The COVID-19 pandemic has hit businesses hard, and especially, the coffee industry suffered a shock from the producers down to the coffee shops in the United States.
Starbucks Corporation, the world’s largest coffeehouse chain, expected to swing to a loss in its fiscal third quarter, predicting it lost as much as 3.2 billion in revenue due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Philz Coffee, a company based in San Francisco, laid off roughly 180 employees across the country in July, management of the cafe chain announced to staff Friday night.
“Larger companies, I think, they have more economic power and they can survive a temporary blip, but we are worried about these smaller shops and smaller chains. Are people going to really change to a different way of working and stay at home a lot more than before? I’m sure that there will be an impact on coffee. But right now it’s very hard to know what the direction will be,” said Jose Sette, executive director of the International Coffee Organization.
Because so many offices and restaurants have shut down, senior staff from a coffee roaster said that her company’s wholesale selling had been down to about 60 percent.
“We closed the cafes entirely. We took almost everybody who was working full time down to part time, if we could keep them. Otherwise, we had to furlough most of our team, myself included, I can go down to part-time work. I want to keep working, I want to help grow this company, so that there’s something we can all come back to,” said Devorah Freudiger, director of coffee culture with the Equator Coffees.
The company has tried to sell coffee products online, resulting in up to 15 percent of the business.
“The goal is to meet people where they are, which they are working at home. So, we are trying to reach them online, through social media, through our website, kind of anyway we can reach these people that are still drinking coffee. They are just drinking coffee differently now,” Freudiger said.
Equator Coffees has managed to re-open six of its eight stores for contact-less mobile orders.
Source: cctvplus
