Shipping to:
Getting to know Paolo Scimone - Founder & Head of Coffee.
How did the journey of His Majesty the Coffee began?
His Majesty the Coffee is a project I started in 2013 inspired by the blooming of specialty coffee market in the UK. My first experience in coffee was in 2005, in London - I was working as barista and I fell in love with coffee but at that time the only commercial grade beans were available on the market.
Between 2005 and 2013, I owned and ran a coffee shop in Italy for 3 years and followed that by working at a local commercial roastery, based in north of Italy. At that time, I was already thinking about starting my own brand of coffee and the only thing missing in Italy, in the jungle of 1000 roasters, was specialty coffee.
I proceeded and started roasting only specialty coffee. Although the growth was slow (because the market in Italy was not ready yet), I'm more than happy of my decision now looking back.
Can you share more about His Majesty the Coffee's approach to sourcing and roasting coffee?
We like to source only the best coffee we find on the market, looking at interesting sustainable projects, where possible.
We also started our own projects like "For the Planet" and "Borderless Blend". The former is dedicated to our planet earth, where every bag of coffee sold, we donate the necessary amount to plant a tree in Kenya. The latter was started in support of a colleague in Ukraine - we donated the full amount of sales to support his difficult situation.
With regards to our roasting approach - we roast separately and differently for both espresso and filter coffees, dedicating our best to every lot we source.
What was the inspiration for His Majesty the Coffee to decide to put coffees into the convenient capsule format?
Instead of serving only wholesale accounts I wanted to reach the home consumer in 3 ways: Instant, Capsule and Infusion. I decided to proceed with capsule where we spent a year and a half to find the best roasting profile, and we're really happy about the result thus far.
Coffee is fuel to get us moving throughout the day, especially in the morning. What is your daily morning ritual like?
In the morning I like to have a cup of filter coffee, made with the team at the roastery. I don't like drinking coffee alone, because for me it's not a matter of the caffeine but enjoying a proper ritual.
What are you most excited about right now and for the future of His Majesty the Coffee as a brand?
I want to invest into instant coffee and single-serve products like coffee bags (similar to tea) to push people to drink a specialty coffee in every moment of their life, without any complication.
Getting to know Jamison Savage - Founder of Savage Coffees.
How did the journey of Savage Coffees start?
I started Savage Coffees in 2016 in an effort to bring more affordable, high-level coffees to our discerning premium specialty audience. At Savage, we purchase cherries from our fellow producers who demonstrate high agronomic and environmental-conscious methods. We then process these cherries to our standards using innovative and creative processing techniques ranging from classic washed to carbonic maceration. These coffees are both traditional varieties as well as exotics which score at 88-90+. The Savage Coffees model has proven to be highly beneficial for both the brand and local producers.
Can you share more about Savage's approach to sourcing and roasting coffee?
We source our cherries from the high-land rainforests of Volcan and Boquete Valley in the Republic of Panama. These farms are all family owned, boutique estates, with meticulous production and harvest standards. We carefully select our producer partners after considering their farm conditions and ability to consistently provide us with the volumes necessary to meet our requirements. Savage Coffees is a relationship-based company and we source our cherries from our partners year after year. We pay a premium for these cherries and expect the harvest selection to be optimal.
What was the inspiration for Savage Coffees to decide to put coffees into the convenient capsule format?
Technology has taken a big step forward over the last few years as have customer preferences for better coffee. This important shift has provided us an opportunity to participate in this single-serve market and bring something new and exciting to the capsule-consuming public. Savage Coffees' capsules are made from Polylactic Acid (PLA) and, therefore, compostable after enjoying. These plant-based capsules consider not only the highest coffee quality available, but also consider the environment.
Coffee is fuel to get us moving throughout the day, especially in the morning. What is your daily morning ritual like?
Well, I am, of course, a coffee enthusiast and enjoy all of the Savage Coffees on offer, but my mornings definitely include drinking several of our capsules. The quality and convenience of our capsules coupled with the Morning Machine is an absolute necessity. This is the reason Savage Coffees and Morning have come together in collaboration; the perfect capsule in harmony with the most advanced capsule machine.
