Ten years ago, a guest served a mediocre coffee would have drunk it anyway. Today they finish half of it, and buy a better one from the independent café two streets away.
That shift is the reason why we decided to rebuild a coffee range that was, by most commercial measures, working perfectly well.
The end result is our a refined Café Concerto, best embodied in the new Café Concerto Premium coffee: a smoother, more balanced flavour profile, improved aroma and crema, and consistent quality from cup to cup. It runs in the bean-to-cup machines our customers already have. But the product change is the easy part of this story. The more useful part, particularly if you are weighing up a coffee supplier at the moment, is why we did it in the first place.
The coffee market moved, and expectations with it
The customers walking into hotels, cafés, workplace canteens and leisure venues across the UK now drink specialty coffee at home and on the high street. They can tell the difference between a considered blend and a functional one, and increasingly they judge a venue on it. Coffee is one of the most visible quality signals a venue sends, and one of the easiest to get wrong.
For operators, that raises an uncomfortable question: is the coffee currently coming out of your machine the coffee your customers now expect?
We asked ourselves the same thing about our own range, and we did not entirely like the answer.
Changing something that is already selling
There is no commercial pressure to reformulate a product that customers keep ordering. The safe path is to leave it alone and let it drift quietly out of step with the market.
We took the view that the range needed to reflect where customer expectations have gone, not where they were when the blends were first developed. That meant treating the refresh as a proper development project rather than a relabelling exercise.
The new range was developed through extensive tasting, direct customer feedback, and close collaboration with our roasting partner. The brief we set ourselves was deliberately awkward: create blends that appeal to a wider range of customers, without losing the reliability our existing customers depend on. Broadening the appeal of a coffee is straightforward if you are willing to sacrifice consistency. Doing both at once is what made this a development project rather than a quick reformulation.
What this means in practice
For operators considering the range, three questions usually come up before any conversation about flavour.
Will it work in the machines I already have?
Yes. The blends are designed to perform in bean-to-cup machines, and the refined range works with existing equipment. No new machines and no capital outlay.
Will the quality hold up across every cup and every site?
Consistency was the central design constraint rather than an afterthought. A coffee that tastes excellent when a trained barista makes it, and merely acceptable at 9:40am on a Tuesday when the machine has been running for two hours, is not much use in hospitality. The refined range is built to deliver consistent quality cup after cup, which matters most for multi-site operators who need the same experience in every venue.
What support comes with it?
The coffee is one part of the offer. Krogab customers also get dedicated customer service and technical support. Coffee quality is only as reliable as the equipment producing it and the people maintaining it, which is why the support sits alongside the product rather than behind it.
The Krogab commitment
The Café Concerto refresh is one product decision, but it reflects a wider set of commitments we hold ourselves to:
Investing in higher-quality products, including when the existing ones are performing well.
Listening to customer feedback and acting on it, rather than collecting it.
Delivering innovative beverage solutions as the market develops.
Providing reliable products backed by excellent service and technical expertise.
Building long-term partnerships rather than simply supplying products.
That last point is the one that shaped this project most. A supplier delivers what was ordered last month. A partner pays attention to where the market is heading and moves before customers have to ask. We would rather improve a range ahead of the demand than defend an ageing one.
What comes next?
The refreshed range also gives us a stronger platform for what follows. Café Concerto now sits as a modern premium coffee offer alongside a beverage portfolio that continues to expand.
For existing Café Concerto customers, the change is an upgrade rather than a disruption, and your account contact will be in touch with the detail specific to your sites.
For operators looking at their coffee for the first time in a while: the question worth asking is not whether your current coffee is acceptable. It is whether it is the coffee your customers now expect.
Share this post: