Page 27 - #58 English

Challenges KGB) agents pushing people to buy drugs to put them in jail
after,” said Artem Temirov, “Now the group of interested
One of the main challenges for people has already googled everything they did not know,
further development is considered to be and they just circulate in between same specialty coffee
high price for rent; due to high cost of shops, which is not big at all. But the rest still do not know
specialty beans and low contribution that coffee is a berry and not an actual bean, that coffee can
margin, specialty coffee shops are not be sweet without any additives and so on.”
ready yet to rent bigger spaces in more
popular and convenient spots of the What’s Next
city. And indeed, why would someone
cross half of the city to get their morn- If you have been following the news you might hear
ing-before-work cup of coffee when “Russia” pretty often, as Crimean crisis promoted a number
they have MacCafe, McDonald’s or of governments to apply sanctions, which were approved by
Starbucks next to their apartment. How- EU and USA, against individuals, businesses and officials
ever, Artem Temirov sees it in more from Russia, and of course it influenced Russian economy
positive way: “As we saw many times on as euro to ruble exchange rate almost doubled, leaving
American specialty coffee shops’ ex- people, including café owners, with twice less money that
amples, we should not try to delight they had a day ago. “Local cafés during crisis do not suffer
customer all the time. For example, that much,” says Oleg Polovnikov, “We used to have our
Stumptown Coffee Roasters did not try peaks and valleys in terms of amount of customers, but
to change coffee culture to be like Star- now the number keeps being more or less same. In times
bucks, pleasing the customer in every of crisis, people tend to become more picky as they need
little thing and predicting their wishes. to think carefully what they spend money on.”
When your clients feel that they need “For most of Muscovites a cup of coffee for 200 rubles
good coffee and they cannot go back to (3,57 USD) is considered to be expensive, especially if
lower quality, it won’t be important you drink coffee every morning. We(owners of cafés)need
anymore how far from a subway station to sell more cups of coffee instead of just raising the price
your café is.” for it. The main factor of specialty coffee development in
What is more, educating local Russia is the population income level,” explains Artem
consumer can also be seen as a sphere Temirov, “Specialty coffee in Russia can become a flour-
to work at. “Two years ago we started ishing market or disappear, but for now it is hard for most
an educational campaign to explain of local specialty coffee shops to earn more.”
people that coffee is actually healthy to According to survey made by Koloro Agency, 96%
drink and what specialty coffee is. And of Moscow coffee drinkers tend to consume it at home
we realized that people did not know and only 20% drink it in coffee shops. “If every big Rus-
anything about it; people started sharing sian city will have at least two specialty coffee shops,
our posts in you can say it is a success,” says Oleg Polovnikov. “There
Facebook and are already nice specialty cafés and roasters out of big
c o m m en ti n g cities, which means that demand for good coffee grows
that they did not also outside of Moscow.”
know that qual-
ity of a coffee
bean itself can
actually affect a
cup. What we
did not expect at
all was reaction
from our Russian readers, as they
started to claim that coffee is a drug and
we were promoting drugs, basically they
opposed our facts due to lack of knowl-
edge on the subject. They blamed us for
promoting coffee just to amass a fortune
as we sell it or there was also a funny
idea that we were FSB (successor of

29