How Hermanos elevated their existing coffee offering, whilst saving 10% on wholesale costs by switching to KOTA

As a business, you made the call that you wanted to change your coffee supplier. How did you then go about looking at other options for coffee roasters, and what made you land on KOTA Coffee?

We’d been with the same roaster since the day we opened shop - we hold our hands up; we weren’t the most aware of other options in the market. We’re really fortunate to have a stellar team of baristas in our team, so before anything else we spoke to them and got some feedback on current roasteries on their radar. 

That’s when we met Dan [owner of KOTA] at the Farnham monthly market. He was local and had visited our shop before for coffees in the past, and one of our baristas had already been using his coffee at home. Immediately it just clicked. We felt like we could be a great fit to be the first shop in our town to use his house blend as so many of our existing customers already knew of him and were using his single origins to brew coffee in their own homes. If our customers and team members already trusted him and his coffee, then it just made sense to nurture that opportunity. 

You have boasted quite the reputation in town for speciality coffee since the day you opened. Were you at all concerned that changing your coffee might change this reputation, or have customers heading elsewhere for coffee?

This was something we were incredibly aware of as our previous house blend regularly got rave reviews. Customers understandably don’t automatically trust change, and this had played a factor in why we hadn’t changed supplier sooner. 

The quick answer is that as soon as our regulars tasted KOTA coffee, we realised we had absolutely no reason to be concerned. But on a more in-depth level, we think our transition was seamless because Dan took the time to work with our baristas to explain recipes, methods, insights into the roasting processes and this got our baristas excited and inspired to elevate their coffee game. This excitement was then naturally relayed from them to our regulars during conversations over the coffee counter, and before we knew it there was a whole buzz surrounding this new era for our coffee.

Supply costs are ever-increasing in the hospitality sector. How important a factor was cost when it came to choosing your house blend?

As with any other small business in the current economy, effectiveness of spending is instrumental to keeping a business running. For us though, we weren’t prepared to lose quality for the sake of saving money with suppliers. We found that KOTA allowed us to maintain exemplary quality, but it just so happened that this came at a more effective cost. Being able to save on our outgoings for coffee has meant that we’ve been able to absorb some of the other inflated costs that we have no choice but to face - for a small business such as ours, this has been key to balancing our outgoings.

How did your staff find adjusting to working with a different roastery?

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, we couldn’t be more fortunate to have the most talented baristas working for us who just seem to effortlessly adapt and produce incredible coffee cup after cup. 

Having said that, if we needed any questions about dialling in answering, or changing the volumetrics on our machine, Dan was always just a phone call away. He spent time with us during our first coffee drop-off to show us the optimum extraction for the beans and how to achieve it, so when he left on day one, we knew we were serving KOTA coffee in its best form and we were equipped to replicate that every day going forward.

How has using KOTA coffee helped with the unpredictable and ever-changing footfall that hospitality brings with it?

Just when you think you’ve found the exact rhythm of footfall through the shop doors, it changes - such is hospitality. We’ve really felt the benefit of working with KOTA because Dan closely monitors how much coffee we’re going through when he does his deliveries and tells us if he thinks we’re over or under ordering. On the rare occasion that we’ve had an unexplainably busy weekend, we know that we can get in touch with KOTA and have more coffee to hand in unbeatable timing. Equally, we feel comfortable to delay orders by a few days if we see a downturn in footfall. We work closely with Dan to vary the pace of deliveries when we need it, and that really helps us counter the unpredictability of hospitality.