You will have noticed that we have updated a number of our prices
1. Olympia machines: since we started selling Olympia machines in 2008 we have consistently sold them at around cost price in order to establish a name for ourselves. This was not sustainable, and we upset the other Olympia resellers around the globe quite a lot in the process which is understandable. Our pricing for these machines is now the Olympia recommended retail price in Swiss francs translated into sterling. We are also charging for delivery now, although we will probably use DHL Express direct from the factory in Switzerland to ensure you have full tracking of your machine and for UK customers to remove Parcelforce from the import chain as they don't add to the efficiency of the process I think its fair to say.
2. Coffee: as you know Londinium are different in that we actually roast your coffee to order in almost all cases, as evidenced by the roast date stamped on the top of each bag. Reviewing our order patterns we observed that we had a lot of customers ordering a single bag or a single bag of a large number of different roasts. This is incredibly time consuming as you can imagine. The price changes have not been made in response to increasing coffee prices; we are using price as a mechanism to guide your choices in ordering, in particular to encourage you to order greater amounts of the same coffee. In essence we need to drive more efficiency into our business. In particular I don't really think 250g of coffee is enough to really 'get into the taste' by the time you have dialled your grinder in. I think this is especially an issue for espresso coffee where being only slightly off in the grind is magnified greatly in the cup. Yet we will stick with 250g bag sizes as this ensures that the coffee is at its optimum. So if you are prepared to order 2 bags of any given coffee, and our belief is anyone who is serious about the coffee will need 500g to get into it, then the cost per bag drops quickly from a high GBP7.50 to a more reasonable GBP6.00 per bag. The next change we have made is to encourage an even number of bags to be ordered as observation has shown that this further increases efficiency in our process. For this reason the basis has shifted from a single 5 bag option to 4 and 6 bag options, each rewarding the customer with progressively greater levels of discount, costing GBP5.00 and GBP4.00 per bag respectively.
It is important to understand the basis of the premium that Londinium charges. You will see some of our coffees offered elsewhere for considerably less. We would implore you to try the competitor's offering alongside ours as we have no doubt they will tell you that 'its the same coffee guv, they're just ripping you off'. We have every confidence that your tongue will be faithful in reassuring you that this is simply untrue from the very first sip. We are charging you on the basis of time for our roasting skills, in the same way that a lawyer, accountant, or other service based professional does. This means we try to charge all our coffees at the same price (it takes the same amount of time for us to roast an inexpensive coffee as a more expensive coffee), other than those coffees that are an order of magnitude more expensive, such as the Jamaican Blue Mountain and Kopi Luwak. It is this unique transformation of the raw green coffee in our own unique roast signature that we are charging you for.
The raw product is available from multiple sources. You should be seeking out a roaster that can bring the best out of your favourite coffee. Do not accept that any shortcomings in the coffee is the coffee's fault; it is for the roaster to tame these as best he can or to elect that the coffee is not fit for sale as we frequently do at considerable cost, the most recent being the Jamaican Blue Mountain from the Blue Baron Estate (2009/10 crop) as we were uncomfortable selling it at around the GBP25.00/bag mark.
Roasters often pitch the story in such a way as to have you believe that it is difficult to find suitable coffee to roast. While it is true that we roasters frequently receive coffee from coffee brokers and direct from source that disappoints, or deviates significantly from the previous shipment when it is supposed to be the same coffee, we will commit heresy and tell you that for the majority of the time any disappointment you experience in the cup is due to the shortcomings of your favourite roaster.
Do not under estimate the challenge presented to get the same result from a consignment of coffee bag after bag. A moment's inattention results in a disappointed customer. For this reason we implore you to get in touch with us and give us both barrels if you ever receive a bag of coffee from Londinium that fails to meet your expectations. The reasons for this can be many and varied, but we stand behind our product and will replace, exchange, or refund as required to ensure you go away satisfied and understand that your custom is important to us.
Londinium is a genuine small roaster of gourmet coffee in London, England. We are not a monstrous coffee roaster of over a million tonnes of 'hand roasted' coffee a year, making out with clever marketing techniques that we are small.