Beverage Startups
Fred Coffee Is Made In Unique Way, Says David Boleas
The cold brew coffee market has been growing rapidly over the past couple of years. People have less and less time, which makes cold brew coffee a perfect replacement for hot coffee. There are many brands of cold brew, which makes it hard when it comes to choosing a favourite. The Barcelona-based cold brew coffee brand Fred has a special charm of its own that captures your eyes and makes you start to feel the need to taste it right away. Today, I have the pleasure to talk with the CEO of Fred, David Boleas.
Every beverage brand has an interesting story behind it. Tell us more about the start of Fred. How did you come up with such an idea?
In Spain we love ice coffee but when a customer asks for it at a bar, restaurant or coffee shop, most of the time the waiter prepares a hot espresso accompanied by a glass with ice.
We remembered how, every morning in summer, at a bar in the town where we grew up, cups of hot espresso coffee would be poured into glass bottles and left in a fridge. Cold coffee would then be served to customers after lunch. This childhood memory and our desire to find an alternative to using hot coffee brought us to discover a technique called cold brew. It also answered our dilemma: Why make hot coffee if it is going to be drunk cold?
It seems that there are many different cold brew coffee brands, which makes us think that consumers are demanding more and more of this type of beverage. In your opinion, why are consumers looking for cold brew coffee products?
People love coffee, but when it comes to ice coffee there are currently not many options. We have seen ready to drink options at supermarkets but these drinks contain a lot of sugar, extracts, milk, artificial flavours…
Cold brew coffee is just that, coffee extracted using a cold brewing process. People like it because this method retains all its flavour, its natural sweetness, original aroma and It is far less acidic.
Since the competition is growing fast, it is very important to stay unique. What makes Fred stand out among other cold brew coffee brands?
Quality, we use Specialty coffee beans coming from the best fields in Central America. We don’t use blends, we only use single origin beans.
Fred is a premium product and the brand has to reflect that.
Fred is the only cold brew in the market created for European customers. We have taken the recipe and adapted it to how people drink coffee in Europe. Espresso coffee is the most popular coffee drink, therefore we have created a cold brew coffee with the same caffeine and quantity of coffee (30ml). People can drink Fred straight from the bottle or mix it with water or milk… in the same way they drink their hot espresso.
I have to admit that the Fred logo design reminds me of the mineral water blk. Did they inspire you? How did you come up with such a design?
We know blk but funny enough we didn’t know about them before we design Fred’s logo and packaging. A friend showed it to us after he saw Fred.
Less is more, we wanted to use the minimum possible elements on the brand to give importance to the content, the coffee inside the bottle.
Fred means cold in Catalan language therefore it seemed the perfect choice for our product. It is a shot, easy to remember and pronounce name that works internationally.
Right now Fred is available in Spain, Portugal and Switzerland. Are you planning to spread across all of Europe? What other countries are next?
Cold brew is a global trend, until now we have been working on the Spanish market but next year we will spread across Europe. We’ve been working on an improved version of Fred with 6 months’ shelf life, until now we only had 35 days. To achieve that we are using and innovative cold pasteurization technique.
England is one of the first countries where we would like to be present. I lived in London for 11 years before coming back to Barcelona 3 years ago and I know the market.
The starting up of any kind of business is a risky and hard process. What was the most difficult part of Fred’s concept creation and development?
I come from a Design and Advertising background and my brother Jorge comes from a Photo background. The most difficult were all the legal and health and safety areas, we were new and had to study everything. We learnt lots and we have great advisors in the coffee industry.
It is said that it is smarter to learn from other people’s mistakes. What advice could you give for beverage start-ups?
Believe in your product.
For more information visit FRED website.
