Effective tomorrow, until 12th January, the government is cutting the rate of VAT for food and non-alcoholic drinks from restaurants, pubs, bars and cafes, from 20% to 5%. Their intention is to support businesses and jobs in the hospitality sector following the massive hit most operators have taken, Cafe Allez! included, during the pandemic.
This is good news for us but it’s good news for you, our customers, too. We haven’t revised our prices since opening last May and even back then, when we benchmarked with competitors in the area, we knew that we were offering you outstanding value.
We were planning to increase prices this Summer to reflect the costs of takeaway packaging and the increases in some of our raw materials and ingredients. This VAT reduction means we can postpone any price increases for you, our customers, for some months to come.
Our loyalty card scheme is still in full swing so your custom is rewarded with a free drink when you’ve bought 9 hot drinks or iced coffees – and it’s still possible, if you choose carefully, to hit that magical cyclists’ “coffee and cake for a fiver” combo!.
A little more detail for those who are interested: the government schemes have definitely helped Cafe Allez!, specifically the furlough scheme that has supported some of our team and the small business grant. Being candid though, these haven’t fully offset the losses from having to close entirely for more than 50 days in the Spring, at a time when most of our fixed costs (insurance, rent, maintenance and so forth) continued. We also had almost all Summer bookings for Van Henri cancelled in the space of a week as event after event was removed from the season.
With your support and with our fabulous team behind us, we fight on! Allez! Allez!.
We hope you love our new branded Frugal Cups as much as we do!.
We scoured the market to bring you the single use cups with the best environmental credentials available. For one thing, they are made in the UK so haven’t had to travel across oceans to reach us. Most importantly, they can be recycled in ANY recycling bin (in your home, office etc.), unlike our previous compostable cups. They’re actually made of recycled paper to begin with!.
The design is from the wizards at AcetheSpace Design, who we entrust with all our design work. You’ll see why when you hold one and take a close look at the detail.
Do our drinks taste even better in these new cups? There’s only one way to find out… available in 8oz Regular or 12oz Large for your caffe latte, Americano, cappuccino, mocha, hot chocolate, tea, Cortado, flat white …
Pictured: the cups in detail, and Joe christening our first cup off the production line.
With a burning question to answer and a little time on our hands during lockdown, we decided to answer the age old question: is Henri, our Citroen HY van, the fastest vintage coffee van (in the hotly contested Vale of Belvoir region)?.
We had a natural adversary in the form of Lauren, from Ginger & Blue Travelling Coffee Company. Lauren is actually a great friend of Cafe Allez! and her beautifully restored Renault Estafette van is of similar vintage to Henri.
We also had access to a runway (as one does) thanks to the lovely people down the road at Skydive Langar. You can find out more about them here: https://www.skydivelangar.co.uk/
Most importantly of all, we have access to a Simon Wilkinson-Blake, a talented videographer and an excellent producer.
So a 1/4 mile drag race was duly scheduled. No spoilers here – you’ll have to watch the film to see the victor, along with an incredible coincidence that the race threw out.
Aside from some local rivalry, there is actually a long standing historical spat that we were acutely aware of. After the 2nd World War, there was a pact between the companies whereby Renault were permitted to build vans but not trucks, and Citroen would manufacture trucks but not vans. ‘Maverick engineering geniuses’ Citroen then became ‘evil marketing geniuses’ Citroen and went ahead and developed the H Van regardless!. So this was an opportunity for Renault to seek revenge.
Sincere thanks to Simon, Skydive Langar, Phil Stringfellow (our drone pilot) and – most importantly – Lauren for making it happen. We hope you enjoy watching the outcome as much as we enjoyed making it.
The History Cyclist, aka Rob, is a great friend of Cafe Allez!. As many of you know, he loves to cycle in the Vale of Belvoir and whilst doing so, he can indulge his passion for the historical events and places to be found right on our doorstep.
You can see the video THC made exclusively for us on our Facebook page at the site of Owthorpe Hall, but we thought we’d share a version to read here too.
Over to THC:
On the edge of the Vale of Belvoir, nestling beneath the ‘high wilds’ that accompany the Fosse Way is the small village of Owthorpe. Passing it today you may notice the quaint village church minding its own business in the corner of a cow field. The 17th century traveller would have too seen the church but dwarfed by Owthorpe Hall the country seat of the Hutchinson family which stood magnificently where the cows now chew their cud.
During the turbulent years of the English Civil War Colonel John Hutchinson and his wife Lucy left Owthorpe Hall for the Parliamentarian stronghold of Nottingham Castle which John commanded. There are many tales of narrow escapes and derring do throughout this time but the young couple survived the war and all it threw at them to return to a peaceful life at Owthorpe. John whiled away his time in this tranquil spot “planting groves and walkes and fruite-trees, in opening springs and making fishponds” whilst Lucy immersed herself in her love of writing and the arts. Perhaps somewhere in the backs of their minds they wondered if John’s decision to add his name to King Charles I’s death warrant had been the right one.
On the restoration of the monarchy John received a pardon for his role in the former king’s death whilst other regicides went to the gallows. The contrition shown in a letter forged by Lucy who was brilliant, bright and brave in equal measure may have tipped the scales in his favour.
