Ue VENTURES INTO THE LUXURY HOTEL MARKET

If you’ve been keeping a close eye on our recent updates, you would have read about one of our latest new contract wins for Urban Espresso with Crowne Plaza Hotels and in particular the Birmingham city centre location that has just undergone a £18m refurbishment.

You may be wondering why Urban Espresso have ventured into the luxury hotel market... well its quite simple.

Initially when we were approached by Crowne Plaza to take a look at their refreshments offer in their corporate meeting rooms and conferencing areas. It was clear that they needed help with their offer throughout the business and not just in the meetings rooms.

When talking to the management team it was obvious that they had a requirement and a desire to make improvements to their coffee menu, enabling them to take the standard of their offer to the next level.

After using Starbucks and Matthew Algies for a good number of years, all of us at Urban Espresso relished the opportunity to pull together or combined experience in putting together a strategy and menu that would enable the hotel to offer their guests a coffee service that would set them apart from any other hotel chain in their local area and further afield.

As well as a change in attitude for the hotel management, we have made a major change in how traditional coffees and teas have been typically served. This was only possible by way of Urban Espresso’s intensive barista training program, which required us to spend a considerable amount of time in training all there managers, supervisors and staff in understanding and coming to appreciate the benefits and rich rewards associated with customer satisfaction and increased sales through the implimentation of such an offer.

With this new menu came about a new and innovative approach and innovative drinks such as the UK’s very first Espresso Gourmand where launched, along with a selection of after dinner espresso martinis and the introduction of the newly packaged London Tea boutique silk pyramid second flush tea range, all of which have been exclusively brought to Crowne Plaza Hotels by Urban Espresso.

BRING BACK THE ESPRESSO CART

The demand for better quality coffee in the workplace has never been greater and this is set to grow even further, according to the recent 2008 Allegra Coffee at Work report. In this report it is documented as saying, "There are currently 24 million office workers in the UK, currently suffering awful refreshments in their place of work".

This report is also backed up by a recent article that was published by Edinburgh University into research that they had carried out, that proved for every 50 employees in a city office location, the employer would be loosing on average £85,000 per annum in downtime with staff leaving the office on coffee runs to the local high street coffee bar.

With this information now in the public domain employers at long last have started to take note of these facts, and they are now starting to look at ways to address this problem. When they look at this more closely they have started to realise that they too could potentially cash in on the benefits, of being able to bring the convenience of a simplified high street coffee offer into their workplace. By introducing compact cost effective solutions such as the mobile coffee cart, and located them in large public or open areas such as reception or large foyers they have been able to see first hand the rich rewards of both employee satisfaction and improved productivity, but also a new income street with great profits.

Recent examples of an average sized building with 150 staff or more, serving 200 coffees per day at £1.50 per cup for a 12oz latte, (grande) are able to enjoy profits in the region of £54K per annum after costs. (5 day week) This profit excludes any margin generated from the sales of any additional impulse, sweet or snack lines that accompany the sale of the coffee.

Urban Espresso have two mobile fully contained coffee cart solutions available, ranging from as little as 1.3 - 1.8 in length and come complete with all the professional equipment, branding and point of sale required to operate and merchandise an in house speciality retail coffee offer.

Initial and ongoing, staff training is offered to locations who have there own staff, or alternatively we are also able to offer clients a fully managed and operated service contract for business locations where they do not want to take over the day to day running of the coffee cart.