FESTIVE SPECIAL
It’s a key time of year for hospitality, so we caught up with Brad Wright, COO at Marimba World, to assess their business approach.
What’s your aim during the festive period? This time of year gives us several events in close proximity, with autumn having led into Halloween and bonfire night. For Christmas, we like to stay traditional. Our Chestnut Hot Chocolate Melt works perfectly and we support customers with specialist point of sale to really promote this. It is different to the usual high-street flavours and fits in to our specially chosen origin chocolate drinks. And don’t forget those who need to be sugar-free. We offer a 55% Sugar Free Hot Chocolate Melt and can pair this up with sugar free 1883 in vanilla, caramel and hazelnut. One of my favourite things is to create a Vanilla Caramel Sugar Free Melt, by combining the flavours. The vanilla caramel truffle is one of our best-selling handmade chocolates. What’s your approach to difficult economic conditions. We are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. The start of the year was particularly hard. Post-Covid there was a bit of bounce back, but as that subsided, reality set in, along with the end to financial help from the government and a need to start paying back various loans. In the 15 years I’ve been in the industry, I think Q1 2023 was one of the hardest yet. Fortunately, the full lockdown enabled us to make kitchen upgrades and infrastructure improvements, while we were closed. This, alongside the availability of tradesmen, meant we were able to consolidate our estate and improve and expand kitchen space. It included an entire roof full of solar panels to help reduce our carbon footprint. We cut our rent bills and outgoings, to remain competitive price wise. We also acquired one of our suppliers, Teasup, and were delighted to bring this in-house as part of the Marimba family business – leading to the reduction of some prices of speciality teas, due to efficiency savings in packing and dispatch times and costs, which was great. Teasup founder, Philip Joseph, had a real passion for speciality teas, researching and sourcing from the best estates, and was a great match for Marimba. 18 CAFÉ LIFE | THECAFELIFE.CO.UK
There are challenges ahead. The price of cocoa is at an all-time high, but we like to innovate – constantly adding handmade chocolate treats to our line-up. We recently included six new flavours of our giant buttons. Consumers must understand that not every cost can be shouldered by the operator. But operators have to appreciate that ingredient and transport costs – along with fluctuations in commodities markets for tea, chocolate and coffee – will lead to price rises. But there is good news for those committed to quality. Customers will come back for more if you are able to consistently offer them a high-quality drink, service and atmosphere. For example, a single origin, real chocolate made in Suffolk is more expensive than buying a basic cocoa powder – the difference in price may be a matter of 20/30p per portion. But all those benefits mean operators can easily add an additional 80p to £1 for the drink, to actually increase the margin. But you need a positive message. We are constantly in touch with our cafés and are always delighted to hear that although we are at the top end of the chocolate market, we offer that family values/single origin/Suffolk-made proposition that goes down well at the till point. Any particular products we should be looking out for? Our key range is fairly unshakeable. That’s our 34% Colombian white Hot Chocolate Melt, our 43% Venezuela and our 71% Ecuador. We have Sugar Free and Ruby Hot Chocolate Melts for something a little different. We’ve increased our retail lines of handmade buttons and will add three new line-ups to our Teasup range for the winter season. I love the Spiced Orange Tea.Pre-orders were strong for our Christmas range, with deliveries now taking place. Our special festive truffles and cracker boxes are always a hit. How do you stay price-competitive? As a growing business, we do keep hitting economies of scale – the next price bracket up from our suppliers. This