But one dark winter’s night the Royalist soldiers came to Owthorpe.
Had Lucy’s forged letter been discovered? John was taken first to Newark, then The Tower of London before ending up in insanitary conditions in Sandown Castle in Kent. The conditions of his custody were wretched and he died as a result of them in incarceration at just 49 years of age.
Lucy never stopped loving him. And she never stopped regretting what she had done. In her grief she dedicated herself to poetry and the memory of the life they shared at Owthorpe.
If I on thee a private glance reflect
confusion does my shameful eyes detect
Seeing ye man I love by me betrayed,
by me who for his mutual help was made.
Who to preserve thy life ought to have died,
and I have killed thee by my foolish pride.
Lucy Hutchinson (1620 – 1681).
We’re delighted to announce that today, we re-open Cafe Allez! Belvoir Castle as a takeaway facility. We feel that the time is right, since restrictions on travel have been lifted by the government. We also had a tremendously positive response to a survey we put out locally.Continue reading
As most of you know, we chose to close Cafe Allez! Belvoir Castle on 21st March in the light of the government’s message to stay at home and avoid unnecessary journeys.
As the lock-down restrictions begin to ease, we’re thinking about how and when to re-open, although this would have to be a take-out service until the rules change further, with no outdoor seating and for consumption ‘off premises’ only.
We’ve been giving a lot of thought as to how we can do this safely and effectively, but would also love to hear your views… so if you’re a current or potential customer at Belvoir and have 3 minutes to spare, tell us your thoughts on this survey… be assured, we’ll be listening!
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CVQVDVG
Let’s talk coffee and specifically, crema!. The crema is the layer of light coloured ‘foam’ that you see on top of an espresso shot. So – how is it formed and what does it do to the flavour of your coffee?.
Keep in mind that a (usually double) shot of espresso is the basis of all of our coffee-based drinks at Cafe Allez!, whether it’s a caffe latte, a cappuccino, a mocha or a flat white… that’s why this matters!
Most obviously, the crema makes the coffee look gorgeous! I give you exhibit A: the Joetado! We were proud to have Joe on the team recently and he was looking for a slightly longer drink than a double espresso but still something with plenty of flavour and punch. So he created the Joetado – a small amount of hot water in a Cortado glass, with an espresso shot brewed on top. The result put us in mind of a miniature pint of Guinness and became a staff regular.
We make our Americanos this way too and they look beautiful as a result.
You won’t really find crema to the same extent from any brewing method other than espresso because it’s a by-product of pressure. When the water is forced through the coffee grinds at tremendous pressure (9 bar!), the carbon dioxide that was trapped in the coffee in the roasting process is released and that’s the ‘crema’.
The presence of crema indicates that your coffee was roasted quite recently because otherwise, carbon dioxide will naturally dissipate over time while the coffee is stored. In fact, always feel free to ask us when your coffee was roasted if you’re on the house blend.
Crema is also a fairly good sign that the barista has extracted the coffee with some skill and attention.
To taste, the crema in isolation is quite bitter. I well recall an experiment with Alex, our mentor at 200 Degrees, at the roast house. He asked us to close our eyes and then taste two different espressos. The second was noticeably less bitter and more balanced, but Alex explained that the only difference was that, with the 2nd, he’d swirled the coffee around to mix the crema in. So we do this as a default now for lattes, cappuccinos, flat whites and Cortados.
Enjoy your coffee the best you can until we see you again and when we do, if you order a Joetado, we’ll know you’ve been reading this!
Coffee in Space: and what true confinement means!
MT: the lock-down has certainly given me more time to read and think and I was lent a book called ‘Endurance: A Year In Space, A Lifetime Of Discovery’, by my Dad. Let me clarify that: it wasn’t written by my Dad, he loaned it to me: the author was US astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
I thought it might offer a good insight into what true confinement feels like and that it might put our own restrictions into perspective. It does and it does! For example, Scott missed nature most of all, but even in the midst of all this, we can go or look outside and appreciate nature and the blossoming of Spring more than ever.
Inevitably for Cafe Allez, this was bound to lead onto coffee and I’ve just read about Scott’s bewilderment (as a US citizen!) with the lengths his European colleague Samantha (and the European Space Agency) went to, to get a decent coffee in space: “Apparently when you have Europeans in space, you also have to have good coffee – the instant stuff just isn’t the same”. Amen to that!
It transpires that the machine in question cost over $1M USD and there were only 10 espresso packs on board. So next time you complain about the cost of a Caffe Latte at Cafe Allez! … it’s all relative!.
On further reading, I found that the machine was jointly developed by Italian firms Lavazza and Argotec. There was one remaining fault. The ISSpresso still had to be brewed in a bag and then sucked from a straw. So, to cement the next giant leap for coffee in space, Portland State University developed the zero-G coffee cup to work alongside it, with the cup replicating aspects of Earth’s gravity so the astronauts could enjoy it more.
The ISSpresso is not a drink we’ll be introducing in the ‘shop post-lockdown, but it was a fascinating insight and made me think of how pivotal good coffee is to our lives… how many treats give us so much satisfaction for so little guilt? And, unless you’re in space, for so little cost?
Check the link to get NASA’s take on coffee in space!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWuEVSCw8B8
