Upselling coffee & tea: upgrading service and products are key ways operators can improve their tea and coffee sales in a competitive environment

Cheers,  Oct, 2005  by Ellie Van Savage

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There's a wide variety of coffee and tea choices available to consumers today, in virtually every food service and convenience location. Starbucks continues to lead the charge with dozens of ready-to-go coffee and tea drinks, from its Caramel Macchiato to its Tazo Chai Tea Lattes. Even at Dunkin Donuts, customers have the choice of at least eight or nine different flavors of coffee, hot and cold, including coconut, raspberry and toasted almond.

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This wide range of options has created in customers the notion that their right to choice should also exist in all restaurants, managers and chefs agree. Philippe Lajaunie, president of the five-location Brasseries Les Halles, says, "American consumers are definitely more educated about what good coffee is than in the past. This is a result of Americans discovering and appreciating good food over the last 15 to 20 years, through travel, and much better products used by chefs. This has extended into the beverages they drink. Anything that brings people to quality is great. If you look at what Starbucks has done, it has done a great job at educating people about coffee, even explaining what coffee is."

Guests have also become savvier about tea. "While coffee is still the bigger seller at our restaurant, tea is catching up," says Amy Svendberg, general manager at the Grand Cafe at the Hotel Monaco in San Francisco. "Guests have a greater awareness about the health benefits, the decrease in caffeine in teas. And they're much more knowledgeable about products. The Whole Foods stores, for example, carry so many teas and this has led to a more sophisticated clientele."

With all of the options available to today's consumers, what can full-service restaurants do to make their coffees and teas stand out in the crowd? In two words, better service. There are many ways that operators can increase sales and augment profits by upgrading the quality and presentation of these beverages, notably by making the experience special for their guests.

FULL FRENCH PRESS

"In increasing coffee sales, restaurateurs should try to give something a bit more, to add value in some way," says Lajaunie. Les Halles restaurants--two each in New York and Florida and one in Washington, DC--add value with French press coffee service. "There's ceremony around it, and people appreciate that. More importantly, it gives guests the joy of the ritual of having fresh coffee brewed in front of them," he says. "And people don't mind paying a bit more for it, to have that quality of service. We do the same with loose teas, brewing and serving them table-side in press pots as well."

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Lajaunie says Les Halles tried serving sugar cubes as an accompaniment to the service, "but people didn't really relate to it, so we serve white and brown granular sugar." Also adding value, he says, "We always give a bit of complementary chocolate on the side. It's between biscotti and a brownie." Les Halles uses both small and larger French press pots, depending on how many are being served. "The coffee used in French press is not as finely ground as espresso. We use Arabica from Africa because it's strong but not bitter, and we get a lot of our coffee from New York-based Dallis Coffee."

Dallis provides coffee for many of New York's top restaurants, and it also loans out French press pots to its customers as well, ranging in capacity from 10- to 48-ounces. Jim Munson, vice president of Dallis, says operators need to change their equipment to provide better coffee, and stop offering just one type. "This is the age of specialty coffee," he says. "When a server asks, 'Would you like regular or decaf?,' that just dumb-downs coffee service and operators need to break through that by not using big electric brewers that make 10 or 12 cups at a time." Dallis' Fresh Impressions offers packets of one-ounce servings of coffee made for French presses, with the roast date on it. "Some operators have said it's too hard to make, so I'm making it easier for them," says Munson.

Using local suppliers is one way to ensure the freshness of your coffee service. The Fifth Floor in San Francisco, for example, helmed by Melissa Perello, takes their coffee seriously. "We use organic coffee and teas from Bay area purveyors, served tableside in press pots," she says. Each coffee drink is ground to order, and the restaurant serves its local favorite, Blue Bottle Coffee, a small-batch roaster in Oakland.

TEAS GO UPSCALE

Restaurant operators can increase tea sales by offering more choices and upsell with specialty teas containing herbs, fruit peels and flowers. "People are expanding away from English Breakfast and Earl Grey. They're trying new things and new teas," says Sebastian Beckwith, with In Pursuit of Tea, in Brooklyn, NY. In Pursuit of Tea explores remote areas in China to supply fine loose teas to the U.S. market.