion of the course, we will explore the fundamental aromas and most frequent flaws and their causes. With the help of the Italian Espresso Trialcard, the official espresso evaluation guide of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters and the Italian Espresso National Institute, we will taste, compare and discuss three different espresso extractions. 

Each seminar includes:

• Espresso Italiano Tasting, the official manual of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters
• The Italian Espresso Trialcard, the official espresso evaluation guide
• Three espressos for the purpose of instruction
• Certificate of Attendance

Dates and times:

• Saturday, October 30, 9:30 to 12:30
• Sunday, October 31, 9:30 to 12:30

Registration Deadline: October 4, 2010

For more information and registration, please click here or write to annamaria@caffeumbria.com

by Carlo Odello

Have you ever tried to drop a line to the customer service of the big multinational coffee companies? We have and we have posed them the sort of question that any careful consumer asks himself: how do you check the quality of your product? We found the address of the customer service or, if they did not have one, the name of the most appropriate person on their corporate websites. We wrote to the companies using a private email address and signed the request. We asked them all the same question: which method do you use for measuring the quality of your product?

This is an unnecessary question when it is down to quality in other sectors. It is already a few years since the car manufacturing industry, just to give an example, has started publishing the results of its safety tests and devotes special focus to them when promoting its product. Coffee is a different story: some companies show the plantations in their ads on television and some others take you in paradise. The overall impression is that not all of them are ready to openly deal with the issue of quality. This is, as we shall see, confirmed by our brief, albeit, accurate analysis.

We had three different categories of replies. Four companies – Nespresso, Illy, Diedrich and MacDonald’s – explained to us in sufficient detail how they measure the quality of the finished product. Vague replies category: Starbucks suggested we should visit their corporate website (which was not that useful), Nestlé replied they would have come back to us. Lavazza told us that quality tests take place everyday and that these tests are certified. The other four companies – Tchibo, Sara Lee, Dotour and Segafredo – have not even replied. We have not been able to contact Costa Coffee because there was no useful contact indication for the common consumer on their website.

Here goes what McDonald’s, Diedrich, Illy and Nespresso said. The Italy customer service for McDonald’s ensured that they use “only products and ingredients that match the highest quality standards and that have been officially approved by competent authorities”. They informed us that “the choice is made on organoleptic evaluations – defined by a panel of tasters – representing the average consumer – who has positively rated the current supplier”. Diedrich gave a more detailed reply saying that the coffee samples are tested before purchase and delivery and that they are also subject to a visual evaluation aimed at spotting any defects of the green coffee. Each roasting process is cupped before it goes to packaging. Also Illy provides great details, informing us that they select the coffee batches and then they make an electronic control on the colour of the beans so that they can discard the flawed ones. They also add that, during the production process, 114 checks are made. From Nespresso, we received a reply by their technical & quality manager Alexandre Bolay (perhaps they smelled the rat?). He said that all throughout the production line there are quality inspections and tasting sessions. The daily production is benchmarked against a reference production: blind testing is done and if the correspondence between the sample and the reference product is lower than 60%, corrective measures are applied to the recipe.

These were their replies. Said this, our test was mainly on the external relations of these companies. The interesting thing to note is that from at least two thirds of the companies we had no useful reply. Actually, Tchibo, Sara Lee, Dotour and Segafredo have not replied at all. We thought this was a bit odd given that quality is the battle field of a wealth of marketing and communication initiatives. In particular, Starbucks vague reply comes as a surprise: they said that, due to the volume of queries they receive, they cannot give interviews or reply to requests for data or provide information on the company other than what is already in the public domain. This comes in a moment when Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO, is fighting against what he defines as a weakening of the Starbucks experience.

In general, talking about the absent companies, and they did this deliberately, we get the impression that their marketing is still based on the assumption that the consumer is passive. They do marketing strongly focusing on promotion rather than information. The point is that now the consumer, when choosing the product, relies on means like other people’s opinion and the Internet which are not that sensitive to the sort of imposition-based marketing style.

by Carlo Odello

We met Gennaro Pelliccia, Production Technical Manager at Costa, he makes sure that the quality of the coffee they produce is good value-for-money. He started off with Costa as a barista in December 1991, then he joined Gino Amasanti at the Roastery in 1997 after his studies in Mechanical Engineering.

