Specialty Coffee Retailer is a publication for owners, managers and employees of retail outlets that sell specialty coffee. Its scope includes best sales practices, supplies, business trends and anything else to assist the small coffee retailer.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/29864
CAFFÉ MORO Heidelberg, Germany BY ROBERT W. THURSTON O n the one hand, it would begr e great ti ifft ew rldwalked the world walked past the door of your shop every day. On the other hand, suppose you faced competition from 11 other coff ee bars within a few blocks, not to mention numerous restaurants, tearooms, and a beer “museum” (not even counting a Hard Rock Café)? Welcome to Heidelberg, Germany’s Hauptstrasse (Main Street), at 1.6 kilometers the country’s longest pedestrian/ shopping zone. Caff é Moro is at number 160. Other cafes occupy numbers 165, 166, 162, 141, and 130. Th e Mermaid serves at number 137. So what does Owner Mohammad Taha do to attract and hold customers? His fi rst answer: “Quality, quality, quality.” He started his business 14 years ago, and was one of the fi rst people in Heidelberg to off er serious Italian coff ee. I can testify from visits to Germany in the early to mid-‘90s that coff ee then meant brewed liquor in a large cup. But now everywhere in Deutschland it’s espresso, latte, cappuccino and their cousins. Sometimes the coff ee is good and sometimes it is made with tired ground coff ee from a can. Th ere is no question customers like what they drink at Caff é (note the Italian spelling, too) Moro. I walked past the shop fi ve LOCATIONS 160 Hauptstrasse, Heidelberg 69117 Germany EQUIPMENT Royal espresso machine; Anfim and Quick grinders WEB www.moro-cafe.de or six times in the course of a few days in town, and I stopped in twice. Business was always good. Open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., on average Moro welcomes 200 to 300 people for coff ee each day, Taha told me. He estimated that 60 to 70 percent of his customers are regulars. Summer is the busiest season, but the weeks before Christmas, when German cities hold Kristkindlmarkts (Christ child markets), are also lively. One Moro regular, university student Slaviero Ludovica, i told me it has “the best coff ee around; [the espresso is] dark brown, not black. Not bitter! Th e coff ee has great body, and the price is very good.” Ludovica likes to drop in with friends at least once a day. Since one part of Heidelberg University (Germany’s oldest university, founded in 1386), is just down the street, Herr Taha appeals to students on the basis of price. A single espresso is 1.70 euros, around $2.43 at today’s exchange rate. Starbucks charges 1.90 euros for an espresso; the highest price I found in Moro’s vicinity was 2.25 euros, at a place that did not specialize in coff ee. Yet most stores on Hauptstrasse also charge 1.70, so Moro has to be good. Taha, who uses only arabica beans for espresso, has a secret formula for producing good crema without the help of robusta. Smiling but unyielding about his recipe, he told me only that he uses a blend of fi ve diff erent beans, and counts on Indian beans in particular to give his coff ee fl avor and body. He has worked out an arrangement with La Spezia roasters of Bisa, Italy, to cook green coff ee fairly —18 to 20 minutes—for espresso. Th e beans then cool in a silo for a week. Aſt er that, Taha gets and uses the coff ee quickly. In addition to ready-to-drink coff ee, Caff é Moro sells alcoholic drinks, tea, whole bean and ground coff ee, various small coff ee makers for the home, chocolate and pastries, some homemade and some from Heidelberg’s fi nest patisseries. SCR May 2011 • www.specialty-coffee.com | 41