Excellent coffee is made up of three essential components:
- 25 per cent Equipment
- 25 per cent Beans
- 50 per cent - the person (barista) making it!
- Café Art - this is the “theatre” attached to coffee making performed by the barista.
- Café society is extending into the office and home and increasingly sophisticated ways of serving coffee are taking place in cafes around the world.
- At the office, tins of instant coffee are being replaced by small individual plungers which sit on the desktop.
- In the home, roasting and grinding coffee beans of choice is beginning to take off.
- From green bean to cup: in cafes, fresh beans are now being roasted in boutique roasting machines alongside the espresso machine. Many cafes have begun installing Green Bean Coffee Roasters to ensure they are serving the freshest coffee on the market.
- Around the world with coffee: many cafes now offer several different grinds and blends along with daily specials (eg. Kenyan, Sumatran, Guatemalan, Ethiopian, Costa Rican).

Australians consume approximately 2.4 kilograms of coffee per person per annum -and that’s nearly 1 kg more than the amount of coffee each of us drank in 1979!

Percentage breakdown of coffee consumed in cafes nationally:

- Cappuccino 50 per cent (men and women almost equal)
- Café latte 12 per cent
- Flat white 18 per cent
- Espresso 9 per cent (men consume ten per cent more than women)
Long Black 11 per cent (men consume 12 per cent more than women)
Cappuccino represents 21 per cent of all coffee sales to 25 - 44 year olds.
Seventy one per cent of all sales (in cafes) are milk-based with males   being the highest consumers.

Espresso sales are higher in 25 - 34 year old males. (Source BIS Shrapnel Out of home sales 2001)

Total value of the roasted coffee category is $68.2 million, which is increasing annually.

The top three brands in Australia are Vittoria, Lavazza and Harris followed by Robert Timms, Aurora, Melitta, Moccona, Andronicus, Bushells and Brothers.

76,000 foodservice outlets (approx 60,000 commercial and 16,000 institutional) serve roasted coffee with Victoria and NSW accounting for 60 per cent of total outlets.

Even the weather was festive - the sun was out, the sky clear and blue,Through it all wafted the irresistible smell of freshly made coffee. Spirits were high.   And why wouldn’t they be?
After all this was a coffee fest and most people - after a cup or two of coffee - were on a natural high. Coffee contains caffeine, a mild central nervous stimulant (CNS) which is rapidly absorbed by the body when taken in beverage form. As you’ve probably noticed, it makes you feel brighter and more alert within a few minutes and can help postpone feelings of fatigue for up to four hours. The fourth Aroma Coffee Festival held at The Rocks in Sydney is indicative of the explosive interest in coffee which has taken place over the past five years in Australia. This year over 100,000 people swarmed to the Harbour foreshores to taste coffee from all over the world  - well over double the numbers who attended the first Aroma Festival four years ago. They had come not just to taste various blends and brews but to learn more about the finer aspects of roasting,
grinding  and  making  the  perfect  cup  at  home.  Nineteen  gourmet coffee  roasters  were  present  and  thousands  of  cups  of  coffee were sold.

According to Gary Trye, one of the organisers, the Aroma Festival is the largest coffee festival in the world and the only one of its kind nationally. “The heart and soul of the festival is the boutique roaster,” he said.“They’ve been springing up all over the place over the past few years as have single origin or estate roasters. They’re very passionate about their craft and have definite ideas about what they consider to be the best roast and the best blend.” Toby’s Estate Coffee, Forsyth Coffee & Tea, Karmee, Café Hernandez and  Caffe  Bianchi  were  just  some  of  the  boutique  roasters  who participated.    Major  players  like  Andronicus (who  sponsored  the event), Segafredo and Vittoria were also present.

Café culture has become very much part of the modern Australian lifestyle. Our cities and suburbs are spilling over with cafes on virtually every  street  corner.  Coffee  has  become  a  gourmet  product  and  a fashion statement and like wine, discerning consumers now want to know where the coffee they drink has come from, what blend of beans is being used and how they were roasted and ground. However, there are still many people paying a lot of money for poor quality brews made from low-grade coffee beans. According  to  Les  Schirato,  managing  director  of  Vittoria  Coffee, the importance of good quality coffee is still vastly underestimated. “Taste, quality and freshness of the beans should guide consumers in their choice of coffee,” he said.  “While this is a very individual thing,in general good coffee should have a strong rich taste and should never be bitter or leave a stale aftertaste.” You can rest assured that little or no evidence of a stale aftertaste could be detected at this year’s Aroma Coffee Festival.

