Hang on! This isn’t a blog about the beans that taste most like toffee when roasted, oh no! This is about the culture of adding flavoured syrups to your favourite coffee!
On one of my recent pop-in visits to one of our customers it transpired that they’d been having a discussion about flavoured coffees. Now, while adding a syrup shot to your coffee isn’t to my taste, I do appreciate that it opens up the hot beverage market to an audience that may not normally find the taste of coffee that appealing – and this is the key… Expanding your potential customer base! You really can steal sales from low margin soft drinks by adding flavours to your coffee menu.
OK, this is another coffee house trend that we’ve adopted over the years from our transatlantic cousins in the US of A, but it’s certainly not new in the marketplace. I remember years ago Caber used to stock flavoured beans but, in fairness, demand was very limited, the flavour wasn’t terribly powerful and, because it was the beans that had been flavoured, you were stuck with that specific taste until you opened the next bag of your chosen flavour. Buying a range of flavours with one espresso bean makes much more sense!
We carry both Monin and Sweetbird syrups. Both are available in a VAST number of flavours (more so with the Sweetbird). There are choices for coffees, teas (and iced teas), milkshakes, sodas and much more. In general, though, popular flavours for coffee tend to be the likes of hazelnut, caramel, gingerbread, toffee, vanilla and so on. Sweetbird also regularly run seasonal flavours – Eggnog at Christmas and Pumpkin Spice around Hallowe’en.
Here’s the really cool bit, though. Don’t just think about one flavour – and this is where the conversation with our customer comes in – be creative, be wacky, be innovative! How about an After Eight Latte? Serve a regular latte with a shot of Chocolate and Mint syrups? A Banoffee Cappuccino, maybe? Chilli hot chocolate? Even something as simple as a cinnamon Americano as a winter-warmer? I’ve even heard of customers adding the flavoured syrup to scone mix! That’s how versatile they are!
Remember, the big café chains offer syrups so there’s certainly a market for them. Special offers such as “coffee of the week” keep your customers coming back. The special coffee might not always appeal to them, but they’ll see you being innovative! What’s more if you order flavoured syrups we regularly deliver seasonal drink recipe ideas to our syrup customers and we stock the Sweetbird point-of-sale material, too!
So go on then, with all this talk about flavours I fancy something different. Make mine a Salted Caramel Macchiato, please!
