Allegra Strategies hosts seventh annual UK Coffee Leader Summit

Allegra Strategies hosted its seventh UK Coffee Leader Summit, at the Langham Hotel in central London, last month. More than 150 industry leaders from across the coffee shop and food-to-go sectors attended this event to explore, discuss and debate the key trends shaping the marketplace. Addressing the theme ‘Transforming the High Street’ Jeffrey Young, Managing Director, Allegra Strategies, opened the conference with some key findings of Allegra Project Café15 report released earlier this year. The report, which features survey responses of more than 16,000 consumers, provides an analysis of changes in coffee culture, trends and consumer profiles. Young said this year’s report revealed that the coffee shop scene on Britain’s High street is growing at 10.7 per cent in turnover, reaching US$10.7 billion in 2014. Young claimed that while branded coffee shops currently dominate the market and the standard of coffee is improving, food is not good enough in coffee chains. Mark Fox, Managing Director of Starbucks, agreed that the standard of coffee was improving and continued the discussion in his presentation Meet Me @ Starbucks. Fox said that coffee chains should consider customer’s functional and emotional needs if they want the coffee scene to grow. Fox said Starbucks is addressing this in its stories in the UK and US, which are introducing wireless charging, mobile apps and a new design. The summit included a number of panel discussions such as ‘How Coffee can help us build a Better High Street’ with five panelists, including Miles Kirby, Founder of Caravan; Robert Robinson, Co-Founder of Notes; Chris Green, Director at Town Planning Services; Ben O’Brian, Founder & CEO of Sourced; and Starbucks’ Fox.