Ep. 2 Coffee Protocol Podcast. The issue in our coffee eco system in India!

Welcome to the coffee protocol podcast. I'm your host, Breston Bike. Let's talk coffee. So welcome to the second episode. So this episode is mainly to do with the issues that we have in the coffee cycle or the coffee community especially in our country. So the cycle itself is a little challenging to explain because it's a cycle so it's very difficult to think or to point out where shall I begin. But I'll just start with my journey that I have to do with the coffee and maybe you'll be able to relate it if not at least you'll get an idea what I'm trying to say. So let's start with the early 1990s. So that's when technically coffee came into my life. It came into my life as well like a sweet tasting yummy something either a sunrise or a brew or some kind of an instant coffee because that's how coffee came into my life. I mean that's how my parents used to drink. My mom especially used to have like that and that's how I started drinking coffee. The instant coffee with a lot of sugar and mint milk. The only major discussion that was around the quality of a good coffee was just the ratio between the milk and the coffee powder used. This was well until the 2000s because until then that's the only coffee I consumed and wherever we tried coffee we used to always debate oh the coffee powder is strong here or the milk is too much here. We also always used to end up getting extra instant coffee powder to make the coffee strong. A little fast forward and early 2000s so let's say around 2002-2004. This is the time when I saw that you know there are cafes around like I saw cafes through my eyes you know oh there is a cafe. There is a place called as a cafe where they apparently serve coffee and other stuff to eat along with it like a Samoza that cost it quite expensive at that time. But I never went there. I mean I did not have that kind of a family where cafe or going to cafe was like a norm. So 2005-45 is I remember I clearly remember the first ever cafe experience that I had especially the CCD experience. So I remember I went with my school friends who obviously had me to cafes before because they knew the drill you know like going to a cafe, talking to the barista, ordering what they like and specifically remembering the name in that menu what to order. I was new to this place right I mean for me cafe was something new. So I still remember that day I went in with my friends I looked at the menu I looked at the entire place and I ordered an espresso well frankly because there was the cheapest thing on the menu and I really did not or could not or did not wanted to spend anything more than that. And I like I said I mean in my previous episode I was always interested in food and beverage but the introduction of coffee to me was like okay I'll have an espresso because that's the cheapest thing. So moving forward I mean let's say in the next couple of years 2005-2006-2007 high school cafes like where around probably I went to cafes in my high school because there was the only place you could take somebody out like if you wanted to go on a date you would go to a cafe and you would order whatever there was in the menu probably like a cafe you know something which tasted horribly bad but you added sugar to it and you drink and anyways that was never the focus right I mean you were going to a place because it was either a date or something and you just wanted a place and coffee was never of that importance and yeah I mean you want to impress somebody you take her to a cafe and yeah I mean let her order whatever she wants and then you just say I'll have the same because that's the easiest way out. So that's how my high school experiences for cafe was. So as I said in the previous episode I mean I was always interested in the food and beverage side of it and I always wanted to be a chef or to work in the kitchen so 2007 is when I decided you know what I'm going to join in hotel management so I started my hotel school. So I did about two and a half years of my diploma in high diploma in hotel school so when I say diploma high diploma there is mention about all the different kind of cuisines different kinds of alcohol different kinds of service style and everything I mean this is a lot of it right but when it came to coffee entire entire course book that we had there was just one line mentioned about coffee which was it's just stimulating drink drinking beverage alongside with tea that had caffeine that is it nothing else. There's nothing about how coffee is made nothing about how coffee is grown how is it roasted nothing. I mean I didn't know anything about it all I knew was this line that was mentioned in the books and when we started working in the hotels as a part of the course and wherever I went I mean it was like coffee was either instant or it was brewed from a machine that was totally automatic okay and see either it was like instant coffee is whether it's a room service whether it is making coffee for somebody or it was if it was an expensive coffee or an expensive hotel where we worked the coffee would always come out of a machine that looks weird and fancy and what I still remember is the companies that of the companies of the coffee beans that we used it was normally normally an Italian brand and super expensive and every time I mean people used to