Why coffee should be purchased from your local café (or Supercafe as we like to call them) and not your supermarket.

Australia’s largest supermarket employs over 190,000 people across its group a year, providing security for families, fuelling our economy and feeding & sustaining people across Australia. 

They deliver convenience, value & quality to their customers on a daily basis. They supply a surprising lot of coffee too. 

30% of Aussie households buy beans & ground coffee for home brewing (as opposed to instant coffee or no coffee), with a supposed tens of millions of bags per year purchased through supermarkets. That’s a lot of coffee that smaller, independent businesses – cafes – could have a larger slice of.

At Single O, we see good reason for a shift in these numbers. 

Three good reasons actually; To support your local café, enjoy what’s likely to be a fresher and tastier product, and get better craft advice and expertise. (Don’t fret, we don’t always get on our specialty coffee high horse)

In a POST-COVID world and with challenge afoot we’re on a mission to ensure that that our quality driven, thriving & independent café scene remains vibrant, service driven and profitable. One of the best ways you can support is buying your home coffee from your local café and not your local supermarket. Whilst the long morning queues & face value gross margin per cup look good on a cup of coffee, below the line after Cost of Goods, labour, rent etc, profits are slim. These are the businesses that kept our lights on and mental wellbeing stoked during COVID, and the fact is the majority of them are under $1M in turnover as a business. If anyone deserves your support its cafes. 

Back to that numbers shift - if cafes could add the sale of 30 small coffee bags a week to their bottom line, that could add $40,000 of revenue to that local business owner. 

The second reason – quality. First cab off the rank is here is shelf life. Specialty roasters work to guidelines anywhere from 14 – 28 days from roast as a sweet spot. After 4 weeks it's generally accepted that there is degradation of the product which can result in staling coffee, flatter coffee profiles and a duller overall life for you. Because cafes serve a daily product in the form of cups of coffee, they receive weekly deliveries and fresh product on a regular basis. This means that stock is regularly rotated on shelf or through the hopper, and you have a much higher chance of hitting that coffee sweet spot.

Conversely supermarkets still require a coffee company to have a 12 month shelf life on the back of the bag, and our *surveys in market have found coffee anywhere from one month up to 6 months old.

Australia has a highly independent and specialised café scene. We even have the current World Barista Champion, shout out Anthony Dixon. So why not have our cafes act as specialist coffee sellers for home. 

The third reason is expertise and choice – Oh there they go, you say.  And we’re happy to take the piss out of ourselves and acknowledge that our craft can be over-bearing for some, but like a good craft beer or wine, specialty coffee is sourced from various origins and terroirs, processed differently (Yes natural coffees too please), roasted in varying styles and brewed or extracted in various ways.

Your local cafe can offer you choice of beans for method, as well as advice on how to brew and extract the best coffee. And they can grind your beans fresh for you. 

Finally, it’s about “value” – often attributed to price only, and caveat if you are only seeking price then look no further than the supermarket, we know that there are pressures on everybody out there.

However, if you’re truly seeking value– then we’d argue through our coffee stained teeth that an expertly sourced and roasted product, delivered regularly to ensure freshness, that comes with brewing support and education to improve your own skills, is much better value than just an everyday low price. And who knows, your local crew might even throw in a free coffee if you do.