RAISING PRICES - 2019

After 6 years of trading, we have decided to raise prices on April 1st by 10p for all Filter and Espresso based drinks

our new pricing will now be;

Espresso - £2.80

Milk Drinks (all sizes) - £3.10

Filter Brews - £3.10

These are, as always, floor prices for a ceiling cost per KG of £22. If the coffee costs more than £22, then we will raise the price accordingly.

Although many of the factors considered have remained the same from our last price rise, some have warranted a complete rethink. For some context here is what we've considered;

Cost of goods.

Usually this is the catch-all reason used to explain away any price rise, and yes, rising costs usually lead to a rise in selling price. But I feel it's a lazy way out to follow this tack so let’s look at our costs;

Price rises - Surprisingly, very little has risen in price this year, with consumables and milk holding price well. So what about our biggest expense, Coffee?

For the first 2 quarters of trading this financial year (April 2018 - Sept 2018) we spent £13,684.17 on coffee. Over 26 weeks and an average of 24kg per week this gives us a per/Kg cost of £21.92 , a £2.36 per kg decline on last year. So if prices haven’t gone up, in fact our biggest cost has gone down, why are we raising prices?

The cost of service.

Great coffee is nothing without great service and in my view the best service is always provided by committed Professionals. We also have a unique style of menu, that relies heavily on the staff to provide clear and concise information allowing the customer to make a more informed choice, as situation where a degree of professionalism comes to the fore. To foster this professionalism, FCP only hires staff to salaried contracts with all the appropriate benefits (pensions, Sick Pay etc..), rather than casual or Zero Hour contracts as is common. This means that for the staff we hire, coffee is a career, not just a job.

With an increase to the National Living Wage, this is where the biggest new cost will be felt. We already pay our staff above the minimum wage, but with that due to rise by 38p per hour, it would be wrong for me not to pass this on to my staff. Why? Simply put the premium they were being paid for their professionalism would be wiped away in an instant. Whilst a common perception is that cafes are a "licence to print money" as a business we hover on the line between break even and making a small profit, a significant cost increase of this kind to a payroll that already runs at 31% of turnover could be potentially crippling.  In fact, combined with a significantly higher cost of coffee  last year it almost was as we came perilously close to losing it all.

The cost of quality and the true cost of coffee.

The easiest solution, and one that have have had mentioned to me on numerous occasions, is to buy cheaper coffee. But to do this would compromise what we are as a shop and reinforce the colonial nature of the coffee industry. We aim to brew excellent coffees, to live at the very top of the quality spectrum and provide a unique taste and service experience to our customers. Its self evident then that paying less for our coffee will reduce the quality of what we serve. Put simply, quality costs.

It’s also very easy to find articles on how the price of green coffee has been rising and falling in recent years. On the whole they will be referring to the "C" price, which is that for commodity or exchange grade arabica traded on the major stock exchanges, a trading system that has deep roots in the colonial system of exploitation, where the rich reap the rewards at the expense of those at the end of the trading chain. Buying cheaper coffee from our roasters means they will in all likelihood have paid less for it, and we refuse to go down that route. We buy from a trusted group of roasters who deal, on the whole, in Speciality Grade coffee. This has increased traceability, usually to farm level, but often to individual plots. It is also, on the whole, of higher quality costs and more due to this and a variety of factors. Read this for a good breakdown of the hidden costs, but even these prices can sometimes be below the cost of production.  We don’t have the knowledge to assess the buying of our roasters at this point, but we are learning and look forward to open and frank communication with them in the coming year.