boast about like how expensive the beans are and every time we opened the can of that bean or canister or a packet or whatever it is I mean we were always sniff it every time I sniffed that packet or that can I could smell dark weird damp carbon dioxide and the dark smelling something was very weird I mean it was just a very weird smell but people like with whom I worked this is like this is the real smell of coffee this is the smell of a good imported coffee from outside of India. So I mean traveling happened across different countries and then when I got back to India there was in 2015 I was like reintroduced to coffee I started working for a coffee company and again here coffee was a basic raw material or commodity and in all the cafes that we had we served in coffee as a product alongside different snacks and coffee along with milk and sugar tasted like something that was drinkable palatable I mean I never got into the flavor or the taste of coffee like I never wanted to taste or never felt like tasting good espresso. In fact I hated espresso so much and at one point it was so weird like it tasted so bad to me and I figured out you know if it is tasting too bad that means it's good espresso and it was really weird but that's how it was at one point and so most of my job was you know to open new stores around the country in different places and one of the challenges we always feared was faced was asking the people in the franchisee owners to buy decent machines to buy a decent machine to buy a decent grinder and was very difficult for us to convince them why you need a good machine or a good grinder. I mean normally machine and grinder used to be the cheapest thing that they want to invest in although that is I mean they are opening a cafe I mean it even happens today I mean you are opening a cafe or coffee shop but the least of the expenditure that you want to [BLANK_AUDIO] make is on the coffee machine and the grinder that you have. And it was really tough to and it is still tough to explain to people why that is important. I mean it is your bread and butter that when it has to be a good product that you are serving right. When it comes to hotels it is a very different scene. I mean hotels they do not want to invest in coffee machines, they do not want to increase their capital expenses. So, all of these fancy beans that comes from outside of India which might be Indian but still comes back to India. These people they just provide all of these machines for free and they make the money or of beans. They charge so much for the beans but because the machines are free of cost hotel just use it. So, it is either instant coffee or beans like that and for cafes it is the cheapest machine possible. And so, I somehow felt like you know 10 years down the line how the I mean just an analogy from my point of view. If you look at the constructions of the houses that we had 10 years ago probably when somebody was making a new house making a toilet or a bathroom was like the last thing that you think of and wherever or how much ever spaces left you would make a toilet or a bathroom out of it. And somehow I felt like this was the same for coffee machines. I mean you invest heavily in the ambience you do all sorts of interior decorations and stuff like that and with whatever money you had left you would then invest that money to buy whatever coffee machine or a grinder you can get in that project really really really stupid. But what is interesting is when you come to the other side of the industry let us come to the road side industry. So, I mean India is a tea drinking nation and and majority of us drink tea and specifically that cutting chai which is available on the road side. But if you ever notice if you go to the same road side stall and you ask for a coffee a coffee is always way more expensive and it is very weird because they use the same milk that they used to make tea and they use half of that one rupee packet which does not make any sense still they are charging. So, if your tea is let us say a cutting cost you like 5 rupees 6 rupees 7 rupees coffee of the same amount of cost you 12 13 15 rupees and you know what I have asked so many of such road side vendors and I have asked them literally why why do you sell coffee expensive. And most of these guys they do not have an answer I mean the only answer they have is or because everybody does the same thing so we also do it. So, this is one of the ways or this is one of the ways in which our community are Indian beverage tea and coffee drinking community get a perception that you know coffee is always expensive than tea. This is how it starts I think ok which is entirely wrong which I will explain a little later but this is just wrong coming back to hotels. So, on the other spectrum which is like the 5 star hotels or the hotel that you look which is like very fancy and luxurious we expect the food the bar the beverages everything to be of the greatest quality right. I mean you go to a 5 star and you expect like an amazing food right it is expensive but it is amazing food that is what you expect and you expect the same with the coffee I mean if I take somebody out on a date to a 5 star hotel I would spend probably like a couple of thousand rupees just for two cups of coffee and I would want that coffee to be the best coffee of my life right I mean spending 2000 bucks on