Since we usually compile 3 Longs & 3 Shorts over the weekend whilst drinking large amounts of filter coffee purchased online, it is but appropriate that we should acknowledge the booming demand for specialty coffees in India. From Marcellus’ staff to the top IPL cricketers – we are all lovers of specialty coffees now. Andrew Clarance of the BBC says that it all started when one couple had a tough time getting good coffee in the booming city of Delhi: “Matt Chitharanjan and Namrata Asthana had just moved from the southern Indian city of Chennai to national capital Delhi in 2012, and they were desperate for a good cup of coffee.
In Chennai, they loved the piping hot “filter coffee” – a strong, frothy southern Indian brew served with milk. And before he came to India, Mr Chitharanjan drank freshly roasted, aromatic coffee from a high-end chain near his home in San Francisco. But the coffee they found at their local Delhi supermarket had been roasted months ago and seemed stale.
They saw an opportunity – earlier that year, long queues had stretched outside India’s first Starbucks outlet in Mumbai city. But the couple discovered that some of the country’s best coffee was being exported.” And thus began a revolution in Indian coffee with the birth in 2013 of the now famous company, Blue Tokai: “”We started cold-calling coffee estates and setting up appointments. We had to convince them to sell us their export-quality coffee beans,” Mr Chitharanjan says.
And soon, in early 2013, Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters was born – Mr Chitharanjan roasted the beans and Ms Asthana packaged it for sale online. Today, the hip coffee brand is a popular choice for India’s urban millennials, with 50 outlets in some of India’s priciest locations and thousands of customers across the country. They’ve roasted more than 1,000 tons of coffee and served close to three million cups so far. Now, they don’t need to convince coffee growers to sell them their best stock.”
Learning from Mr Chitharanjan roasted and Ms Asthana fuelled by the formal job creation boom in India, a whole host of coffee growers, vineyards, craft cheese producers, etc are now tickling the palates of urban Indians. Thus weekends at home have become so much interesting in the last few years. Exit the shopping mall, enter the boutique Indian food manufacturer.
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