Coffee Marketplace

Free on-loan equipment is used in the coffee industry to avoid customers switching between suppliers easily. Additionally it is a way for coffee companies who have many outlets for coffee taking responsibility for the equipment and deploying it as they see fit.

Many people who are starting cafes and catering venues may not have the capital, say $5000, to spend on coffee equipment. That is where a coffee company with equipment can locate it in there quickly, get the customer up and running and start making income.

Exiting a customer site is difficult. You are never going to have 100% of your equipment on site. You have got to go through get the equipment out of the site and be prepared to have that equipment out of production until you find a new site for it. Invariably when you need new sites they come and want to come on-line in short term notice, whereas to get out of sites will take you at least thirty days with a thirty day notice period.

There is a growing trend amongst the hotels and clubs market to outsource the management of their kitchen and catering function. This is mainly driven by the extra work-load that is involved in organising food supplies and all that goes with the kitchen chef and good catering staff. The catering issue is not able to compete with other very efficient catering providers. The hotels and clubs outsource the management of their kitchens to experienced catering providers who concentrate on providing that catering service.

From a coffee point of view it changes the decision maker in who provides the coffee and who enters the agreements to provide the equipment. There seems to be two ways in which it is done. The club will have an infra-structure with equipment and will provide all the equipment. The caterer basically just provides labour. In a growing way we are starting to see caterers who will come in and take responsibility for all the equipment. They are entering into their own coffee contracts and coffee equipment supply contracts. In this case you need to have an alliance with these outsourcing providers if you are going to make a success in the commercial espresso market.