Searching for the Perfect Cup of Coffee

Many food service franchises have spent 2011 trying to perfect their coffee offering, quashing the stigma that fast coffee isn't good coffee.Paying particular attention to the quality of its coffee is Retail Food Group, the owner of Michel's Patisserie, Donut King, Brumby's Bakeries, Esquire Coffee Houses and bb's cafes.The group recently ran its inaugural Espresso Perfecto competition, allowing more than 200 of its best baristas from around Australia to compete and showcase their talents and skills.Sofian Loekman from Michel's Pattisserie Eastgardens was named Retail Food Group's Espresso Perfecto National Champion, with the Eastgardens store also taking out the team category.RFG head of strategy, Gary Alford, said "Launching a national RFG barista competition has been a dream of mine for many years. Coffee is important to us and the competition presented a wonderful opportunity to recognise and reward the outstanding calibre of baristas that we have in our brands,""Making quality coffee is a serious business and we know that it takes two key ingredients: quality coffee beans and well-trained baristas.RFG's coffee push comes about five months after the king of fast food, McDonald's, launched an advertising campaign and a strong drive towards improving the coffee offering at its McCafe outlets.The franchise admitted its customers weren't completely satisfied with its coffee, claiming they wanted more consistency, a stronger blend and more skilled baristas, all three of which were attended to with a new blend, a national training program for staff and stardardised equipment maintenance.If McDonald's customers are still unhappy with their new and improved coffee, it will be replaced, free of charge.And finally, international coffee house, Gloria Jean's has also committed to improving its customers' experience and increasing its share of the Australian market from two to ten percent.This will be achieved, general manager Gareth Pike explains, through new store layouts, specialty team roles and a new food and coffee offering.Maitre'd and coffee purveyor roles have been introduced, with the maitre d' welcoming guests and sharing their expertise on the new food range, while the purveyor's role involves educating customers on the coffee range and new brewing methods through interactive in-store coffee classes.As part of the revamp, Gloria Jean's sourced one of the world's rarest coffee beans, Lot #5 Norival Favaro - Sao Marcos. Only 2,756kg of the bean was produced in Brazil, and the franchise has managed to snag 840kg of it, indicating just how much they want to be taken seriously in the Australian coffee landscape.So what do you think about the quality of coffee in Australia, especially those served by fast food restaurants or chains? Has it improved lately?Original article by Danielle Bowling