What are you most excited about right now and for the future of Savage Coffees as a brand?
Consumers are demanding higher quality coffees with convenience. We're thrilled with the direction the industry as a whole is headed in as we are embracing this movement. We are very focused on the single-serve market and have not only the finest coffee capsules available, we also have a line of instant coffees and we'll be announcing news on our ready-to-drink beverages soon.
Getting to know BK Kim - Co-founder of Fritz Coffee Company
How did the journey of Fritz Coffee Company began?
The journey of Fritz Coffee Company started with 6 good friends, all with different skills and expertise, coming together with the desire to build the best cafe experience in Seoul.
Can you share more about Fritz's approach to sourcing and roasting coffee?
Our approach to coffee is simple, we believe that good ingredient is everything and it starts with the green bean that we buy. We've established long-standing direct relationships with coffee producers around the world and deal directly with them - roasting their coffees to bring our their best characters.
What was the inspiration for Fritz to decide to put coffees into the convenient capsule format?
We started to see that behaviours of consumers have changed and many people started having capsule machines at home - it was a common wedding gift for couples.
Convenience was important to our customers and that's when we decided that we could share our quality coffee products in an easy-to-drink format - we call them "Easy Coffee"!
Coffee is fuel to get us moving throughout the day, especially in the morning. What is your daily morning ritual like?
I am a very early riser - I think it must be because of age, I start my day at 6am usually absorbing knowledge by reading books on coffee, management and self-improvement. This is followed by my coffee ritual, hand-grinding beans and making a pour-over coffee.
What are you most excited about right now and for the future of Fritz as a brand?
We want continue to build and grow as a brand to build a sustainable business - ultimately to support the well-being and progression our staff members, co-founders and everyone in the coffee supply chain.
Getting to know Jaroslav Tucek, - Co-founder of doubleshot
How did the journey of doubleshot start?
We founded doubleshot in 2010 after having traveled to and worked on coffee farms in Panama and El Salvador. Part of the team were also working and learning from one of the leading Canadian roasters - 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters in Vancouver.
Being close to the best gave us the much needed experience and a different perspective on what specialty coffee means and what it could provide. With this experience we set up doubleshot almost in mid-air, on the flight back home to the Czech Republic.
Can you share more about your local coffee scene in Prague and what
doubleshot's approach to sourcing and serving coffee there?
The coffee scene in Prague is huge and interesting. It is really easy to get a great cup of coffee at many places around the city. In the past 10 years, it has progressed so much so that Prague can compete easily with other European capitals. Though usually small and local, specialty coffee roasters are plentiful and very good.
We in doubleshot run three of our own coffee shops - Můj šálek kávy, Místo, and an espresso bar at Alza.cz. We consider them our showrooms where we serve coffee exactly as we want to and as best as we can. Apart from these three, we provide coffee (wholesale) to hundreds of coffee shops, restaurants as well as to offices and company coffee shops around Central and Eastern Europe.
What was the inspiration for doubleshot to decide to put coffees into the
convenient capsule format?
Our mission from the beginning is to make specialty coffee approachable, make it a common thing and not a luxury. Ease of preparation is an important factor when you want to appeal to a large group of customers, who are time-stressed or who take coffee as necessity.
For a long time, we were not satisfied with the quality of coffee capsules and aluminium capsules were too much of an ecological burden for us to even consider adding to our offering. But soon came the evolution of compostable capsules which gave us a positive step towards our goal which is to make specialty coffee a common standard.
To be frank, part of our inspiration of developing on our own capsule line was the introduction of the Morning capsule Machine. We had tried a few coffees from Colonna Coffee brewed on the Morning and were instantly blown away by the cup quality.
Coffee is fuel to get us moving throughout the day, especially in the morning. What is your daily morning ritual like?
My days are really varied, so it is difficult to generalize. But I usually start my day with a cup of great tea. While commuting to work, I usually go through necessary phone calls and I have my first cup of coffee at the roastery.
