A business that began with “one roasting machine and a box of cups” has grown into a hugely successful on-the-go coffee company, importing more than 700 tonnes of beans a year and serving 4.5 million cups of coffee last month.
Coffee Planet, a family business established in Dubai, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and is about to double in size.
It’s one of an increasing number of homegrown roasteries – including Raw, Boon and Bio Bean –fuelling the coffee boom.
Coffee Planet’s beans are imported from 22 countries, roasted and packed in its Jebel Ali warehouse, then distributed across the country and farther afield.
Rob Jones, from Wales, makes for a slightly unusual boss of a coffee company. He has a background in technology and computer science and worked at a live music venue, but says he never really “got into a career” before joining Coffee Planet at 25.
It was set up by his father, his brother and his business partner Matthew Yorke-Smith, who had the idea of on-the-go coffee.
“It started as a trial. We bought a machine from Seattle and one box of cups. We went to the cup company and asked for a couple of hundred – they said the minimum was 25,000.”
The company set up the machine and cups in an Adnoc petrol station. After a successful trial, it was given the green light to expand into all the stations. As far as Jones is concerned, it was the only real choice for consumers.
“There was Nescafé before us – and if you want to call that coffee, you can,” he laughs. “We had a model whereby we weren’t asking consumers to come to us; we were saying we will go to where you are. Everybody drives in this country, so the first port of call was gas stations.”
Until 2008, the company was buying coffee from overseas. It set up a roastery in Dubai Investments Park, but outgrew the space in two years.
It’s now based in an 835-square-metre space in Jebel Ali, and is in the process of taking on the adjoining warehouse of the same size.
There are now machines in petrol stations, carts and cafes. The company supplies hotels and restaurants and it offers to create particular blends for certain clients.
It has an online shop, a mobile-phone app, a loyalty programme and a new product to rival Nespresso.
After the Nestlé-owned company’s patents began to expire in 2012, other companies started producing capsules and machines that are compatible with its equipment.
Coffee Planet has a new range of eight capsules that vary in flavour, strength and origin. A pack of 10 bought online costs Dh21 (Dh2.10 per cup of coffee). Online prices for Nespresso capsules start at Dh25.50 for 10.
“It’s still about the quality,” Jones says, “at a more affordable price.”
Coffee Planet has also sold franchises in Oman, Malaysia and Pakistan.
To keep up with demand, the warehouse currently has three roasters; one that roasts 120 kilograms at a time; a second that roasts 12kg batches; and a smaller machine used to roast 300-gram samples.
“We receive samples from all over the world. We roast it here, and Matt will analyse the quality and characteristics of the coffees.”
“Matt” is Matt Wade, who’s the company’s secret weapon. He’s the Coffee Planet roastmaster.
He has been roasting for 15 years, after training in coffee shops in New Zealand and London.
He’s a certified “Q Grader”, also known as “cupper”, after completing regular exams with the Coffee Quality Institute.
The exams are not for the average coffee enthusiast. “It’s a week of exams,” Wade says, “testing your smell, taste and your ability to sense acids, salts and sweets. It’s a reaction thing; it’s not like you can learn the information and get better.”
With 15 years’ experience, Wade is familiar with most coffee regions and their flavours.
“Harar, for example, it’s just like blueberries: sweet. Sumatran coffees are really earthy – very heavy-bodied with dark chocolate notes.
“Ethiopia as a whole is really floral – jasmine. It’s the origin of the species. Brazil has very light coffee – it’s typically always hazelnut, peanuts, caramel and vanilla.”
As well as sourcing and choosing coffees, Wade is also part of the quality-control measures.
He tastes the coffee at various stages to check for contaminants.
“There is one particular insect that leaves bacteria inside the beans and makes it taste like raw potatoes,” he says. “It’s a flying bug that burrows inside. It’s really common in African coffees. This is why they try to get the coffees to the washing stations as soon as possible.”
Samples are routinely sent away for microchemical biological analysis.
Wade also visits individual farms to source the best beans. Partnerships with smaller boutique growers have proved to be beneficial to both parties, he says.
“A couple of guys had been in coffee for a long time, but were really struggling. They get coffee brought down in lorries from the farms in the mountains; it’s all mixed. They paid a commodity price for their coffee.
“We said to them: ‘If you separate all these [beans], you will get a much higher price from us. We helped them to get it going and now we get this really good-quality coffee.”
