Frankly Speaking: How choosing a coffee supplier taught me some valuable business lessons

I have a confession to make. I’ve never really been a coffee drinker. 

A staunch tea lover, my cupboard has always been filled with herbal offerings and teapots of various sizes. Even living with an award-winning barista during my sharehouse days did little to sway me.

That all changed one very unremarkable morning in a sea of identical mornings in lockdown, where trying to work and parent within the four walls of my home had pushed me to a new point of exhaustion. 

My partner brewed up a cup of coffee on our brand new we-better-get-a-coffee-machine-seeing-as-we’re-working-from-home Breville and silently handed it to me. While initially he did have to be a bit heavy-handed on the sugar, I was a good student, and am now well-versed in the ritual of caffeine.

The timing of my coffee revelation could not have been better, considering within just two years I would be on my journey to open a cafe of my very own.

And so, we had reached one of the most critical points in our cafe career in the coffee capital of Australia: who on earth do we choose to supply the coffee?

The rule of three

My coffee selection journey seemed to be ruled by the number three. Three tastings, with three brands, where each offered us three different blends to choose from. 

There were also three considerations I had in mind when choosing: the taste, ethics and personality of the supplier.

In the interest of being respectful to those involved in a very small industry, I won’t be naming these brands — instead, let’s call them Italian Coffee, Ethical Coffee and Local Coffee.

The first meeting

Meeting number one was at the Italian Coffee roastery. A gorgeous fit-out, a great atmosphere and really good coffee. One of my favourite brands to use at home. The rule of three followed us here, as there were three of us doing the tasting — a former barista, my sister Angie, and me. 

This is where we got introduced to the idea of the three blends. 

Coffee moves along a spectrum, from lightly roasted, new-wave coffee (the kind that tastes almost lemon-y), to more rich, traditional dark roast. Each coffee brand will generally have three roasts on offer, a light, mid, and dark roast (though where their start and end points are on the spectrum can vary greatly). 

Here, we learnt there’s an interesting phenomenon that happens in Melbourne (and is replicated across most major cities). The closer you are to the city centre, the more likely tastes are going to move towards those new, light, citrusy roasts. As you head out towards the ‘burbs, with its mix of demographics, a middle-ground mid-roast performs best. And then you hit regional Australia, where the rule, by and large, is a huge swing towards dark, traditional roasts. 

We loved the coffee, with the mid-roast being a perfect compromise for where our cafe would be – a suburb that still had its Greek and Italian roots but was welcoming more and more city-dwellers that had moved to raise their families.

As I drove home, I happened to pass several cafes with the sign for the Italian Coffee out the front. As a brand, they have huge aspirations and partnerships, but was it a bit too much? Would we just be another number to them? As newbies in the coffee scene, we really needed a partnership that felt good, where we had the support we needed to tackle this challenge head-on.

 

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The second meeting

Meeting number two was with Ethical Coffee. Despite many brands discussing ethical and fair trade coffee, the industry still has a long way to go. There are only a handful of places in Melbourne that are really roasting and producing coffee that is kind to people and the planet. 

Ethical Coffee is one of the leaders in this space. Here we learnt of the concept of a coffee broker, where a lot of brands will shop around and buy beans at a particular price to keep costs down. That means that sometimes the quality of bean goes down so the price of a cup of coffee doesn’t go up. 

Coffee is still a hugely exploitative field, and Ethical Coffee has direct links with producers overseas, with agreements that ensure workers are paid 50% above market value. They were also very concerned with the sustainability of the industry, constantly trying to be as eco-friendly as possible in their operations. 

One piece of advice we learnt here that will stick with me is the concept of, for lack of a better word, a “tastemaker”. 

Basically, the rep said, you have four people walk into your cafe. They all enjoy the coffee and the experience and they leave. But the fifth person is the one you want to impress, because they’re the one all their friends rely on to tell them where to eat and drink. They’re the influencer in their group and if you don’t capture them, you’ll lose out. 

We left Ethical Coffee with them ticking two out of three boxes — unfortunately, the taste didn’t pass the mark and we couldn’t agree to serve coffee that we wouldn’t enjoy drinking ourselves. 

Which brings us to Local Coffee.

The third meeting

Local Coffee is not too far from our cafe. It’s housed in a huge former warehouse (surprise, surprise) and is dark and moody with expertly placed feature lighting. The rep here coincidentally went to the same high school as my sister and me, was chatty, funny and hospitable. We loved the coffee. Here, we only had two choices — a mid or dark roast, and we liked them both. We talked at length about potential collaborations, about branding our own packages of beans to sell in store. 

They offered us unlimited training at no cost, a godsend to our partnership, where we needed all the help we could get.

By the end of the meeting, our mind was made up. This was a business we wanted to work with, the coffee was tasty and though they weren’t as principled as Ethical Coffee, they were slowly doing their best to improve and had great aspirations for the near future. 

We left the roastery feeling energised. Here we were, with one of the heaviest decisions on our shoulders as a new cafe business done and dusted. 

The next day, I called Local Coffee and confirmed that they were it; we wanted to partner with them.

A spanner in the works

As the next few months passed by, with holdups in funding and council red tape, I felt steady knowing that at least we had locked in our coffee supplier. 

Then, just a few weeks ago, as things with council started to pick up speed, I called Local Coffee to check in and let them know we wanted to get the ball rolling.

“Oh,” said the rep, flatly. “I’ve been meaning to call you.” 

He proceeded to tell me that there was another business opening not far from us, and it had engaged Local Coffee as well. While we were navigating through our various challenges, this rival business had swept Local Coffee out from under us and signed an exclusivity deal, meaning we could no longer partner with them.

I left a long pause. “I wish you had called me to let me know.”

The rep brushed me off, saying it had been a while and he was still really looking forward to coming in to see us when we opened.

It was here that I learned a lesson that I already knew — salespeople are really slippery. 

With the sting of rejection hot in my chest, we were back to square one. 

Chryssie Swarbrick is a writer, small-business-juggler and mum of two. She is currently documenting her adventures in opening a cafe, Two Franks, opposite her childhood home.