A guide to buying coffee beans There are literally hundreds of different brands of coffee beans out there for you to choose from. If you look around online you will find coffee blends on offer supplied in various guises with varying prices. We understand that in the first instance, you may wish to choose the cheapest beans you can get, we have often heard people state that "coffee is coffee". That is true but only by definition, this article is quite long but if you want to drink good coffee, or if you are a commercial vendor and you want to run a successful coffee shop or business, read on, it will be worth your while. Thinking from a strictly logical point of view most people would agree with the statement that in life, to a degree, you get what you pay for. This is also true, to a degree, with coffee. If you want a good Espresso, Latte or Cappuccino, the most important thing remember is that from the very start, you must begin by using high quality coffee beans. It is true to say that a person who is not very experienced or knowlegeable can make a pretty good coffee if they start with a good grade of coffee bean, it is also true to say that the best coffee maker (aka a Barista) in the world will not be able to make a good coffee if they start with a sub standard coffee bean. As the old saying goes "you cannot polish turd". For a domestic user it seems pointless to put cheap coffee through an expensive machine, only to end up with mediocre results just to save a few pennies. We cover the commercial aspect in the next section. Invest in success In our experience the people who own the coffee shops which do the most amount of trade are those who spend the most on investing in their supplies and care enough, or are smart enough to do so. We have seen many people come and go, the ones who go are always the one who went 'cheapskate' on their coffee. They bought cheap coffee, cheap cups, cheap sugar and cheap almost everything else they could get their hands on. One thing that all these people had in common is that they would not listen, or be told, they thought they were being shrewd or finacially astute. Buying high quality products at a reasonable and competitive price we can understand, but buying low quality goods for a cheap price, it just doesn't make good business sense, remember you are supplying a product which people taste and you want those people to come back for, again and again. If you buy cheap coffee you can get it for £20.00 for 6 kilos, we have even seen some sell for less, but when you look at the maths behind it, you begin to see it's a false economy. You buy 6 Kilos of coffee for £20.00, taking it that your grinder is set correctly to dispense 7 Grammes at a time, you will get around 857 shots of coffee from that box, that's around 2 - 3p per shot. Now if you had spent around £42.00 for 6 kilos or more, on some Happy Donkey coffee, it will cost more initially, but only between around 2p and 5p per cup and on average the profit in a good coffee is around £1.40 per cup, even if your milk is expensive. The difference is when you buy Happy Donkey Coffee it is freshly roasted, full of flavour and an absolute pleasure to drink. When you buy cheap coffee you get what you pay for, it's usually tasteless, dusty and quite often stale, you have little chance of buying a consistent roast from a vendor who sells primarily on price, that is a fact. So where is the value in paying more for coffee beans? The value is in the quality of the product, the taste, the aroma, the freshness and the consistency, this ultimately results in a pleasing experience for your customer, long gone are the days when people were happy to get a coffee from a 'real machine', they know quality when they taste it and you only get one chance to impress. All our coffees are of extreme high quality, gourmet by definition. We would never sell a bean that we would not be happy to use ourselves, we are very proud of our roasts, every batch of coffee is tested, tasted and checked in order to maintain the same high quality that has given us the reputable status we enjoy throught the uk. Think about it, when was the last time you went back to a shop because the experience was 'ok' ? The probable answer is that you didn't. If your customers come into your business and have a great coffee, they WILL remember it and the chances are they will tell people about it and come back again, they will probably choose you above anyone else in the area because they know you sell the best coffee in town. Every business needs repeat business and repeat business means you also get referrals and ultimately more people through the door. This is not sales spiel, it's fact, buy quality because if you customers have an average experience when they buy a beverage from you they will not come and tell you it could be better, they will just go elsewhere next time. That's what happened to all the people we have seen go out of business, they bought cheap coffee, we tried to tell them. Thank you for reading this article. See our Coffee Beans in our online shop by clicking on the links below: Italian Coffee Beans | Brazilian Coffee Beans | Organic Coffee Beans | Costa Rican Coffee Beans ©2008 www.happydonkey.co.uk - All Rights Reserved This article or any part of it may not be reproduced in any form without our written permission.