Craft Coffee Pushes the envelope in the world of Specialty coffee & Coffee innovation

The brand aims to make the coffee-making & consumption experience more effortless, comfortable and therefore more democratic through a network of experience centres & speciality coffee kiosks. As we know, the artisan process of making coffee today depends on many variables: coffee origin, quality of the roast, humidity, temperature, talent of the barista etc. There is no question about it; the more these variables are controlled, managed and processed, the better coffee you will make.

Owing to the increased popularity of the already established functional beverage – coffee in India & with an aim to serve specialty coffee thereby making the beverage more accessible & affordable Abhinav Kumar along with Dipraj Das quit their respective corporate life & founded Craft Coffee in Kolkata-West Bengal. As a specialty coffee brand, they commenced operations with a pilot specialty coffee kiosk at Park Street Kolkata in March 2021. Continuous learning and improvisations lead to the launch of an Experience Centre to showcase the entire coffee bean to cup journey to the coffee enthusiast community. Each of these experience centres spans an area of 5000-7000 sq feet each along with 20-35 kiosks basis the catchment radius of coverage. Along with the same the brand aims to build a parallel presence in online & institutional sales through the launch of the Coffee Box subscription program whereby  being professional coffee roasters the brand will be customizing and curating roast profiles based on their guest’s palette. 

While we have always been so concerned about the quality of our coffee, it always seemed strange & intriguing to Abhinav as to why we are not as exacting about our choice of food. Hence areas like coffee & food pairing have tremendous scope & hence the work on handcrafted artisanal cheese, chocolates & bottled brews started at the Experience Centre with the subsequent launch of the in-house bakery & bottling unit. Having hand-crafted the brews in-house, Abhinav and Dipraj believe in tailoring select foods that pair ideally with their exquisite range of specialty coffee emanating various flavours suiting the palette of the young millennial and Gen-Z.

Being well-received in West Bengal, Craft Coffee eyes to cover the entire geographical base in Kolkata through a hub-and-spoke model in the next 6 months. With a devised plan to furthermore launch 10-12 coffee kiosks within West Bengal, and a deep belief in tech-backed operations, the brand trusts in being a service facilitator to ensure scalability and increased penetration through precision products and app-based ordering following own-delivery platform, loyalty programs, and self-service artisanal coffee kiosks which will, in turn, help the brand to grip national presence in 2022-23.

The millennials know their coffee. Consumers have become quite inquisitive to know the source, blend & the other processes involved in brewing and hence brands have to continuously innovate and build an emotional connect with the guests. Our baristas are basically trained as tour guides to build a conversation with the guests and share the journey of coffee. Artisanal coffee is all about discovering and appreciating newer flavors, aromas, textures & roast profiles and hence the finer nuances of coffee. Coffee arrives in the final consumer hands after a long series of baton hand offs from farmer to roaster to brewer and hence the entire supply chain plays a pivotal role in ensuring that the specialty coffee meets all the tests of survival encountered in the long journey keeping the standards intact. Hence continuous improvisation & innovation on product, supply chain & making specialty coffee affordable & accessible plays the key differentiator.

As coffee roasters working on coffee sustainability is another dream craft coffee chases. Hence the work on planters based on coffee grounds or crockery made of coffee husks or blending exclusive recipes with cascara. All these aim to support fair wages & also become environmentally responsible. We aim to work on the triple bottom line: people, planet and fair profit.

As Abhinav & Dipraj firmly believe- coffee making can be an art but the science of it is undeniable. It is in this marriage between technology and artisan-ship where we coffee lovers thrive and intend to work passionately.

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