Most larger-scale coffee roasters are secretive about exactly where their coffee comes from. In the Coffee Planet warehouse, it’s not permitted to take photographs of the printed details on the fronts of the hundreds of coffee sacks imported from across the world.
“Good sourcing is one of the things to being a successful coffee roaster,” Wade says. “We work really hard on visiting the farms and forming relationships. It costs quite a lot in time and plane tickets and stress. So someone else could see it and say: ‘Oh it’s them, can we buy some coffee from you?’ Even by the colour of the print, you can tell what area it is coming from.”
The company expects to import more than 750 tonnes of beans this year – 200 more than in 2014.
It has just invested in an automated packing machine capable of weighing, packing and sealing 100 bags of 100kg in less than eight minutes. The work is currently done by hand.
For Jones, business is better than it has ever been.
“International coffee associations put a lot more focus on the Middle East. Europe and America have massive coffee markets, but the Middle East is developing on the specialist side of things pretty rapidly.
“Then you have local coffee and traditional coffee, going back to the tribal days when each tribe and each family had their own recipe for the coffee. There is a huge coffee culture here.”
For some people, a bigger business does not necessarily mean a better business. The Dubai resident Orit Mohammed runs her own boutique Ethiopian coffee company, Boon, drawing on her family’s experience in the coffee trade in her home country.
She started sourcing and importing beans from the East African country in 2008, giving it to other roasters to prepare for her to give to friends and family.
Four years on, she imports 40 tonnes a year and sells her coffee to some of the city’s most-popular restaurants and cafes.
Mohammed, a mother-of-three, is originally from the Harar region of Ethiopia, which is believed to be the home of the domesticated coffee plant.
“Boon was set up for my friends. It didn’t make sense to me that there wasn’t great coffee here,” she says. “Starbucks was selling Ethiopian coffee, but it didn’t make sense that it was coming from this region, going to Europe, then coming back again.”
Using family connections in the coffee trade, Mohammed has hand-picked what she considers the best beans in the area.
She visits the farms and has a distinct advantage, as she knows the area and language. As well as roasting single-origin coffees, she also mixes her own blends and prepares custom variations for individual clients that include Galeries Lafayette, Baker & Spice, La Serre and the Urban Bistro.
She gets her business from hosting personal tasting sessions with cafe owners and food-and-beverage buyers, and considers herself the best ambassador for the brand.
There’s also a Boon coffee shop in Jumeirah Lakes Towers, and she sells directly at The Farmer’s Market on the Terrace every Friday at Emirates Towers. All her coffees are blended and roasted at the Boon warehouse in Dubai Investments Park.
She has two medium-sized roasters from Turkey and is currently waiting for a third, larger one to arrive from Italy.
In a country that drinks mostly espresso-based drinks such as lattes, the coffee needs to pack enough punch to counter the milk and other flavours that might be added.
“Not all coffee can do this. We have some great coffees, but they won’t do this – you have to create something. On paper, it can look like premium coffee. But you bring it here and taste it and it tastes like lemon juice.”
Mohammed creates the stronger blends by tasting as much coffee as she can manage.
She imports certified organic varieties as well as regular kinds, but the difference is minimal, she says.
“Small farms can’t afford the chemicals and the pesticides. It grows abundantly – I still see it everywhere, so it’s not a new crop that we’re trying to introduce. You don’t need the chemicals. But if you want official certification, you have to go with coffee sold through the unions.”
Last year, Mohammed imported about 40 tonnes of beans to roast and sell as six varieties of coffee, as well as blends for individual clients.
“It’s very rare that I go somewhere and someone is using a local roaster. There’s a lot of Lavazza and other European roasters. People will say: ‘I don’t want coffee from Ethiopia; I want coffee from Italy.’ I have to tell them there is no coffee from Italy.
“Ethiopia has a great history to go with the coffee, but we sell the product not the history.
“I want to let people know about Ethiopia. I almost feel like I have to speak for the whole of Ethiopia. I want to bring the story of the farms to the front.
“I want to bring something positive from Ethiopia to the Middle East, especially Dubai.”
Ten per cent of Mohammed’s profit goes to an educational non-government organisation that she set up in her home country. It helps pay for young people in the farming community to go to school. She established it when she was living in the United States.
“This year, we are finally profitable. It took a long time. I finally feel like people are taking me seriously. In the US, I was working in economic development, but here I was a stay-at-home mum. You spend your 20s trying to change the world, then you realise you just have to do your small bit.”
munderwood@thenational.ae