Caffeine is not an energy booster for me so I usually drink coffee just because I like it or whenever we have a cupping session. It always has to be an amazing coffee, I can't drink anything mediocre just because of the caffeine.
What are you most excited about right now and for the future of doubleshot as a company?
Tough question. We survived covid, then the economic crisis is on our shoulders and prices of coffee are hitting record highs. I think I am more nervous than excited. I hope all these factors will not stop the amazing change which is going on for more than a decade now in the Czech Republic coffee scene and that doubleshot will still play an important role in making more people hooked on specialty coffee.
On the other hand, we have several big things in the pipeline right now so there is not much time to relax. We are opening a fourth cafe in a premium downtown location; a new, much bigger roaster is on the way and hopefully we will start working on our new roastery, which will be awesome. In a way, I am nervous but still very much excited too.
Getting to know Rob Berghmans - Founder of Caffènation
How did the journey of Caffènation start?
In 2003, I was tired of people in Antwerp making coffee without love for the product and the people drinking it, and so decided things had to be changed drastically. Based in the city of Antwerp, we seek to challenge the coffee landscape, always striving to be one step ahead in both coffee quality and experience.
Can you share more about your local coffee scene in Antwerp and what Caffènation's approach to sourcing, and serving coffee in the local area?
The local coffee scene is lively, young and with many of coffee lovers. At Caffènation we hope to offer people that home-away-from-home feeling you get with a good cup of coffee.
With coffee sourcing, we look for producers who we know to be ethical growers, who share our values and dedication to quality and seasonal freshness. We travel the world in search of beans whose expressive flavour tells a story – the taste of terroir, that unique combination of soil, altitude, water and climate that makes every bean unique.
Plus, transparency means a lot to us. You can trace your coffee’s journey from cherry to cup and know who’s helped along the way. Our transparent pricing means we have no secrets about what or who we pay for our beans.
What was the inspiration for Caffènation to decide to put coffees into the convenient capsule format?
Nespresso is market leader here in Belgium, but all these people with such a machine had almost no access to capsules with light-roasted specialty coffee and adding to the fact that we used compostable capsules (at that time) was almost unseen.
Coffee is fuel to get us moving throughout the day, especially in the morning. What is your daily morning ritual like?
Drinking one big mug of filter coffee with my breakfast and then later on drinking another big mug of filter coffee at work.
What are you most excited about right now and for the future of Caffènation as a company?
Coffee from origin is constantly improving and this we want to tell the world. We want to become a coffee company leading in transparency, diversity and sustainability - for the Belgium region and beyond.
Getting to know Kasper Frandsen - Head of Coffee for Original Coffee.
How did the journey of Original Coffee start?
Two great childhood friends who had been selling coffee from bicycles for a couple of years got an opportunity to open a coffee shop in Copenhagen’s most exclusive shopping mall - Illum. It didn’t take long before they had the chance to open their second coffeeshop and with that they called up the big brother of one of the friends, asking him if he would like to join the adventurous journey of running coffeeshops, and that was when it all began. This year (2022) Nikolaj, Philip and Jonas celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Original Coffee and the 16 coffeeshops and bakery they now run.
Can you share more about your local coffee scene in Copenhagen and what Original Coffee's approach to coffee sourcing and serving the local community of your coffee shops?
The coffee scene in Copenhagen is constantly evolving. We have some great roasters, baristas and very diverse looks and atmospheres with the coffee bars here.
Our goal is to serve great coffee and give high end service experiences to all our guests. We experienced that the locals in the neighbourhoods we have coffeeshops in quite quickly become our regular customers.
What was the inspiration for Original Coffee to decide to put coffees into the convenient capsule format?
We started to look into that market when we experienced that a lot of our regulars were asking us about capsule coffee. We saw an opportunity and decided quite fast to use the same high quality of coffee in our coffee bars and put them into capsules. A lot of our customers have a capsule machine at home and therefore we also see it as a service for them, to be able to have our coffees at home.
