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| Dear Specialty Coffee Professional: I made this just for you; for my friends and associates in San Diego's coffee trades; in particular, the coffeehouse and caf? owners that have shaped this city's approach to specialty coffee for nearly two decades. Operating a coffeehouse in San Diego is tough; the majority of them are one or two-person operations working long hours. While most coffeehouse operators accomodate this pace, it means that many of them are tied to their operations virtually around the clock, with little time left for trade associations, co-ops or study of trade developments. It's impossible for them to get out of their coffeehouses for any length of time.
In addition, local bureaucracy regulates coffeehouses in an arbitrary fashion. Local government sees them as a plum to be picked and squeezed for all the money they can bleed into San Diego's (aka Enron by the Sea) nearly bankrupt city treasury. While coffeehouses are profitable, government interference limits their growth and expansion. Limiting innovation, investment opportunity and preventing new ideas from seeing the light of day results in a general decrease of business power, creative development and profitability. Fortunately, San Diego's specialty coffee trade has an ace up its sleeve in the form of ESPRESSO, San Diego's Coffeehouse Newspaper which has won the battles its fought on the coffee trade's behalf over the years. Now, ESPRESSO will launch a new publication which will launch in 2007 specifically for coffeehouse operators and local affiliated businesses-Caf? Tab.
Caf? Tab will bring needed information to the coffeehouse operators and hospitality tradespeople in San Diego; it will increase business power and opportunity by giving the trades a voice and forum for action; it will acquaint local powers that be of the concerns of the trades and better bridge the gap between politics and profitability. The specialty coffee community in San Diego needs help and Caf? Tab will bring it by finding solutions to problems, bringing the world's trade to its door and generally increasing knowledge of trade developments.
Caf? Tab is not just another glitzy coffee and tea trade publication. Frankly, I have no interest in competing with other publications in the field since ESPRESSO is my first passion and driving direction in publishing. Caf? Tab will supply a crying demand by local trades for information about their business concerns. If local coffeehouse operators can't find out about the rest of the coffee world, that world must come to them and Cafe Tab-a quarterly, free, local trade compendium hand delivered to every coffeehouse operator in the San Diego region-is the means for the world of specialty coffee to make their acquaintance.
Think of Caf? Tab as a door through which your business can access 370-plus potential coffeehouse clients-as well as thousands of local restrateurs, food professionals and allied business professionals on both sides of the border here that are not getting your message now, because that is exactly what is happening.
According to our latest research, only seven out of 370 coffeehouse owners and operators are members of the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA). The well-known, slick, glossy trade publications are notable by their absence among the majority of San Diego's coffeehouse operators. Styles of service common elsewhere are little understood, practiced or used here. The same is true for all kinds of developments in the trade. Besides that, the glossy trade publications do nothing to reference the unique and critical problems facing San Diego's coffeehouses.
Caf? Tab will change that because Caf? Tab knows its city like no other publication can.
I don't mean to slight San Diego's coffeehouse operators. They're doing a great job and for years they have depended on ESPRESSO's trade page for local news and information that is important to them. Caf? Tab is the logical extension of what my newspaper has brought them for 14 years, and I look forward to doing a better job on their behalf by giving them a dedicated publication for their eyes only-instead of one that shares its secrets with the coffeehouse public.
The premiere issue that will launch in early 2007. I hope you will become part of it and gain many long term clients through Caf? Tab. I look forward to your interest which will allow Caf? Tab to do a better job for San Diego's coffeehouses and the people who run them. Please contact me at the above numbers day or night. I'm usually in my office and if I'm not, I will return your contact immediately on my return. Thanks. Sincerely, John Rippo, Publisher & Editor, ESPRESSO, San Diego's Coffeehouse & Caf? Newspaper, TE Coffeehouse Review of Books & the Arts and te Caf? Tab. | Cafe Tab FORMAT:
Tabloid, 11 x 17 inch page format, on E-brite bookstock; non gloss. Four color available. FREQUENCY:
Quarterly; Winter (January), Spring (April), Summer (July), Fall (October) DEADLINES: December 15, March 15, June 15, September 15 for all business, copy and images. CIRCULATION:
5000 copies printed quarterly; free distribution to all 370 coffeehouses and cafes in the San Diego region, with distribution to nearby Orange and Riverside Counties, as well as to the Tijuana, Mexico region.
Delivery to selected restrateurs, culinary schools, professionals in allied trades. Including complete access to San Diego Food & Beverage Association membership. WHO READS IT:
Coffeehouse operators
Coffee roasters
Importers
Investors
Brokers
Insurers
Vendors
Bakers
Bankers
SD Chamber of Commerce
Business Improvement District Officials
Politicians
Service Technicians
Entreprenerus
Lenders
Lease agents
Lobbyists
Investors
Restrauteurs
Hotel management
Tourism officials
Regional School Board Nutrition Buyers
Wholesalers
Grocers
All manner of food, drink and related industry professionals of every kind in San Diego County. |
