For both the business owner and even the consumer, one of the questions becomes: What makes a good coffee roaster?
To address this issue within the industry, we must analyze a peculiar convergence in desires between both specialty and regularly-roasted coffee.
Business agreement handshake at a coffee shop by rawpixel.com via Wikimedia Commons.
According to the National Coffee Association USA (NCAUSA), nearly forty percent of Americans drink specialized coffee, with this demographic landing under the 20-39 age category with no kids and living in urban areas.
To that end, it’s important to keep in mind your target consumer audience. For example, if your coffee is catered to the more hipster, younger crowd, then it would be feasible to invest in specialized coffee for customer retention. If, however, this isn’t the case for your business then this option simply wouldn’t be prudent.
From a roasting perspective, this becomes paramount to your coffee-making process.
Coffee maker in action by Mostafameraji via Wikimedia Commons.
This is especially true when trying to assess how much coffee a business needs to roast in order to remain both lucrative and reliable for their customers.
For example, the study goes on to cite certain behaviors often exhibited by specialty coffee connoisseurs. For starters, these types of coffee drinkers typically consume 2.7 cups on average per day—much more than the traditional drinker.
The findings later show that these types of drinkers are more likely to use dark roasts (44%), flavor their coffee (51%), sweeten their coffee (11%) and use espresso-sized cups (13%).
What’s perhaps even more intriguing is the Out of Home (OOH) market has increased for this demographic since the advent of the pandemic, too. For specialty drinkers, 58% said drinking at home allowed them to experiment with different coffee combinations.
However, when prompted on the quality of said coffee, that same statistical subset said only 39% said the quality was “not the same” as prior experiences with other roasters.
Accounting for share of cup groupings by ‘specialty’ vs. ‘non-specialty,’ the implicated data trend has grown steadily over the years since 2013—during which 43 percent of those surveyed said they preferred speciality over the latter.
A specialty latte at Colombia Coffee Roasters, Oxford by Bex Walton via Flikr.
Interestingly, this has almost flipped on its head entirely.
By January 2021, 56% of those surveyed said they preferred specialty over non-specialty coffee.
In other words, roasting can be critical not only for the quality of the coffee, but for the quantity, too.
Luckily, our roasting process caters to both the traditional and specialty drinkers.
While we certainly have exclusive offerings for the latter, Primo Roasting Equipment sells roasters that allow for eclectic roasts, which in-turn effectuates a versatile offering to your consumer base.
One of our many goals is just that—to enable you to expand your customer base to converge with other consumer demographics which will allow your business to flourish and grow. This can be one goal to set your sights on for your respective business, whether you’re in a legacy role or an intermediary one.
For more on Primo Roasting Equipment’s products, check out our Sentinel-Xr20, which we will be presenting in our next post in addition to more tips and tricks of the coffee roasting industry you may find useful.