First of all, let’s find out something more about Costa: its history and what it is today.
Costa was set up in London in 1971 by two Italian brothers, Sergio and Bruno Costa. The two of them noticed that there was some demand for good-quality, blended coffee so they started supplying such a product to catering services and specialised Italian coffee shops in the UK. In 1978, the Costa brothers opened up their first store in London. This was the beginning of their expansion with two new selling points being opened every year. In 1988, they moved to a bigger site, in the Old Paradise Street, in the Lambeth area, south of London. In 1995, Costa was acquired by the Whitbread Group: at the time it had 41 stores all around the country. Today it is the leader in its sector and it is also the operator growing at the fastest pace: at present, it has 600 stores in the UK and 222 abroad.

What does the coffee market in the UK look like?
According to April 2007 figures, there are approximately 9.300 stores which comprise branded coffee shops, independent and unspecialised operators. It is assumed that there will by a growth by 4.2% per annum which will lead to having 11.000 stores in 2010. As for branded coffee shops, the big chains market, from 2001 to 2006, there was a 10% growth per annum. At present, there are 2.973 stores of this type in the UK: the market share of the branded chains accounts for 32% of the global British market; this percentage should get up to 37% by 2010.

Do you believe that there is still margin for growth for Costa?
Yes, undoubtedly. Twelve years ago we carried out an investigation that made it clear that the market was open to the creation of places, not dominated by males, as is often the case with pubs, where people could meet. This was the ground on which the further development of Costa was built. There has been a positive growth trend for coffee shops also due to a major change in eating habits in the UK over time. Today people do not eat at home most of the time and tend to prefer quick snacks. This is the reason why the coffee shop is the ideal solution.

Let’s speak about quality in the UK.
No doubts that over the last 10 years espressos and cappuccinos are much better in our country. This is also thanks to the clients. Over the last five years, our most evolved clients – those that, after having been to Italy, asked us to offer products which were to a greater extent Italian-style. In addition, the attitude to the product is different: once upon a time, the espresso was chosen because it was probably the cheapest option on the menu. At the beginning there was also a certain linguistic concern triggered by words the pronunciation of which was deemed to be difficult, e.g. ‘caffè espresso’ or ‘latte macchiato’. Actually, nowadays, it is a real choice, part and parcel of the life-style.

How about the future?
This looking for Italian-style products and for better quality will not cease: whoever will not be able to meet this need will have no chances in the market. The next step will actually be the choice of the coffee shop depending on the quality. Costa has already prepared itself for picking up this challenge in an effective way. We measure ourselves against the parameters set by the Italian Espresso National Institute and we use machines and grinder-dispensers that are certified by the Institute. However, the monitoring is not just downstream, at the coffee shop, it starts well in advance on the entire production cycle.

Back to British consumers, do they tend to be loyal to brands?
They are, first of all, loyal to the experience of taking an espresso or a cappuccino in a certain type of place. For example, several clients of Costa are professionals who stop at the same coffee shop on their way to work or when returning home. Our baristas know their tastes and make them feel as if they were at home by offering a tailor-made service. So the clients are loyal because of that atmosphere and that place which looks familiar to them. The very wide product range gives them satisfaction and plays a role in making them loyal.

What is your view on single-dose coffee pods, and, more in general, on any solution that makes the espresso experience possible without a coffee shop?
In the UK there is for sure a developing market for consumption at home of this type of products, though we must not forget that most of the coffee drank at home is instant coffee. The single-dose coffee pods, or other solutions of this sort, are still not too common neither at home nor at the office. In the UK they are becoming increasingly popular at places that are not specialised in coffee, e.g. pub restaurants, where at the end of a meal some clients simply like to have a cup of coffee. In these places, the low sales volume and the high frequency in staff turnover make it difficult to afford having the proper complete machinery and the blend in the form of beans. This is the reason why they opt for the professional espresso machine with filter-holders for single-dose coffee cartridges. Also in the Costa stores we use this sort of solutions for the decaffeinated and Fair Trade products in order to be able to serve a product which is always fresh.

What is the policy of Costa Coffee on the international stage?
Currently, we have more than 200 stores all over the world: Ireland, Eastern Europe, Middle East, India and Pakistan. For the moment being, we have got no plans to enter Italy where there are already independent and well-rooted suppliers that provide an excellent product to the country. In general, in Italy, branding policies are not too strong yet.