Welcome to winter! It’s time for those favourite belly warmers like Osso Bucco and Butternut Pumpkin soup. Yes, it’s time to get the chainsaw out, stack the firewood and light those cozy fires.
This month I had the pleasure of meeting a real life hero and to be inspired by a motivated lady who has seen the opportunity to turn commercial food wastage into food for the hungry. Ronni Kahn, CEO and founder of Oz Harvest has grown her concept of food recycling into a charity that gives out hundreds of thousands of meals annually to the needy. I was lucky to be invited to a local dinner for REAP, which is the chapter group of OZ Harvest here in Port Macquarie. After a very motivational chat by Ronni, I instantly thought about how cafés and the café supply industry should get involved. We are the largest sector of the hospitality industry, so please put your thinking caps on and see what we all can do to contribute to this amazing charity.
The team at Café Culture has been busy again travelling the globe attending coffee events in Seattle, Shanghai, Melbourne and Vancouver. The world definitely is becoming smaller, as far away places become more accessible. The travel time is crucial for us as a media business, in helping us understand world café trends and what we need to stay ahead of the game. I believe the Australian and New Zealand café market still have some of the most impressive experiences worldwide. Being innovative in the world market in coffee and café food service has created the massive growth in our café space. I also believe we have sold the concept of café lifestyle well to the consumer, where they believe they need to visit a café daily.
Our latest Café Pulse survey is showing a CBD office worker visits a café 5 – 6 days a week across the nation. Another interesting figure is the average kilo of coffee usage in café has risen from 10 kg a week to a national average of
15 – 20 kg, which means consumers are spending more on out of home coffee. I also believe our coffee service levels have risen as consumers demand more from the café owner as general coffee knowledge improves.
Now it’s time for my rant. Why are baristas becoming too cool to give good customer service? I appreciate a well made coffee from a well trained barista, but I can’t tolerate arrogance from this new breed of front of house show ponies. It is only a small minority who are spoiling the good image. I suppose in some ways I should also shoulder the blame, as it is companies like ours that have been putting baristas on the pedestal for quite some time. I think it’s time now to educate this bunch into being a little bit more tolerant and understanding of the overall marketplace. One of the few grounding things I have done in my coffee career is go to a coffee growing area in a developing country and really see the hardship in coffee farming and processing. All the coffee we drink in our cafés should be appreciated for its story, and it should not always be about who has paid a high price for a particular origin. I suggest to any upcoming baristas to get on a plane and go see the real coffee industry outside of your social media playground, as not everything you read is true.
In my travels I am getting feedback around issues with paying GST by café owners and how badly this is affecting small operators who are trying hard to run their books cleanly. Many new operators don’t realise most products purchased are GST free but when processed into a meal, GST is incurred, so there is no balance or claim back like other businesses. It’s not the first BAS period that is difficult – it’s the second, as with the first BAS of a new business there is often a refund because of startup and fit out purchases that incur GST.
Smart operators will make sure when they price a menu that they put in the GST component. Most new accounting programs will track GST daily, so as not to shock at BAS time. Another tip is to run a GST account and bank it weekly, so you are forward planning for BAS time.
Look at all receipts, especially when products have been bought from the supermarket, as they will often have GST charged. Many café owners pay these small amounts straight from the till and miss these little claimable items.
The Australian Taxation Department have been targeting cafés for a few years now and they will know the benchmarks of a café structure and will do random audits on businesses where the figures don’t stack up.
The Café Culture team has been very busy preparing to launch a new café association called COBAA (Café Owners and Barista Association of Australia) which will assist café owners and managers in their business. I would urge all café owners to join up so we can unite the Australian café industry and ensure a strong influence in our economic direction. It’s amazing how a multimillion dollar industry has had no real association ties apart from a specialty coffee association, which mainly concentrates on barista competition and development. What COBAA is all about is looking into the full picture of running a café successfully and stopping failure because we are a disregarded industry that is over taxed and under educated. More info at www.cobaa.com.au
Just a quick plug for a program we are supporting in this issue, The Australian Café of the Year Awards. This program has been very successfully run in New Zealand, and there are some great prizes to be won plus the kudos. I will be personally judging cafés later in the year; get involved, so I can come and check out your café.
Sean Edwards