Nestlé Coffee Partners December Coffee Notes

COFFEE NOTES DECEMBER 2020

Welcome to December’s Coffee Notes.

In this year’s final edition, we’ll be talking about what the new café experience looks like, with a look at what customers expect to see. We’ll also be giving operators a few ideas on how to use takeaway coffee to their advantage and exploring why Veganuary is one of the key sales opportunities of 2021. Lastly, we’re reminiscing with a round-up of last year’s We Proudly Serve Starbucks® Holiday experiential activity that we’re hoping to get back to next year.

Wishing you and your families a very Happy Holidays, and a productive new year — however you might be spending it!

5-MIN READ

CREATING THE NEW CAFÉ EXPERIENCE The traditional café experience has been on hold while the world battles the pandemic, and in its place is now a focus on creating the ‘new café experience.’

The at-home hot beverage experience is of course taking precedence in this new tiered system, but when we come back to a more normal way of living again, consumers will be driven by the need to go beyond the at-home experience and return to the premium speciality drinks they know and love, but just can’t get anywhere else!

A great way to meet the demand for this elevated experience is to create and promise a premiumised beverage offer. This will help to demonstrate that cafés can offer much more than the functional side of the consumer’s beverage needs, and provide them with a higher-quality, more premium experience that goes beyond what they can make at home.

Take for example the upcoming Winter/Spring beverage range from the We Proudly Serve Starbucks® programme, which includes the Caramel Macchiato and Vanilla Bean Macchiato. Operators can utilise these speciality drinks to sit alongside a selection of iced teas and coffees and a lighter roast option for even more choice.

A safe, seamless experience — as well as a premium one — will remain top-ofmind with customers as they return, so it’s vital to consider and implement the allimportant safety measures and contactless delivery systems too. Technologies like digital payments or pre-order and collect have already become a huge part of this new café experience. Sites with any outdoor or exterior space can also make use of this luxury as an additional safety protocol, while optimising their visibility to new customers, reducing queue times, and helping to facilitate a calm, one-way flow of traffic in and out of the space.

With the rise of flexible or remote working and studying, it’s never been more important for café operators to carefully consider how they can use the consumer need for a new café experience to their advantage to boost both footfall and spend in this unchartered landscape.

If you need any help in navigating the second round of re-opening your café then do get in touch with the team — we’re always open for you.

3-MIN READ

VEGANUARY: A GREENER START TO 2021 The global recognition of ‘Veganuary’ as an entire month dedicated to the practice of veganism tells us more about the rising popularity of this diet than any statistics ever could.

In 2020, Veganuary reached the milestone of one million officially registered participants, completely eclipsing the 250,000 people who signed up to take part in 2019.1 But how has this growth affected the world of out-of-home coffee?

For us to answer, we can simply look to the upsurge in plant-based milk alternatives sales. In 2019, UK sales of milk alternatives were up by 28.3%, while in the first half of 2020 it was reported that 32% of UK households were regularly purchasing plant-based options, 2 leading many in the industry to dub these products as ‘white gold.’

Source: 1 - The Guardian, Veganuary movement to welcome 1 millionth participant, 2020.

2 - Speciality Food magazine, The Rise of Plant Based Milk, 2020

THE BIG 4: AN OVERVIEW The category is led by the big four: oat, almond, coconut and soy, but it also acts as an enormous hub for exciting innovation in the vegan lifestyle category itself, with nuts, grains, rice, hemp, legumes and even bananas being used across the vegan product development sphere. Another rising milk alternative option is pea milk, which has caught attention for its thick texture and luscious taste.

Why not encourage your customers to try something new this Veganuary by communicating the key flavour profiles of these milk alternatives.

OAT

Taste: Naturally sweet and mild.

Texture: Creamy and thick, good for smoothies and cereal.

ALMOND

Taste: Sweet and nutty.

Texture: Light with a slightly ‘watered-down’ quality.

COCONUT

Taste: Rich and sweet with a subtle coconut flavour.

Texture: Creamy and thick.

SOY

Taste: Mild flavour, typically sweeter than other options.

Texture: Silky, and often considered the closest to cows’ milk.

Veganuary coincides with the launch of the 2021 We Proudly Serve Starbucks® programme Winter/Spring beverage range. These milk alternatives will complement any of the new layered beverages that are available as part of the programme, so be sure to use this great opportunity to give your customers the option to try something different in January.

5-MIN READ

THE LIFELINE OF TAKEAWAY COFFEE

The hospitality industry has been hit particularly hard by COVID-19 and the impact of both lockdowns, with many cafés being forced to close their doors to guests who would normally sit inside to enjoy their drinks. However, cafés do hold an advantage that has helped to manage the challenges of lockdown and tiered living, commonly known as: the takeaway cup!

