Coffee in Australia Part 2
This part is more about the business of coffee in Australia and how can it work. With casual wages sitting at £13-17 per hour and a small cup of coffee selling for an average of £2.50 sounds like a squeeze. Wait for this though! Because wages are higher, prices of everything else become higher too. “A Speciality Coffee Blend” at trade looks like most of £20 /Kg and single farm coffees are common at £30/Kg. This raises some interesting questions about how much the ingredients and labour cost as a proportion of the selling price. This could also answer why the amount of coffee in the cup has dropped too.
From the outside, the Australian coffee scene consumes a lot. The current (new) government is in favour of looking after its workforce and developing a well-paid economy. This is no bad thing, possibly a great thing. The similarity that I can draw (to the UK) is that there is a big squeeze on operators of businesses.UK coffee shops currently have daft rents, VAT (twice that of Australia), and business rates. Good staff cost more if you can find them and then you need a constant queue to make it stack up.
Things to take away from this:
I think that we will experience some of what Australia is now, in years to come.
Small is often beautiful if you are a coffee shop.
Independent companies do “bigger stuff” rather than leaving it all to the chains.
90% of all coffee machines in Australia are La Marzocco and most of them are custom colours.