Mobile blogging is an exciting phenomenon that is sweeping the blogosphere. One of the reasons why a lot of bloggers are attracted to the medium of logging in the first place is that they enjoy being able to make frequent updates and posts that keep all of their visitors up to speed with current situations. Mobile blogs, or "moblogs," take this to the extreme by allowing users to post things literally as they happen. This new wave of moblogs and mobloggers keep web surfers up to date with good and bad events of importance as they occur all over the world, helping to make international communication faster and more accurate.

A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:

1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox

When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers -- all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

2) Start a web log (blog)

Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3) Carry out polls or surveys

Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games

Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5) Update frequently with fresh content

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

This a few tips to make a Good Cup of Coffee :

Use Only Fresh and Pure Water

Good coffee starts with good water. You can use water from your tap but it should be filtered toEnjoying Gourmet Coffee take out the chlorine and other tastes. Run your faucet for a few seconds to clear out some of the water that has been sitting in the pipes before filling your coffee maker.

Only Use Whole Beans

Whole beans maintain the flavor and richness of coffee longer. Forget about ground coffee. Coffee Gourmet Coffee Beansbegins to deteriorate from the moment coffee is ground. Coffee on grocery and retailer shelves are often stale and lacking flavor but still rate fresh according to their standards. Premium coffee from gourmet coffee retailers like Volcanica Coffee only ship coffee that is freshly roasted.

Store Beans Properly

Always store your premium coffee in an airtight opaque container such as Tupperware, away from heat, moisture and light. If you don’t have an airtight container the next best thing is to seal it in an airtight zip lock bag in the freezer.

Grind to Perfection

Only grind what you will be using immediately. If you use a blade-type grinder, while grinding hold the lid down with one hand and shake it upBurr Coffee Bean Grinder and down. This will yield a more even grind and reduce the amount of powdery grounds which can make coffee bitter. Better yet, invest in a good quality burr-type grinder, available at better kitchenware stores. Gaining in popularity are the new coffee makers that grind your beans automatically then brews your coffee. You'll taste the difference. Visit our this link for more information on grinding coffee beans.

Keep it fresh

Remember, glass carafes and other containers should never be left on the burner for more than 10 minutes. An airtight thermos-type container is the preferred hot storage container and will keep hot coffee fresh considerably longer.

Best Way to Serve Coffee

Everyone has their preference but we have found the best way to enjoy exotic coffee, if you do not enjoy it black, is by adding half & half and raw sugar. If you are watching your calories use Splenda. Sweet & Low and Equal add bitterness which takes away from the rich Volcanica flavor. In place of half & half you may also lighten it up with steamed or warmed whole milk which will add a distinct natural sweetness.

Many of us rely of coffee to help us do exactly that. Coffee trees grow to heights of 20 feet and are often pruned to 8 to 10 feet to simplify harvesting. Since the cherries ripen at different times, they are mostly picked by hand. One pound of roasted coffee requires about 2,000 cherries, and since each cherry contains two beans, it takes 4,000 beans to produce that one pound. The average coffee tree only produces one to two pounds of roasted coffee per year, and takes four to five years to produce its first crop.

Three Species of Coffee Trees

Robusta beans are resistant to disease and come from a high yield plant that does best at lower elevations. Unfortunately it has harsh flavors and is used for the lower grades of coffee that are sold in markets. Not generally found in gourmet shops, they are often used for “instant” coffees and popular commercial blends.

Arabica beans do best at altitudes of 3,000 to 6,500 feet and have a much more refined flavor. This is the coffee that specialty roasters search for. It is susceptible to disease, frost, and drought however, and requires careful cultivation and just the right climate and conditions.

Liberica is the third recognized commercial variety, hardy and low-altitude. It's a minor crop of coffee from Africa and is similar to robusta.

After harvesting, the cherries are transported for processing. The fruit is then removed from the seed by one of two methods. In the natural or dry process, the cherries are dried in the sun or in dryers, and the fruit is then separated from the bean by processing them through a mechanical husker. In the wet process, a superior soaking method produces beans which are referred to as washed coffees. The beans are then dried, sized, sorted, graded and selected, usually all by hand. After the beans are bagged they are shipped to local roasters around the world. In terms of human effort, few products require so much attention and detail.