Coffee is fuel to get us moving throughout the day, especially in the morning. What is your daily morning ritual like?
Personally I have a lot of different equipment at home so naturally I brew on a lot of different methods. But my go-to is an espresso or a filter coffee; in the weekends I do prefer a pour over.
What are you most excited about right now and for the future of Original Coffee as a company?
The last couple of years have been tough for everyone and especially the service industry. But we see that all our shops are performing very well even though there have been many lockdowns throughout the last two years. Thus, what makes me excited is that we have loyal regulars, high quality coffee and some great capsules and by that room to grow as a company.
Getting to know Wei Jie - Director, Co-founder and Coffee Roaster of Foreword Coffee Roasters.
How did the journey of Foreword begin?
Foreword was established as a social enterprise in 2017, as a cafe that serves specialty coffee from Asia, while providing training and employment opportunities for persons with disabilities. Fast forward to 2022, we are currently in 8 locations and provide a range of products and services, such as mobile coffee cart, team building workshops, and of course - our coffee capsules!
In February 2022, Foreword was also officially certified as a B Corporation, a global movement which recognizes businesses as meeting a high standard of verified performance in social and environmental factors and are being transparent by allowing information about our performance to be made public. We continue to review and improve on our company practice as we aspire towards an equitable and sustainable value chain that empowers stakeholders from farmers to consumers.
Can you share more about your local customer community and also what Foreword Coffee's approach (philosophy) to sourcing and serving coffee is?
I was inspired by the coffee production process from farm to cup during my first trip to a coffee plantation in Yunnan, China. From then, I was determined to source our own coffee when we started Foreword. I have visited the farms in China, Laos, and Indonesia when we were sourcing our beans, to learn and understand the processes and systems in place at the start of the value chain. Through such visits and interaction with the coffee traders, we are assured that they share similar values as us and have responsible practices in place to benefit their local communities through coffee production.
We continue to import coffee from the same partners we have worked with over the past 5 years because we want to support them as much as they want to support us. This relationship-building is important to us, as the demand for coffee has been increasing over the years and our partners were kind enough to reach out to us first to reserve our required quantities before making it available to other buyers.
Being in multiple locations, the customers we serve vary from those office people who seek a cafe to hold off-site meetings, to students who are looking for a space with free wifi; doctors and nurses who require their fuel to last through their day and people who find us specifically to try specialty coffee from Asia while supporting our social cause.
At the cafes, we typically provide 2 choices of beans (one with a nuttier profile and one with a fruitier profile) and rotate them on a regular basis so that our customers get to taste something different each time. Coffees are all served in double shot so as to keep our workflow lean for our employees with disabilities and to provide the greatest caffeine kick (and value for money) for our customers.
What was the inspiration for Foreword to decide to put coffees into the convenient capsule format?
The global ready-to-drink (RTD) coffee market is estimated to be US$26.3 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow year on year. Convenience is something which more consumers are looking at, and we were inspired to make specialty coffee more accessible to our customers.
The capsule format is one of the ways in which we can make our coffees more accessible to coffee drinkers. Improved technology, such as the Morning Coffee Machine, allows coffee drinkers greater control over their brew, which gives the best of both worlds of convenience and quality. As consumers look towards greater convenience without compromising on quality, we felt that coffee capsules is a good line of product we should offer.
Coffee is fuel to get us moving throughout the day, especially in the morning. What is your daily morning ritual like?
I like to head down to one of my cafes - usually Temasek Shophouse, because of its accessibility in the town area, and to brew a cup of latte before the cafe's opening time. I get to talk to my cafe staff on coffee calibration as we taste the first espressos of the day, and practise my milk frothing and latte art as I make my coffee.
What are you most excited about right now and for the future of Foreword as a company?
We are busy with 2 new cafe openings in the second half of 2022 and we are definitely looking forward to having these cafes up and running. We are excited as more corporates and consumers get to know about us as a social enterprise and the interesting coffees that we have, which paves way to more collaborations such as this one with Morning. We certainly look towards a brighter future in the coffee and cafe industry in the years to come!