Business Info - i142

businessinfomag.uk magazine 22 COVER STORY Maintaining effective communications and a strong corporate culture during periods of rapid expansion can be challenging, as many growing businesses know only too well. In its new report, Driving Growth in Small Businesses – How UK SMBs can transform communications & culture through technology to maximise their competitive advantage , Microsoft highlights how modern communication and collaboration tools like Microsoft 365 and Teams can help organisations overcome some of the shortcomings identified in a recent YouGov survey of more than 1,000 SMB leaders and staff. These include poor communication and lack of enterprise- wide communications (cited as a cause of stress by 34% and 29% respectively); poor access to information (45% of employees complained that they have to make decisions without the information they need); and low take- up of internal collaboration tools (just 19% of respondents use such tools on a daily basis, compared to 74% who communicate face-to-face, 69% who rely on email and 55% who pick up the phone). Clifton Coffee Roasters, a Bristol- based coffee wholesaler and service organisation, is featured in the report as an example of how such problems can be overcome. James Goulding spoke to its Director of Coffee, Josh Clarke, to find out more about the challenges it faced as a growing business and the benefits of implementing Microsoft 365. Coffee and a chat Clifton Coffee Roasters was established in 2001 when its founding director James Fisher spotted a gap in the market to provide coffee shops, restaurants, hotels and other outlets in Bristol and the south-west with equipment servicing/support and barista training. “We were at the start of the third wave of coffee, a new wave of specialist coffee coming into the UK, and there were a lot of machines and people doing an OK job with coffee. James saw a big gap in being able to support customers with equipment and training, particularly coffee training,” explained Clarke. A second director Edward Buston joined the company a couple of years later to strengthen the training side of the business. Then, in response to customer demand, the company started to stock product too – coffee machines and drinks. “We became a one-stop-shop. If you needed product, if you needed training, if you needed technical support, you could come to us and we could facilitate that for you,” explained Clarke. This broader offering helped Clifton Coffee Roasters secure contracts with two small businesses that have since grown into national chains: Loungers Group, operator of Lounge and Cosy Club cafes/bars/restaurants, which now has 162 sites nationwide; and Coffee#1 (acquired by Caffe Nero Group this time last year), which has more than 100 sites across England andWales. “When we started supplying them, Coffee#1 had five sites and Lounge had one. As they opened more shops, we said we would like to offer you the same level of service, the same level of support, the same friendly face for deliveries and machine maintenance, to the point where we had a portfolio of a couple of hundred customers and 12 employees,” said Clarke. Coffee roastery In 2013, Clifton Coffee Roasters took another great leap forward with the establishment of its own roastery and associated wholesale business (more recently it has also opened an online store selling coffee, machines and accessories). “Before that, we had coffee contract- roasted for us.We didn’t have the ability or the means to roast or source coffee ourselves, so we relied on other experts in the industry. But when we saw the rate at which the coffee industry was growing, particularly the specialty market, we decided to take control of our whole supply chain, including our brands, purchasing and sales.” Since the roastery was set up, it has grown by at least 25-30% each year and now roasts 250 metric tonnes of coffee per annum, generating around 50% of the company’s total turnover. Over the same period, the company’s headcount has grown from 12 people to more than 30, split across the wholesale department, the training department, the engineering department, office In 2018, Clifton Coffee Roasters... n supplied and supported more than 850 sites across the UK n roasted and sold 109,210,640 coffee beans, enough to make more than 7 million cups of coffee n bought coffee from 16 countries (El Salvador, Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Panama, China, Guatemala, Peru, Mexico, Kenya, Costa Rica, Myanmar, Honduras and Tanzania) n paid on average 156% above the Fair Trade Price for its coffee n trained more than 1,000 baristas from around the world Microsoft 365 has enabled Clifton Coffee Roasters to improve both collaboration with colleagues and communication with customers and suppliers