According to the Coffee Research Organization, coffee roasting is a chemical process by which aromatics, acids, and other flavor components are either created, balanced, or altered in a way that should augment the flavor, acidity, aftertaste and body of the coffee as desired by the roaster. This is accomplished in several steps:

Roasting Coffee Beans

When the roaster receives them, the green beans are slowly dried to become a yellow color and the beans begin to smell like toast or popcorn.

The second step, often called the first crack, occurs as the temperature rises. The bean doubles in size and becomes a light brown color.

As the temperature continues to rise the color changes from light brown to medium brown.

Soon, the second crack occurs. At this stage the color is defined as medium-dark brown. The second pop is much quicker sounding and the beans take on an oily sheen.

Most roasters will remove the beans during the second crack. Coffees from famous regions like Java, Kenya, Hawaiian Kona, and Jamaican Blue Mountain are usually roasted lightly so their signature characteristics dominate the taste.   Otherwise the “roast” will obscure the unique qualities of these flavorful beans

There is no single factor that makes a gourmet coffee, but the right combination of coffee bean, roast, blend, grind, and definitely freshness can make for a very succulent cup of coffee.

The first factor is the bean.  Gourmet coffees are only made from hand-picked Arabica beans.  These coffee beans grow at high altitudes, in rich soil, under shade.  Arabica beans are grown in many parts of the world, but the three main regions they hail from are South and Central America, Africa and Arabia, and the Pacific.  Beans from each of these regions have separate and distinct flavors.

Roasting the coffee bean is a science.  It’s up to the Roast Master of the coffee house to know how to roast the bean to perfection. There are five common types of roasts:  American Roast or Cinnamon Roast; City Roast or Vienna Roast; Full City Roast; French Roast; and Italian Roast.

The American Roast is a very light roast, not used for gourmet beans, only for Robusta beans.  The City Roast is a semi-light roast, the lightest gourmet roast.  The Full City Roast is a dark roast, intended to bring out the full flavor of the bean.  It often has a subtle caramel flavor.  The French Roast is another dark roast.  Some people prefer the slightly burnt flavor of this roast.  The Italian Roast is a very dark roast, even burnt.  The beans come out of this roast dark, shiny and brittle.  Cappuccino and Espresso are made from this roast.

The blend of a gourmet coffee largely depends on personal preference, although there are certain blends that can be used for specific purposes, a low acid bean blend for those with sensitive stomachs, for example.

The three grinds used are fine, medium and coarse.  A coarse grind is best used in a French press.  The fine grind is for espresso and Turkish coffees, leaving the medium grind for use in automatic drip pots.  Weak coffee often means that the beans should have been ground more finely, while bitter coffee may be remedied by a coarser grind.

For a truly gourmet cup of coffee, freshness cannot be underestimated.  When a bag of freshly roasted coffee is open, the beans appear oily.  This oily look is the essential oil of the beans and most of the flavor is in this oil.  The longer the bean is exposed to air or moisture, the more rapidly it will lose this oil and the resulting coffee will taste flat.

While there are many guidelines to aid in selecting gourmet coffee, it is really a matter of personal choice.  Looking over the above mentioned guidelines before shopping for coffee will make selecting a gourmet coffee easier.

Corporate blogging is a relatively new idea, and the jury is still out on whether it will succeed. This controversial marketing tool may be the beginning of a new kind of advertising strategy, or it may fizzle out in a matter of months. Many companies are looking for ways to capitalize on the blogging trend, and many of these corporations have determined that a great way to ride the blogging wave is to keep a blog on their corporate website. These blogs are often created to appeal to the demographic that the company needs to court, and the content may have quite a lot to do with the activities of
the corporation, or it may have very little to do with the company itself. Often, a corporate blog will focus on the kinds of content likely to attract the desired surfers, even if that content is not related to the product or service that the company provides.

Some bloggers feel that corporate blogging is a kind of validation for the blogging movement, and shows that this exciting new medium has really infiltrated the mainstream. Other bloggers consider the kind of viral marketing that corporate blogs practice to be unethical or distasteful. In any case, watching the evolution of corporate blogs and whether they survive and proliferate or fail and disappear promises to provide some interesting insight into today's consumers.

It is worth cataloguing the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings I've compiled to you hope its usefull:

•    Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
•    Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
•    Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
•    Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
•    Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
•    Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
•    Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
•    Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
•    Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
•    Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
•    Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
•    When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
•    When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
•    Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

If you would observe the company that delivers the daily paper to your doorstep for a business case study, you will come to learn that the newspaper publisher hires reporters, writers and other important staff to create the contents and deliver the papers to their readers.