it. But normally it is the other way around it is the serious cup of coffee I mean now that and now that I know how a coffee could be or should be and then the problem is most of the people would not even know what coffee is I mean they would just go to such fancy place and you know expensive place in order to cup of coffee and drink whatever they get and they would assume that this whatever they got in that cup which cost a thousand rupees is good coffee this creates another circle of problem because they are understanding of good coffee is already shit coffee. So when they actually have good coffee they are like confused oh this is this might not be good coffee because I had great coffee at that 5 star hotel which costed me 1000 bucks so there is another circle going on right there okay which is very confusing. Now coming to the 2000 to let us say 2010 to allish now I missed all of this thing there are a lot of people who get into the cafe business without knowing much about what a cafe business is which is fair enough this is our food industry has been since a long time. Coming to the coffee industry there are two of the possibilities either like somebody who studied in hotel school graduated from a hotel school they start up a coffee shop okay now listen to me carefully so a hotel graduate starts a coffee shop because he is in hotel management but his understanding of coffee is that one line in the textbook coffee is a stimulating drink with has caffeine so he does not know much about coffee. Other coffee shop owners they think that somebody who has done hotel management would be a suitable guy to run the coffee shop and they hire the same person. Option 2 is they hire baristas from different coffee shops who have had experience this experience might not be varied but then that person would have had worked in a coffee shop so that person is suitable to work in this new coffee shop. Now that coffee shop might not know much about coffee per say but then for the new coffee shop that is going to be the norm now because the owner does not know about coffee so he is just relying on whatever knowledge the barista would have at that point which is kind of weird because not a lot of knowledge exist in that spectrum of coffee at least not in that time. A little fast forward to the third wave of coffee let us say 2012, 13, 14 when it started with brands like Plutokai which came up people knew about good coffee people started to know what good coffee is either either there were people who travelled a lot and now they know what a cappuccino is who would now experience coffee at such specialty coffee shops and appreciated. There are people who have access to a lot of social media and they know what a good cappuccino looks like and they now want to have it as well and they want to experience that. But now what also happens is or what has also happened is the specialty coffee shops have gone a little expensive let us say if your coffee regular cafe cost to the 120, 130 rupees for a cappuccino with specialty coffee shop or charge 180 to 120 rupees for a for example I am not making a direct comparison. So then what is the happen is again the second time in the coffee chain what is happen is good coffee means expensive coffee there is logic behind to it but let us keep the logic separate to it but it is just the understanding that good coffee is expensive coffee. Now fast forward to the era of Instagram where coffee is made to look Instagram friendly there is a lot of influence that Instagram is made to our coffee community in the country. Now we know that Lathe Art on a coffee should mean that it is good coffee I mean it is it sounds funny but it is being like this for a long time right if you have like a fancy Lathe Art on top of your coffee you know that oh that person knows Lathe Art that means that person knows what coffee is that means this could be a good cup of coffee. However there is no relation between a good Lathe Art and good cup of coffee two different things. It is like bartending and bar flaring. Flaring is when you see that guy juggling different bottles in his hands. Well bartending or mixology is more of our drinking anyways. So there are consumers who really want to experience different coffees who or there are people who have already been introduced to good coffee and they want to experience that in the country. But there is a lot of lack of knowledge in the spectrum. So majority of coffee owners do not know much about coffee. If not their fault I mean it is honestly not their fault they want to make money they hire baristas they open a coffee shop and that is it. In the hotel it is the same thing I mean they they have an automatic machine that is really crappy or they have because it is rarely clean for example or they have a barista who has done hotel management again they only think that that person has learnt as coffee is stimulating drink. They rarely hire good baristas not a that payrolls then you have instant coffees and CCDs and other cafes. So, what is the difference again does it mean that good coffee needs to be expensive, but does expensive coffee mean good coffee? There is lot of question that goes behind it right I mean because it plays with the mindset of what people think. Now, I have missed all of this confusion the aim being is not like just to lower the cost. I mean what happens is because everybody