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So, how hard can it be to make a cup of coffee?
I AM donning an apron and about to make my debut as a barista with a £7,000 Dalla Corte coffee machine. I have a dedicated trainer and am using some of the richest beans in the business.
The facilities look good, I am learning about what makes a decent espresso and, when my latte arrives, it has a decorative leaf drawn in the swirling beiges and browns of the drink.
This is not, however, the posh tasting hub of a large coffee chain, but an industrial estate on the edge of Huddersfield.
The location might seem humble but it hardly matters; it has certainly done Cooper's Coffee no harm. Since the firm was founded in a back bedroom in Garforth, near Leeds, 21 years ago, it has grown to have 17 staff with a turnover of 2.3m.
Diners drink it at Anthony's, often described as Leeds' best restaurant.
What it offers makes it seem like three businesses rolled into one, however. David Cooper and his wife Jacqui create the recipes for their own coffees, distribute the beans, tea and hot chocolate, act as the sole British agent for Dalla Corte machines and then provide the training for people who buy them.
It makes you wonder if there is a market for a firm that offers such specialised types of coffee products.
After all, life is hectic and there is a recession going on. Don't we just find it simpler to make a cup of instant?
The answer appears to be No. Twenty per cent of coffee sold in Britain is roast and ground while that means plenty more which is not, Mr Cooper sees that as his potential market.
The Coopers supply coffee to about 800 outlets already, including a hair salon and a car showroom, but in spite of the economic slump they believe they can increase their turnover to 3m by next year.
To do so they will have to persuade more shops that buying a Dalla Corte machine – which cost 5,000 on average from Cooper's – is worth it and convince more consumers that "proper coffee" is significantly better than the instant variety you get from a supermarket.
There may be – there is no other way to put it – grounds for optimism.
The taste of real coffee is so much better and every business which purchases one of the espresso and latte-making machines gets training from Mr Cooper in how to use them – "to do the job properly you need face to face contact", he insists.
It is this that makes the business one of the most unusual. Cooper's even has its own barista training manager, Lisa Huntington, who seems to know most of what there is to know about coffee – for example, that Americanos derive their name from GIs in Italy during the Second World War.
The soldiers didn't like the taste of strong Italian coffee and asked for extra water from the waitresses, who dubbed the weakened drinks Americanos.
Having a trainer might seem a luxury for a modestly-sized firm but Mr Cooper fears that if people misuse their machines and serve up a bad cup of coffee, it will put consumers off his brand.
Once you realise what a roundabout route he took to success, it is not hard to see why he feels so strongly. Mr Cooper trained and worked as a chef for four years before becoming a salesman of Italian food, wines and coffees to cafes in Yorkshire and the North East in the late 1980s.
When he was sacked from the firm in 1989, it might have spelt the end of his fledgling career in the black brew but Mr Cooper felt he had found his ouevre: making his own coffee blends to sell to contacts in the catering trade.
Interest rates were 15 per cent and his mortgage payments were 515 a month while he was looking, and failing, to find, a job. So he spent time developing his recipes at home in Garforth and planning for the future.
"The neighbours hated me and the place stank of coffee."
He rented three garages at 15 a week and, by his own admission, was probably in breach of byelaws which forbid the running of a business from there.
But he carried on buying the coffee himself, breaking it down and making blends by his own recipes.
The Coopers made a loss of 9,000 on sales of 250,000 in their second year and went on to survive the recession of the early 1990s.
While most successful entrepreneurs say that the hardship and anxiety of their tough early early days gave them the wisdom to make it big, Mr Cooper maintains he was never that worried.
"We were fairly carefree at that time. We just went for it. I did not find running a business very difficult. (The recession) did not affect me at all.
"I was working day and night training people – I would not let them use my coffee without training." The harder part came when the firm grew and Mr Cooper had to deal with the sums.
He didn't realise he had made a year two loss until his accountant pointed it out – "cash flow and dealing with banks, I learnt along the way."
The logistics are more complex than one might expect. Cooper's import from 52 countries in order to make its different blends and also sells coffee syrups for flavoured lattes as well as what Mr Cooper calls bespoke crockery branding – putting client firms' names on the mugs, cups and saucers they buy.
It may seem like a hectic existence for Mr Cooper and his wife, who have sons aged 15 and 12, but the businessman seems untroubled by this, the credit squeeze or the suggestion that people won't want to buy their products in the recession.
For someone whose job is caffeine, he seems remarkably relaxed.
REVEALING THE MAGIC TOUCH FOR A PERFECT CUP
In a typical branch of Starbucks it barely seems to take longer than a minute. A burst of steam, the grains go in the machine, a few bangs and then a gush of water and it's fresh coffee.
At Cooper's Coffee, however, making a latte takes rather longer and the end result tastes very different.
Lisa Huntington, the barista training manager, took me through the process.
I began by cleaning the Dalla Corte machine and then loading the coffee into a portafilter, which I then levelled, "tamped" at the side to ensure the customer gets all the coffee and then smoothed the top of the fine powder by "blessing" it, then attached it to to the machine.
Before heating the milk, I had to purge the steamwand – creating the hiss of steam you always hear when you walk into coffee shop – before inserting it below the surface of the milk.
Then I lowered it further, move it to the side and heated the milk to 60C degrees before swirling the milk jug to knock out the bubbles.
The last part was the hardest part – pouring the milk onto the espresso and finishing it with a decorative swirling pattern.
I had grasped the basics but this, alas, proved beyond me.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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