In addition to the above mention, the publisher has to invest regularly in heavy duty machineries and tons of papers in printing tons of newspapers on a daily basis.

And in order to ensure that the newspapers are delivered on time, the publisher appoints agents at every part of the covered territory.

So, how does the newspaper company make money? It is obvious that selling a copy of the papers at less than a dollar would not even be able to even fund the operations.

The answer? Selling advertising spaces! You have definitely seen lots of advertisements in the newspaper. The publisher simply sells advertising space in the papers to advertisers who want to leverage their advertising efforts on the paper’s high readership.

On the same analogy, you can make money the exact way from your newsletter: simply by selling advertising space to prospective advertisers!

If your mailing list size exceeds 1,000 (5,000 is recommended) subscribers and beyond, you can start selling advertising space for say, $10.00 per sponsor ad.

In this manner, you turn every issue you send out to your subscribers into a profit-pulling device. And since there is virtually no end to the stream of advertisers as products, services and businesses are cropping every single day in every industry imaginable, so are your money making opportunities.

The greatest expense you're going to incur in conducting a successful business is advertising.

You have to advertise. Your business cannot grow and flourish unless you advertise. Advertising is the "life-blood" of any profitable business. And regardless of where or how your advertise, it's going to cost  you in some form or another.

Every successful business is built upon, and continues to thrive, primarily, on good advertising. The top companies in the world allocate millions of dollars annually to their advertising budget. of course, when starting from a garage, basement or kitchen table,you can't quite match their advertising
efforts---at least not in the beginning. But there is a way you can approximate their maneuvers without actually spending their kind of money. And that's through "P.I" Advertising.

"P.I." stands for per inquiry. This kind of advertising most generally associated with broadcasting, where you pay only for the responses you get  to your advertising message. It's very popular--somewhat akin to bartering--and is used by many more advertisers than most people realize. The advantages of PI Advertising are all in favor of the advertiser because with this kind of an advertising arrangement, you can pay only for the
results the advertising produces.

To get in on this "free" advertising, start with a loose leaf notebook, and about 100 sheets of filler paper. Next, either visit your public library and start poring through the Broadcast Yearbook on radio stations in the U.S., or Standard Rate and Data Services Directory on Spot Radio. Both these publications will give you just about all the information you could ever want about licensed stations.

An easier way might be to call or visit one of your local radio stations, and ask to borrow (and take home with you) their current copy of either of these volumes. To purchase them outright will cost $50 to $75.

Once you have a copy of either of these publications, select the state or states you want to work first. It's generally best to begin in your own state and work outward from there. If you have a moneymaking manual, you might want to start first with those states reporting the most unemployment.

Use some old fashioned common sense. Who are the people most likely to be interested in your offer, and where are the largest concentrations of these people? You wouldn't attempt to sell windshield de-ice canisters in Florida, or suntan lotion in Minnesota during the winter months, would you?

At any rate, once you've got your beginning "target" area decided upon, go through the radio listings for the cities and towns in that area, and jot down in your notebook the names of general mangers, the station call letters, and addresses. be sure to list the telephone numbers as well.

On the first try, list only one radio station per city. Pick out the station people most interested in your product would be listening to. This can be determined by the programming description contained within the date block about the station in the Broadcasting Yearbook or the SRDS Directory.

The first contact should be in the way of introducing yourself, and inquiring if they would consider a PI Advertising campaign. You tell the station manger that you have a product you feel will sell very well in his market, and would like to test it before going ahead with a paid advertising program. You must quickly point out that your product sells for, say $5, and that during this test, you would allow him 50% of that for each response his
station pulls for you. Explain that you handle everything for him: the writing of the commercials, all accounting and bookkeeping, plus any refunds or complaints that come in. In other words all he has to do is schedule your commercials on his log, and give them his "best shot." When the responses come in, he counts them, and forwards them on to you for fulfillment. You make out a check for payment to him, and everybody is happy.

If you've contacted him by phone, and he agrees to look over your material, tell him thank you and promise to get a complete "package" in the mail to him immediately. Then do just that. Write a short cover letter, place it on top of your "ready-to-go" PI Advertising Package, and get it in the mail to him without delay.