wants to make profit everybody wants to make more margins. Most of this coffee shop keeping the specialty coffee shop separate for this explanation. Most of the other places they just want to make more money so they end up buying the cheapest being possible in the market. And what happens is behind the cheapest being possible to the cafe owner for example, there needs to be existing cheaper green beans from the farmers. That means the farmers are not making enough money out of that green bean. So, he is not making money he is selling it to the trader the trader is then selling it to the roaster the roaster is then giving it to the middle man again and then that goes to the cafe and still it has to be cheap. So, imagine how cheap or at what cheap rate would the farmer be selling that is ridiculously low. I mean it could be a lot different story. I mean I don't even want to get to the farmers side of it because that's a whole another thing to discuss and talk about. And at this point I don't want to take that because there's so many things that is to be spoken and explained in that end. We will keep it separate for another episode. But there's a cycle that going and going and going and going and going which is really sad. So, what happens is I mean we think you know now that we think with all the Instagram and all of these things going on and oh yeah we need good coffee we need good lot of milk based drinks we need a spressos we need pourovers we need manual drinks and the cafe should do this and the cafe should do that. Or we even like you know just simply sit in our homes or on a desk and we think yeah the cafe farmer should probably focus more on getting natural coffee or washed coffee they should be eco-friendly or organic and what not. But it is very easy to see all that. Trust me it is very easy to see that the farmer should do this or the roaster should do that or whatever. The problem is not that the problem is the lack of knowledge that is there and it is a huge huge gap of knowledge that exists in this value genes especially after the roaster. I call I call cafe owners as the mediators they are the one who influenced the coffee drinking trend in different cities. I have known people who have started a trend in our city where coffee was almost inexistent and it is these mediators cafe owners or baristas who influence the coffee consuming trends they need to get more knowledge. So when I say knowledge it is not just about getting the right machines but understanding why the machine is important or why the grinder is important or why us particular bean is important what are the challenges behind it. What could be the best way to serve a particular drink what could be the best way to make money or something and such to learn in that area in that spectrum of coffee. There is a huge gap out there you know. There is some amazing specialty and even non-specility shops who really done the shops with amazing passion and are really helping spread good word about coffee to consumers. It is really really interesting. The general consensus that most of the people have that tea is way cheaper than coffee is yes it is because they are comparing the raw products with each other. I mean we are comparing a decent good coffee bean whole bean to tea dust that would drink at home. What would drink at home is not even tea leaves it is tea dust. It is like the lowest grade possible of the tea after everything gets saved and sold separately. So tea dust is like the cheapest thing possible and that is the reason we have used to of like boiling and make a curry out of it. I mean I like it I am not saying I do not like it. But comparing that with the decent good bean is not a good comparison. If you compare a good bean let us say that is like 1000, 1000, 1500 or basically from any of the specialty roasters. And you compare that with good tea leaves, whole tea leaves, a first flush or a second flush or what not. I mean have you ever heard of silver needles? Google it if you have not. Teas are way more expensive than coffee when we compare it to gram by gram. Okay, there is a lot of other permutation and combination there as well. I will not go into that for now. But it just that you know we are comparing the raw products with the raw products and that should be stopped. Again it comes back to the to this huge cap knowledge. So being a being a consultant or coach myself my idea is that more such mediators should know about good coffee. And good coffee as I say should be made more available to more people in the country. This episode is still incomplete. I mean we will pick it up later as well. I would love to cover the other end of the coffee spectrum which is on the farm side of it probably with somebody who knows more and better about it. But understanding that fact that there is this huge gap of knowledge that exists in our coffee ecosystem that needs to be dealt with. Well, regarding this set for or five in the morning. Again thinking that it would be quiet but apparently it was not. But thank you very much for listening to this episode. We back soon with another one. Till then enjoy and remember let's make coffee simple. Bye. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast Coffee Protocol by Burston Pike. We'll be back soon with the next episode. Until then, keep enjoying your coffee and remember let's make coffee simple.