Our senior consultant, Ed Arvidson, just returned from a weeklong consulting trip to Saudi Arabia where he worked with the large coffee company, Bonnon Coffee. Bellissimo has been working Bonnon for a few months, consulting on their quickly growing coffee retail and wholesale roasting business.

Salem Binmahfouz of Bonnon says, "Dear Bellissimo, We are overwhelmed with your keen courage, brilliant personality, and specialized skillfulness. The pleasure is all ours to have met you. Ed, you are a true gentleman and professional. On behalf of the BONNON COFFEE team, and me we are grateful for your dedicated visit, inputs, and insights. This is an excellent start and we would like to continue working together toward building lasting successful relationship. My sincere regards to Ed, Bruce, Matt and the rest of Bellissimo."

Below is an article from Arab News that talks about Bellissimo's visit.

Coffee business growing rapidly, says US expert
K.S. Ramkumar I Arab News

JEDDAH: Ed Arvidson, senior consultant at the US-based Bellissimo Coffee Info Group, is on a visit to study the Kingdom’s coffee business and explore the prospects for offering Barista training. The group, based in Portland, Oregon, also runs a coffee school where trainees come from the world over for a weeklong course. It has its dedicated websites for coffee school, espresso and coffee universe, which is aimed at creating a community of coffee lovers.

“Bellissimo helps coffee businesses succeed, whether you have a coffee shop start up, or an existing coffee shop, espresso kiosk, coffee cart or espresso,” Arvidson told Arab News on the sidelines of a meeting he had with some senior executives of Bonnon Coffee, which runs a chain of coffee shops.

“Coffee culture is surely growing in many parts of the world including Saudi Arabia,” he said, adding that the United States today has around 40,000 coffee bars and Italy 250,000 espresso bars. “In fact, coffee is becoming popular even in some of the tea drinking nations like Japan and China,” he added.

“What is liked about coffee is its caffeine content. It also depends on how best you make coffee. We select only the finest Arabica beans and roast them to perfection to bring you the highest quality espresso coffee, he said, adding that the group’s mission is to create luxurious, welcoming stores that provide a haven from the cut and thrust of everyday life. Offer of a steaming hot and refreshingly cold cup of coffee with or without a snack menu is immediately lapped up,” he added.

Bonnon Coffee, a 100 percent Saudi enterprise, has six outlets in the city since its establishment three years ago and has plans to increase them to nine before moving out to other parts of the Kingdom. “We also have plans to establish our franchises elsewhere in the Gulf and world,” its Marketing Manager Mohammed S. Al-Nahdi said. It has several Saudi partners some of whom have returned after graduating from the US and Europe.

Although the term coffee culture seems to be exclusively American, the formation of culture around coffee and coffee houses in fact dates back to the earliest coffeehouses founded in the 16th century Turkey. Coffeehouses, or enterprises that specialize in the preparation of coffee drinks, have traditionally been social hubs and artistic centers.

Click here to read article online.

On July 16th, in an NPR segment entitled, “The What, How and Why of Online Social Networks,” Matt Milletto’s Barista Exhange Web site was featured in a discussion that included the biggest and most popular social networking sites on the Internet: Facebook, MySpace and Linked in. In the segment, Barista Exhchange was examined as a prime example of niche social network — one that caters to a particular group in society, in this instance, the specialty coffee industry.

Click here to listen to the NPR segment.

Networking Together: Firms Join Forces On Social Networks To Raise Profiles

Last year, Matt Milletto, director of training for the American Barista & Coffee School in Portland, Ore., had an idea for generating some buzz around the specialty coffee industry: Why not create an online social network where independent coffee-house owners, baristas, roasters and java lovers could swap tips and stories, pose questions or arrange to meet in person?

Using Ning.com, a site that allows anyone to create a social network, he founded a group called Barista Exchange that allows members to build profiles about themselves or their business and post discussion topics, blog posts, photos and videos. He invited everyone he knew in the industry and encouraged them to invite friends.

Since its December launch, the site has grown to about 3,000 members and gets about 15,000 unique visitors a month. Discussion topics range from the best espresso machines to the closing of Starbucks stores. "There's been forums and blogs [about coffee] for a long time, but with a site like this you can really put a face behind what you're posting about," Mr. Milletto says.

The expansion of social-networking sites and new tools making online interaction easier are giving small businesses new opportunities to network with each other and their customers, and to expand their reach. Instead of just setting up a network for their own customers, many are realizing the benefits of hooking up with other businesses to collectively raise their profile in a particular geographic area or industry.

Dedication Required
Small businesses are often better positioned to take advantage of social networking than larger businesses because they often seem more approachable and so customers and prospects are more likely to be interested in connecting with them online. And they're more nimble. "Smaller companies are a lot more able to react and be proactive" by using social networking sites to promote their business, says Alex DeNoble, head of the entrepreneurship department at San Diego State University.

Using social networking for marketing isn't as easy as it may appear, though. It requires the network's founders to first generate a healthy membership base of other businesses and consumers and then get those members to feel compelled to return frequently to the site and contribute content.

Mr. Milletto spent several months sending out emails to people he knew in the coffee industry. He also placed ads on other coffee-related Web sites and in newsletters to drive traffic to Barista Exchange and boost membership. He populated the site with blog posts in hopes of sparking dialogue among members. After a few months, the network took on a life of its own — but it took a while for members to start contributing.

Mr. Milletto has worked to make sure the site isn't static by adding new features such as job listings in the coffee industry and online messaging features.

John McMullen, a technology consultant in Jefferson Valley, N.Y., a few weeks ago created a social network on Ning.com for wineries in the Hudson River Valley region of New York. The hope is the site will help brand the area as a wine-tasting destination.

Mr. McMullen is still posting most of the content, including videos about the wineries, photos and wine-related articles. But he's starting to see some members join who weren't originally invited. Members can elect to have updates on the site emailed to them, which he hopes will encourage them to come back to the site.

Many networks employ tools such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds and email updates to keep members connected to the network's activity.

Still, many find growing social networks is slow going. Luke Bunting, founder of a Lancaster, Pa., Web development firm, started a group on Facebook.com two months ago for Lancaster businesses. Mr. Bunting says he hopes the site will help businesses share advice as well as publicize the need to support local businesses. So far, though, the network only has 19 members.

Netting Referrals
The networks that do manage to grow virally and build a critical mass can reap big benefits for their members.

Troy Reynard, owner of Cosmic Cup Coffee Co. in Easton, Pa., has about 619 "friends" in the Barista Exchange network and has created a subgroup for coffee businesses in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania. He met one coffee-shop owner on the site who is about 20 minutes away. He refers customers to Mr. Reynard's shop when they're in the Easton area, and Mr. Reynard refers customers back.

Mr. Reynard says he hopes his participation on Barista Exchange will draw more people to stop by his shop by showing he understands coffee. "If they read a couple of my blog posts," he says, "I think they could get a sense of what kind of level of professionalism I have — what kind of dedication to our craft."

Click here to view article on-line.