Posts Tagged ‘economy’

Brewed coffee and the UK

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

This is something of a summary of the short talk I gave at the Allegra Strategies UK Coffee Leader Summit a week or so ago.  Please also bear in mind that this talk was directed at the UK market specifically so won’t necessarily hold true for other national coffee cultures.

For me this talk was a moment of crystalisation about how I feel about coffee right now, and what I want to focus a lot of my energy on.  I had initially planned to talk about how quality focused businesses were doing well right now, but in the process of writing the talk that seemed to shift.  I should add a final caveat to this by saying that I do love making and drinking espresso.

My talk was titled “How the coffee industry lost the public’s trust, and how good coffee can win it back again.”

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Recession and the British high street

Friday, January 16th, 2009

In the last decade high streets1 in the UK have become increasingly homogenised.

In my old job I would end up travelling visiting most major towns and cities in the UK and it was depressing that they all looked the same – same brands, same items, same old same old.

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Footnotes:
  1. For those who don’t know what a high street is – in the UK the main shopping street in every town is refered to as a high street, and is often called High Street. []