--------------------------------------------------------------- The Hill and Valley Gourmet Coffee Newsletter --------------------------------------------------------------- Issue 5 September 2001 This month - :It's been a long time coming... :Coffees :Life at the Coffee Tree in Aylesbury :The Alpenrost Home - Roaster :Going Mobile --------------------------------------------------------------- It's been a long gap between newsletters this time - sorry about that, but we've been busy, very busy. We know some of you have received some delays after making ordersthrough the site and we've explained to you individually why this sometimes happens. Thanks to those of you who made suggestions on how we might adapt roasting schedules to ensure all coffees leave for you within 2-3 days of order. We will certainly be working on this as soon as we can in order to try to improve the service. Please rest assured that such delays occur from order to roast and not roast to post. --------------------------------------------------------------- Coffees --------------------------------------------------------------- We were somewhat taken aback by the burst of demand that came after our last re-stocking in late June and the following coffees sold out very quickly: Costa Rica Riserva Presidente Guatemala Palencias Peak Java Blawan Estate Old Brown Kalosi Celebes Kalosi Grade 1 Tanzania AA Kilimanjaro We will be re-stocking with all of these for the autumn, but in the meantime we decided to bring in some new coffees for the late summer period and these will all be in the online store shortly: Peru Organic Chanchamayo - roasted dark enough to make "Organic Espresso" India Monsooned Malabar - another unique coffee which OBK lovers will fancy Kenya AA "Mutitu" Estate - less acidic and with a heavier body than our last Kenya Guatemala Strictly Hard Bean Select As far as the blends are concerned we've had to remove Mocha Java and therefore decided to introduce a new espresso blend to take advantage of some of the new coffees we have been "playing" with. A couple of you who managed to prise "review copies" out of hands have been quite complementary and so ESPRESSO SAN GIORGIO will soon be making it's appearance on the main list. Customers at the Coffee Tree have been enjoying it throughout the first week of August. All the above are of course available in Green for home roasting. Prices We have decided that we will no longer be applying our standard "one price for all" to all the coffees in our main range. One of the consequences of the world coffee market's delicate state at the moment is that the price differentials have widened dramatically between rare or premium green coffees and the standard grades. With prices low, the differences in percentage terms are vast in some cases. As a consequence we no longer think it is fair that the Colombia or Sumatra drinker "subsidises" the Kenya drinker!! The price changes (and yes some of them are decreases) will filter into the catalogue this week. --------------------------------------------------------------- Life at the Coffee Tree in Aylesbury --------------------------------------------------------------- Our Coffee House in Aylesbury is now entering it's fifth month and we are slowly establishing ourself as a slightly different type of place for local people to grab a cup of really good coffee and something to eat. Aylesbury is like many other towns in the UK - the town centre offers the usual mix of national chains in our case mostly crammed into two large shopping centres. Independent businesses have to move to the sidestreets (almost invariably restricted parking areas) to be able to afford rents. They fail and close down frequently as did the second hand and rare book shop just 3 weeks ago. Food shopping is almost totally dominated by two massive edge of town Tescos and a Safeway. You seem to be able to buy a mobile phone every 50 yards or so though!! The shame of the situation is that Aylesbury is something of a boom town especially for IT businesses, and property prices in the area are very buoyant - so it is not a case of a boring town centre reflecting a failing local economy. The nice thing for us at the Coffee Tree is that we seem to be attracting a regular clientele who also detest this "naffness" or who are ex-pats and see something in the Coffee Tree that they had as birthright in their home country whether that be Switzerland, Portugal, Spain or Italy. We have very often been encountered with the casual assumption that life will be tough for us because we are "in competition with" the likes of Good Bean and Costa Coffee here in Aylesbury, who both have national chains of distribution and far more visible sites in the town. It is perhaps a sign that UK "cafe society" is finally starting to mature when in a town like Aylesbury we are easily able to cut out a niche for ourselves, and hear complaints about the pricing and customer service in these chains daily. Good Luck to anyone else who fancies having a go in their town - providing you don't blow your money on a sexy fit-out, you may be surprised at what might happen. --------------------------------------------------------------- The Alpenrost Home - Roaster --------------------------------------------------------------- As pre-viewed in the last newsletter, we are now in a position to offer this machine for sale through our website and will be adding it to the catalogue in the next week or so. Like the high end espresso machines and grinders that we offer, the machine has been "bench-tested" extensively by ourselves and friends and business associates and we feel we now know most of the benefits and pitfalls. Our price will be 310 pounds including delivery and 2 pounds of Green Coffee (the Alpenrost takes exactly half a pound per cycle). Our testing included one outdoor show where we sold only filter coffee that had been roasted in front of the customers in the Alpenrost - that was fun! However the greatest endorsement of the machine's capabilities comes from our mate Steve "Hasbean" Leighton. Not satisfied with proving that Rocky and Oscar can be used to serve espressos and cappuccinos in a cafe environment, Steve has taken to ordering green beans from us and roasts for his shop sales in Stafford in the Alpenrost each morning - even we cannot claim such an obsessive approach to freshness as that!! --------------------------------------------------------------- Going Mobile --------------------------------------------------------------- Our mobile event catering season has finally got off the ground in the last month and our eventing customers were happy to see us at recent Horse Trials in Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Cake That (our co-conspirators in bringing quality coffee and cakes to Aylesbury) have armed us with the best Fudge Brownies ever made for this season and we are looking forward to expanding the number of events we go to next summer. We have also been supplying the country's leading serious speciality coffee mobile operation at major music festivals with our roasted coffee this year. If you had an espresso or cappuccino at WOMAD, The Big Chill or even in the campsite at The British Grand Prix, the likelihood is that you were drinking Hill & Valley Coffee without knowing it. Trading under the brands of REAL COFFEE and ESPRESSO TO GO, these guys do a great job of maintaining standards in the heaviest volumes and make your neighbourhood Starbucks or Costa look shameful by comparison. Look out for them if you are going to a festival this summer. --------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 2 Issue 5 September 2001 Copyright (c) 2001 Hill and Valley Coffee Ltd. Information freely distributable, but must include this copyright messages. Formatted and delivered by m.e.thornton internet "Let us show you how your business can succeed on-line" http://www.methornton.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------- T h e G o u r m e t C o f f e e N e w s l e t t e r From Hill and Valley Coffee Ltd. --------------------------------------------------------------- Web: http://www.hillandvalleycoffee.co.uk E-mail: roaster\@hillandvalleycoffee.co.uk Fax: +44 1296 482717 Tel: +44 1296 482708 Mobile: +44 468 028021 Address: Hill & Valley Coffee Ltd The Coffee Tree 11 George Street Aylesbury Bucks HP20 2HU Privacy: http://www.hillandvalleycoffee.co.uk/privacy.html