If you're turned down, and he is not interested in "taking on" any PI Advertising, just tell him thanks, make a notation in your notebook by his name, and go to your next call. Contacting these people by phone is by far the quickest, least expensive and most productive method of "exploring" for those stations willing to consider your PI proposal. In some cases though, circumstances will deem it to be less expensive to make this initial contact by letter or postcard.

In that case, simply address you card or letter to the person you are trying to contact. Your letter should be positive in tone, straight forward and complete. Present all the details in logical order on one page, perfectly typed on letterhead paper, and sent in a letterhead envelope. (Rubber-stamped letterheads just won't get past a first glance.) Ideally, you should include a self-addressed and stamped postcard with spaces for positive or
negative check marks in answer to your questions: Will you or won't you over my material and consider a mutually profitable "Per Inquiry" advertising campaign on your station?

Once you have an agreement from your contact at the radio station
that they will look over your materials and give serious consideration for a PI program, move quickly, getting your cover letter and package off by First Class mail, perhaps even Special Delivery.

What this means is at the same time you organize your "radio station notebook," you'll also want to organize your advertising package. Have it all put together and ready to mail just as soon as you have a positive response. Don't allow time for that interest in your program to cool down.

You'll need a follow-up letter. Write one to fit all situations; have 250 copies printed, and then when you're ready to send out a package, all you'll have to do is fill in the business salutation and sign it. If you spoke of different arrangements or a specific matter was discussed in your initial contact, however, type a different letter incorporating comments or answers to the points discussed. This personal touch won't take long, and could pay
dividends!

You'll also need at least to thirty-second commercials and two sixty-second commercials. You could write these up, and have 250 copies printed and organized as a part of your PI Advertising Package.

You should also have some sort of advertising contract written up, detailing everything about your program, and how everything is to be handled; how and when payment to the radio station is to be made, plus special paragraphs relative to refunds, complaints, and liabilities. All this can be very quickly written up and printed in lots of 250 or more on carbonless multi-part snap-out business forms.

Finally, you should include a self-addressed and stamped postcard the radio station can use to let you know that they are going to use your PI Advertising program, when they will start running your commercials on the air, and how often, during which time periods. Again, you simply type out the wording in the form you want to use on these "reply postcards, and have copies printed for your use in these mailings.

To review this program: Your first step is the initial contact after searching through the SRDS or Broadcasting Yearbook. Actual contact with the stations is by phone or mail. When turned down, simply say thanks, and go to the nest station on the list. For those who want to know more about your proposal, you immediately get a PI Advertising Package off to them via the fastest way possible. Don't let the interest wane.

Your Advertising Package should contain the following:
1. Cover letter
2. Sample brochure, product literature
3. Thirty-second and sixty-second commercials
4. PI Advertising Contract
5. Self-addressed, stamped postcard for station acknowledgement and
acceptance of your program.

Before you ask why you need an acknowledgement postcard when you have already given them a contact, remember that everything about business changes from day to day---conditions change, people get busy, and other things come up. the station manager may sign a contract with your advertising to begin the 1st of March. The contract is signed on the 1st of January, but when March 1 rolls around, he may have forgotten, been replaced, or even decided against running your program. A lot of paper seemingly "covering all the minute details" can be very impressive to many radio station managers, and convince them that your company is a good
one to do business with.

Let's say that right now you're impatient to get started with your own PI Advertising campaign. Before you "jump off the deep end," remember this: Radio station people are just as professional and dedicated as anyone else in business---even more so in some instances--so be sure you have a product or service that lends itself well to selling via radio inquiry system.

Anything can be sold, and sold easily with any method you decide upon, providing you present it from the right angle. "hello out there! Who wants to buy a mailing list for 10 cents a thousand names?" wouldn't even be allowed on the air. However, if you have the addresses of the top 100 movie stars, and you put together an idea enabling the people to write to them direct, you might have a winner, and sell a lot of mailing lists of the stars.

At the bottom line, a lot is riding on the content of your commercial---the benefits you suggest to the listener, and how easy it is for him to enjoy those benefits. For instance, if you have a new book on how to find jobs when there aren't any jobs:

You want to talk to people who are desperately searching for employment. You have to appeal to them in words that not only "perk up" their ears, but cause them to feel that whatever it is that you're offering will solve their problems. It's the product, and in writing of the advertising message about that product are going to bring in those responses.

Radio station managers are sales people, and sales people the world over will be sold on your idea if you put your selling package together properly. And if the responses come in your first offer, you have set yourself up for an entire series of successes. Success has a "ripple effect," but you have to start
on that first one.

I wish you success!