In one of the Sunday papers recently I came across a piece by that great promoter of quality in Irish hospitality Ms. Georgina Campbell. In it she complained that hotels & restaurants throughout the country were letting things slide. Paint looking dull and faded, tiles getting chipped, etc. Now, I’ve mislaid the newspaper in question so I don’t remember whether or not the good lady referred to the quality of the food on offer so I’ll comment only on our own experiences in GREENBEAN.

Ever since this current recession began all our customers (without exception) have been putting pressure on us to reduce prices of our coffee products. This, at a time when raw coffee prices have never been higher! Because of these same prices of raw, we have not been able to accede to these requests. In fact we have had to increase prices in the recent past to a small degree. Hopefully that’s the end of it and prices will not increase further. My point is that the vast majority of our customers accepted that you must pay for quality and only 2% of them (by number) have actually left GREENBEAN for an inferior product.

So maybe some tiles are not what they were. Perhaps a paint job is overdue. The important thing is that, in our humble experience, the catering industry in Ireland, while trying very hard to get value for money, DO NOT seem to be compromising on quality. After all, if your quality drops you might still be in business in the short term but you have almost certainly been handed your hat.