Volume 2

The practical grocer : a manual and guide for the grocer, the provision merchant, and allied trades / by W.H. Simmonds ; with contributions by specialists, trade experts, and members of the trades ; illustrated by a series of separately-printed plates.

  • Simmonds, W. H.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The practical grocer : a manual and guide for the grocer, the provision merchant, and allied trades / by W.H. Simmonds ; with contributions by specialists, trade experts, and members of the trades ; illustrated by a series of separately-printed plates. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    110/344 (page 82)
    to four times, and I have had many words of praise from cus- tomers who had been induced to give coffee a trial when freshly roasted and ground. I attribute this to giving best possible value, as I have never advertised. I commenced with a good Costa Rica alone, afterwards adding one-part Jamaica, one-part East India in every 5 lbs. A tyro must see that he gets a good supply of gas for his roaster, as this is important, but his best plan will be to get someone experienced to put him in the way, if pos- sible.” Another grocer, in business in one of the suburbs of Man- chester (and since then in Manchester itself and elsewhere), wrote in the following terms:—-“A question was put to me a short time ago by a wholesale dealer in coffee: ‘ Do you think you have sold more coffee since you began to roast your own, because all my customers say their trade in coffee is dying out?’ To this I was pleased to be able to say: ‘My coffee trade has increased more than threefold since I began to roast my own coffee’; and I feel sure that if grocers would adopt this plan (especially small sub- urban grocers) they would find it both an increasing and profitable trade. Speaking from experience, I can testify that, besides sell- ing three times the quantity, I have nearly double the profit I had when buying ready-roasted, and the increased sales show that the quality pleases better. Further, as an encouragement to other grocers to do likewise, I may say that from a careful calculation I made during the first year I found that the increased profits alone had fully paid for the cost of the roasting apparatus. In these days of stores’ competition it is needful that we should throw no chances away, and I believe many are throwing a good one away in not paying more attention to the coffee trade. It has astonished me to find how many store-prejudiced ladies have given in to the coffee being better than what they were using, and many of my best customers have been obtained through some casual purchase made when they were running short, and had not the time to get it from the stores. It also has some little effect on the tea trade, for some ladies who would look upon us as being demented if we happened to mention that we keep a good article in tea, and who would tell you loftily that they get a chest at once from the London stores (by the way, ladies always talk about a chest of tea if they have had a 15- or i6-lb. cad), will