With the government allowing both click and collect and takeaway services to continue in the tiered system, the takeaway hot beverage itself provides a muchneeded lifeline for cafés as we move through hospitality restrictions and come out of the other side in the new year.

Customer safety has obviously been the priority this year, and takeaway options are the most effective way to continue serving while keeping customers safe. That being said, some measures should still be in place to ensure that the system is as safe as possible. For instance, Perspex screens to create a safe space for pick-up and reduce all necessary physical contact and the chance of exposure to germs. This is an important feature to include in your café to help customers feel more comfortable when collecting their order. As well as this, appropriate signage and communications to relay to customers what is expected of them — not to mention the all-important hand sanitiser — will remain as top priorities in 2021.

In the interest of keeping physical contact to a minimum, offering contactless payment is another imperative feature that can be included within your café. When paired with the Perspex screens, ‘going contactless’ offers an increased level of safety for your customers.

With this being said, it’s important to provide some motivation for customers to want to visit your café when stepping outside the safety of their homes to go to work or out onto campus — even if only for a collection service. Seasonal, promotional, or speciality beverages are the perfect incentive, as most customers will not have access to the ingredients or equipment needed to create these, ‘limited time only’ drinks. If restrictions continue into 2021, it is worth considering the positive impact that campaigns such as the We Proudly Serve Starbucks® programme Winter/Spring range could have on enticing customers to pick up a coffee from you.

The pandemic has demonstrated the power of social media and shown how vital it is to communicate with your customers. Letting them know that you’re able to provide takeaway coffees can help to generate more interest during the tiered restrictions.

UK consumers are more than willing to show their support for their favourite coffee shops during this challenging time. By offering speciality drinks that are unavailable in their home space, while still doing your utmost to ensure their safety, you can stand to benefit from this support and continually show your customers why they hold this faith in your business. As well as this, you can provide them with the personalised service and human interaction that everyone has so sorely missed in 2020.

Please regularly consult the government website for updates: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-safely-during-coronavirus-covid-19/restaurants-offering-takeaway-or-delivery

3-MIN READ

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, EVERYONE! After what has been an incredibly challenging year for everyone, we’re getting into the festive spirit by looking back to this time last year when we had just spread a whole load of festive cheer and had reached the end of our 18-day Holiday activation — ‘Festive Cheer, Right Here.’

The campaign visited 28 sites, serving 5,164 samples of 2019’s Holiday beverages, Toffee Nut Latte, Toffee Nut Frappuccino® Blended Beverage, and Toasted Marshmallow Hot Chocolate. And while this year’s Holiday beverages couldn’t be introduced to the world with the same level of fanfare, they were still a welcome addition to the We Proudly Serve Starbucks® menus.

The 2020 Holiday campaign has seen the return of the Toffee Nut Frappuccino® Blended Beverage and the Toffee Nut Latte, as well as the new addition of the Truffle Deluxe Hot Chocolate. These three drinks symbolise a continued dedication to festive tradition after an uncertain year, and their return will hopefully bring smiles to the faces of We Proudly Serve Starbucks® customers when many of them might not have been feeling the festive spirit.

Insight from restaurants and pubs has shed light on a consumer trend of upscaling regular orders when enjoying food and drink out-ofhome, opting to spend that little bit more on treats that may not be as easy to replicate in their home. We look forward to hearing from you all in the new year and finding out how well the We Proudly Serve Starbucks® programme Holiday beverages performed.

Please note: All promotional activity was filmed in November 2019, before the start of the Coronavirus pandemic.

As we approach the end of the year, we’re hoping for a return to bigger and better things in 2021. The success of the 2019 Holiday sampling campaign and the Blonde® Espresso Roast sampling campaign in February of this year (that was unfortunately cut short due to the pandemic!) showed that any effort from brands attempting to create a stronger connection with their customers is always appreciated. We have our fingers crossed that we’ll be able to get back to creating experiential events sooner rather than later in 2021.

With the rise of flexible or remote working and studying, it’s never been more important for café operators to carefully consider how they can use the consumer need for a café experience to their advantage to boost both footfall and spend in this uncharted landscape.

From everyone at Nestlé Coffee Partners, we want to wish you a Happy Holiday, as well as a prosperous and safe new year. We hope that 2021 is a better one for you all, and we’re looking forward to supporting you however we can in the months to come.

Nestlé Coffee Partners offers a range of brands and solutions to fit your customers’ requirements.

If you’d like to talk through any of what you’ve read and explore how we can help you leverage the insight we’ve shared this month, or if you’d simply like to catch up over a socially distanced coffee, we’d love to hear from you.

We’re available on +44 (0)203 124 1029 (Option 2) or at StarbucksSupportEMENA@nestle.com

STARBUCKS and the Starbucks logo are used under license by Nestlé. Serveware varies from images shown.