Every restaurant owner knows that a good cup of coffee is essential to gaining and retaining customers. After all, coffee is America's favorite beverage, morning, noon and night. When we go out to eat, a good cup of coffee is an essential part of the dining experience. If the coffee we're served is weak or, worse, old tasting, we may well never return to that restaurant, no matter how tasty the food might be. This is why the most successful restaurants make sure their customers get a good cup of coffee every time they visit. Let's see what they know.

For a truly delicious cup of coffee, the secrets are simple and the rules are few. However, if you deviate from the simple formula, the results can be disappointing.

Believe it or not, the temperature and quality of the water used to brew the coffee matters. Always start with cold water. Tepid or lukewarm water does not allow the flavor to develop fully. Ideally, the temperature of the brewed coffee should range from 200-205 degrees. If you start with tepid water, you won't extract all of the flavor, resulting in a loss of some of the complexity of taste in that coffee bean.

A good cup of coffee is only as good as the coffee you use. You've probably noticed that there's a significant amount of variation in the price of commercial brands, up to $3 per can in many cases. Why? As with anything else, it's quality driven. Arabica coffee beans grow in rain forest areas, at altitude and typically under a canopy of larger trees. This means that the coffee beans develop and mature more slowly and yield a more refined flavor and nuances of taste, when compared to Robusta coffee beans, grown at lower altitudes and which mature faster, at the expense of good flavor.

Some manufacturers use all Robusta coffee beans in their product, selling at a cheaper price and having a blander taste. The cheaper coffee may be a case of 'penny-wise and pound foolish', due to the fact that you may need to use more coffee to get a strength you enjoy. You're also cheating yourself out of the flavor you expect in a good cup of coffee. Try just one can of all Arabica coffee and see if it's not actually more cost effective than a cheaper coffee.

A good cup of coffee must be fresh! If you just need a couple of cups each, for you and your sweetie, use a four cup coffee maker. It's little trouble to brew a new pot and have consistently fresh coffee.

The last secret to a good cup of coffee is a clean coffee maker. Nothing can ruin the taste of your coffee faster than a pot with built up oils from previous brews. Scrub your pot with soapy water after each use and run a dilution of half water and half vinegar through the coffee maker once a week. After running the vinegar solution through, follow up with a pot of clear water to clear any vinegar taste that might remain.

Simple enough. Those are all of the requirements for a good cup of coffee every time you brew.