Tag Archives: marketing

Gwilym’s disloyalty card

By James Hoffmann | Published: December 17, 2009

Let me start by saying that this has to be one of the best ideas I’ve seen in ages. I’m very pleased and very excited by this.
Gwilym Davies – you know, the current World Barista Champion – has come up with a rather splendid card: the disloyalty card.
The idea is simple: If you go and [...]

Posted in News, Opinion | Also tagged brilliant, disloyalty card, gwilym davies, wbc | 56 Comments

The Fair Trade Finish Line

By James Hoffmann | Published: October 18, 2009

A little while ago my frustration with Cadburys advertising led me to try and sum up my frustrations with Fair Trade in 140 characters. The best I could do was,
Fair Trade – the absolute minimum necessary to get people to stop questioning how you source, or pushing you to do better. Not enough.
The advert [...]

Posted in Opinion | Also tagged black gold movie, costa, fair trade, pricing, starbucks | 18 Comments

Brewed coffee and the UK

By James Hoffmann | Published: May 30, 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 [...]

Posted in Opinion | Also tagged article, Barista, brewing, Coffee, consumer, drinks, economy, Espresso, history, innovation, italy, london, pricing, quality, tradition, trust | 42 Comments

The wine model doesn’t work

By James Hoffmann | Published: January 7, 2009

I think everyone in coffee knows deep down this is true. The wine model only works for wine, we can’t transplant it to coffee and expect some immediate understanding and increased sales of quality coffees.
First and foremost – we don’t drink coffee like we drink wine. Broadly speaking we buy wine in two [...]