Product News

Singapore: Coffee academy opens

Boncafe International, 46-year old pioneer European-style Gourmet Coffee Roaster, announces the opening of a new coffee gallery and academy in Singapore. The new learning and training facility will showcase and teach all things coffee. It officially opened its doors on February 11.

Located in the main Boncaf?roasting house at Pandan Loop, Coffee Gallery & Academy took seed as a place for one to learn about the end-to-end Coffee Journey or crop-to-cup story, as well as a facility where Boncaf?s institutional customers can come to be trained on their coffee making or barista skills. This new facility will also make available coffee appreciation and barista courses to the public to sign up for.

Being the pioneer in the coffee roasting business since 1962, Boncaf?s vision with the coffee gallery and academy was to promote the coffee story to all who love and partake of this brew everyday of their lives!

"We are launching this learning and training facility because we have always had the passion in the company to be good at what we do", says Christian W. Huber, managing director of Boncaf? "We would like for this new gallery and academy to hold aspirational and hopefully inspirational meaning for those who come through it, a place where they can learn and train to be good at making coffee! Just as we aim to always produce good coffee for the connoisseur, so also those who would want to learn to make a good cup!" continued Huber.

"Many coffee drinkers are clearly familiar and attached to the brew they drink every morning, or in the afternoon, but we thought it'd be interesting for coffee lovers to understand the many processes that go into the whole crop-to-cup journey before they even have that shot of espresso in the cup. After all, coffee is the second largest traded commodity in the world after oil!" said Huber.

The Coffee Gallery has a green coffee section which showcases premium coffee beans that come from some of the best coffee-producing countries in the world - Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The Gallery also has a shop-floor roaster installed to demonstrate live roasting - ask any coffee aficionado and he'll tell you it's all in the freshness of the roast! - and cupping which is the process of sampling and tasting for the experts, and taste profiling.

Denmark: Coffee Queen Serving Concept

This summer Coffee Queen introduced its Serving Concept at the SCAE's Wonderful Coffee show in Copenhagen. It was so well received that later the same fall it was also widely introduced throughout Asia and the Pacific region.

The key to the Serving Concept is its award winning "Serving Station". It was initially the result of global consumer demands of higher quality and variation of their coffee. Eventually it also turned out be warmly welcomed by demanding tea-serving outlets and consumers.

The Serving Concept provides solutions for every possible outlet, from a small neighborhood coffee shop to any large conference hall.

The Serving Station's display cover provides excellent opportunity to give consumers attractive information of its content, but it also serves as an attractive advertisement space for the serving outlet or company.

As we all know, it's the sum of the minor details that creates the whole impression.

Please visit www.creminternational.com for more information.

Taiwan: Salty Coffee craze

A Taiwan coffee chain is enjoying sweet results after launching Salt Coffee which produces a unique but not entirely salty taste.
Since launching Salt Coffee on December 11, the 85 Degree Bakery Cafe, Taiwan's largest coffee chain, has changed coffee drinkers' habits and more and more customers are ordering Salt Coffee rather than black or sugared coffee.

"Public reaction surprised us. Nowadays an outlet in north Taiwan can sell 700 cups of Salt Coffee per day and a store in south Taiwan can sell 700 cups, which is 20-30% more than the daily sale of our brand coffee, American coffee, Cathy Chung, spokeswoman for 85 Degree Bakery Cafe, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA).

Chung said her company hit upon the idea of launching Salt Coffee because the trend of using sea-salt as a health ingredient in food or as cosmetics is sweeping Taiwan.

"Sea salt, which is also called ocean salt, is not refined and has more minerals than table salt. Besides giving the salty flavour, it opens the taste buds of your tongue, so you get a unique flavour from our Salt Coffee," she said.

The 85 Degree Bakery Cafe adds a small amount of sea salt to the creamy foam and chilled cream to a cup of steaming coffee.

Many customers screamed with delight when they tried their first cup of Salt Coffee.

"It gives you three tastes. First, you get the slightly salty taste from the cold cream foam, second, the mixed taste of the salty cream foam and hot coffee, third, the aroma of coffee," according to Ho Hsiu-ling, a university student. "It is amazing. I ordered it out of curiosity and expected it to be salty, but the taste is not entirely salty. It is salty and sweet, and is more fragrant then sugared coffee," she noted.

But Li Ping-mou, a computer engineer, said he preferred iced Salt Coffee "because the salty-sweet taste is sharper."

Taiwanese traditionally rub salt to fruits to make them taste sweeter and this may explain the latest craving for Salt Coffee.

After creating Salt Coffee, the outlet plans to launch Cheese Coffee and Fruity Coffee - by adding cheese and mashed fruit to the coffee.

Founded in 2004, 85 Degree Bakery Cafe beat Starbucks to become Taiwan's largest coffee chain in 2005. It now has 35 outlets in Taiwan, 20 in China, four in Australia and one in the United States.