Kiwisizzler

I am not a coffee connoisseur, but I do appreciate a seriously good cup. With a long career in hospitality, a mother who owned and ran a successful Wellington café, a wife who used to brew over 600 coffees daily, and brother who was a top barista, I’ve managed to learn a bit about the subject.

I was spoilt for choice in Wellington, so my initial experience of coffee in London was, to say the least, dismal. While I’m sure that the big chains—Starbucks, Nero’s, Pret a Manger and Costa—once made a consistently good coffee, it seems that the bigger a business gets, the poorer the standard becomes.

There are several reasons for this. When a business begins its life it is usually headed by someone who is in that business because of their experience and passion. As a business grows, it becomes more likely that the skills and passion become diluted. At what point this dilution becomes the norm depends on whether the management at each site is employing the right people, training them, and constantly checking and re-checking. This can be difficult as the bigger a company becomes, the more pressure there is to keep the labour costs low, resulting in the need to employ unskilled and passion-lacking workers. The café industry notoriously pays minimum wages, and, in the UK, has a high staff turnover—something around 75% per year. As a result, it seems to mainly attract students and transients who don’t want to commit to long-term employment, as opposed to people who join the industry because they love good coffee and food, and want to make it a career.

Even though the above cafes are large national and international companies (Pret turns over around GBP£150million a year, and Nero had a revenue of GBP£70million in 2005, while Starbucks has over 3000 outlets in the UK alone, and Costa has over 500,) they don’t always produce a bad cup. Pret a Manger is probably the most consistent overall, and in my view, the most attractive. They use organic, fair-trade beans and organic milk. At the end of the day, companies like these serve their purpose and feed coffee to the undiscerning masses of the western world. Sadly, they have reduced our expectations of a cup of coffee, and although they all have relatively intense training programs in place, the staff generally don’t have a great deal of passion. Many analysts expect these top companies to double in size over the next decade, so is this the demise of quality coffee on the high street?

I think not! London does have an increasing number of exceptionally good cafes, which give the aficionado an opportunity to taste coffee as good as anywhere else in the world.

‘Flat White was established to bring the refined artisan style coffee prevalent in Australian and New Zealand cafes to London. Flat White has become a rendezvous for Soho locals and a haven for Australian and New Zealand expats and travellers desperate for a good coffee in the capital.’

Yes, it seems that the influence of down-under has ebbed its way into the London coffee market. A brewer of Monmouth beans, Flat White consistently delivers a fantastic cup with attention to detail that keep the homesick Kiwis and Aussies coming back.

Sacred is a Kiwi venture based just off Carnaby Street, owned by Wellingtonians Phil and Vicky Ross. They provide a consistently excellent cup of Joe, along with typical New Zealand cafe food, such as soup, panini, biscotti and carrot cake.

Apart from the Antipodean establishments, other noteworthy London cafes include Café Italia, an institution on Frith Street. Where else in London can you experience a more Italian coffee experience, complete with Vespa riders and surly service?

Vergnano (pronounced ver-nya-no) on Charing Cross Road produces a consistently excellent cup in the Italian style. Worth a special visit. They even give a free chocolate with every cup!

For aficionados of all things coffee and tea there’s the internationally renowned Algerian Coffee Stores on Compton street, in Soho. This store is over 120 years old and specialises in coffee and tea with over 80 different coffees and 160 different teas to choose from. Well worth a visit, even for a quick espresso.

Top of my list would have to be Monmouth. Taking a small share of an industry worth over GBP£1billion a year in the UK, they are succeeding as a growing business with 3 cafes (2 in Borough Market and 1 on Monmouth Street in Covent Garden) and a substantial bean-roasting division. Established in 1978, I think that the overall reason for successfully being able to produce consistently superb coffee in their cafes is that their focus is actually on their roasting division. In fact, their café sales would probably only account for around 5 % of their business, something that accentuates their success when considering the queues to be endured at all of their outlets. They even have a training centre to ensure that all the cafes they supply (numbering around 75) are producing great coffee, further enhancing the reputation of Monmouth Coffee. Go there today!