Beverage Startups
The Brew Company – Innovators From Denmark
All over the world people tend to start their mornings with a cup of their favorite beverage, and most often that choice lands on coffee or tea. It’s always a pity when we just don’t have enough time to prepare and enjoy our favorite beverages. The Brew Company, which is located in Denmark, has developed three brands of innovative and premium beverages to make our mornings more enjoyable. Today, I have the pleasure of talking with Ulrik Skovgaard, Innovator and Founder of The Brew Company.
Looking at your website it looks like you have achieved a successful company. How did the whole story of The Brew Company start?
I actually came up with the idea of how to brew the high-quality coffee and convenient coffee back in 2003 and on the basis of the idea set up the company. The rough history is that at a certain point of time I ended up not having any filters for my drip filter coffee machine and I started to think that there must be a better way to brew a decent cup of coffee. So, I started experimenting with different tea bags. I cut them open and filled them with coffee grounds. This idea led to the product that we see today where we have a stand up pouch with an inside filter containing freshly ground coffee. The consumer simply has to add hot water into the pouch to brew 2 cups of rich gourmet coffee.
Under The Brew Company stands 3 different brands. Could you tell us more about each line?
The whole idea behind the Coffeebrewer by Grower’s Cup is to have high quality coffee, but with a super convenient brewing process. I sort of fell in love with the specialty coffee universe and learnt how beautiful coffee could be in terms of taste and in terms of doing things the right way. With Grower’s Cup I really wanted people to taste the coffee directly from the coffee farmer. I wanted people to start thinking about coffee just like they do about wine. When you walk into supermarket, you do not simply decide between red wine or rose wine, but you also look at the different vineyards and what how each wine is produced, and I want that to happen within the coffee world as well.
Teabrewer by April Love and Herbbrewer by TeaPharmacy are quite different from our coffeebrewers. With the teabrewers we really wanted to focus on making the best tea infusion with the most flavor to it. We use the same design of the brewer and have found that this gives our tea ingredients the optimal conditions for infusion. To get the rich taste in our teas we use real pieces of fruit, vegetables, spices, herbs, and of course, whole leaf tea. With the herbbrewer we instead had our focus on which benefits each herbal tea had. So with this we developed 7 different herbal tea blends that each have a certain health benefit.
The Coffeebrewer has 5 different coffee drinks. Which one is the most popular among your customers?
Our coffees are all quite popular, but the Honduras is definitely one of our best selling coffees. It is a very pleasant and rich coffee, uncomplicated and easy to enjoy. This coffee has been roasted medium, and has very light and fruity nuances. The coffee is quite complex with many different tastes to it, but the pleasant aftertaste of chocolate is something that differentiates it from our other coffees. Of course this coffee is also both organic and fairtrade certified.
The Teabrewer has 16 different flavors. Was it hard to create so many high quality and tasteful tea blends?
Yes, for sure – it took a lot more time than what we originally anticipated. After having done comprehensive research and tests, we hired two tea sommeliers from the Netherlands to guide us and to educate us. This speeded up the process. However, it roughly took us 1,5 years to get to the assortment that we have today. One of the focal areas of the development of our assortment was that we wanted all of our tea blends to be 100% organic and containing real ingredients instead of for example tea dusts that is commonly used in conventional tea bags. We wanted consumers to be able to see, feel and taste the difference, and that only comes when using the very best ingredients.
The Herbbrewer has 7 different blends dedicated for digest problems, immune system boost and even breastfeeding. Which blend is most successful among consumers? In your opinion, why?
We have 3 herbal blends that stand out in comparison to the others. These are our Relax:T, AntiOxiDant:T and Detox:T. All three are very pleasant herbal teas and all are very much spot on in terms of todays health agenda. Furthermore, these tea blends have tastes that are very similar to what we already know and love. Take for example our Relax:T that contains camomile blossoms, and our AntiOxiDant:T that contains ginger and lemon. But in this modern world we live in, where a lot of people suffer with stress, these tea blends stand out in terms of what they can do for our health.
The Brew Company has won a lot awards. What is the secret of your company?
The secret must be that we are a very innovative company. We have designed the brewers in a way that extracts the most flavor while still being super convenient. Our brewers are optimal for taking with you as you leave your home. With this you have the option of still enjoying good quality even when you aren’t in a place where you would normally be able to get good coffee or tea. In all that we do, we have this focus on quality and convenience combined, and this is an ares where we do not make compromises.
There are many different coffee and tea blends all over the world. In a market full of great blends, what makes The Brew Company’s brands stand out?
Aside from the obvious being the design of our brewers, we definitely stand out in terms of taste and quality. Our coffees are all single origin, so we always know exactly where our coffee comes from.
We would never do a coffee blend, because it is important for us to know the original of our coffee. We also have a big focus on our products being organic and fairtrade.
As of now, 80% of our coffees are fairtrade, and 100% of our teas are organic. In our teas we work with real ingredients instead of using unnatural flavors. When we design a fruit tea recipe and we claim that it is a berry tea, it is because it really is a tea made from real fruits and berries. Most other teas on the market today are flavored, and haven’t seen a trace of actual berries.
What are the major difficulties, if any, that The Brew Company has faced since its launch?
There have been countless challenges and problems since the beginning. We basically had to start from scratch in terms of the technology and material selection in the production of our brewers. This created a log of challenges, and to succeed we have had to reinvent pretty much everything.
Based on your experience, do you have any advice to people who dream of starting a beverage company?
It takes a lot of work to start something from scratch, so my best advice is to have courage, patience, perseverance and a solid funding.
For more information visit The Brew Company website.
