Italian coffee company Lavazza is determined to lead the drive to educate the GCC market on coffee.
That was according to Karim Merhi, marketing manager at Lavazza, who was speaking to Catering News Middle East at Gulfood.
“As a 120-year-old company we believe we have a big role to play in education, we are already seeing so many new players, mainly Italian, who are trying to follow in Lavazza’s footsteps in the market here,” he said.
“Coffee is only a semi-finished product, you are not selling a product that is being consumed immediately, you need to be sure that whoever is using it understands what exactly is the blend and how do you prepare it.”
He said that having the best product on the market will not help if the person using does not understand how to get the best from it.
“We are building awareness and in a couple of years hopefully we will become leaders in this market,” he said.
Lavazza was also at Gulfood to promote a new range of products.
This year we have launched a new product Tierra Origin – this is going along with the new trend for speciality coffee and single origin products,” he said.
“We have launched Tierra Brazil which is a single origin of Brazil, it’s more about the intense taste. The second product is Kafa – from Ethiopia, it’s one of the most premium products we have today, it comes from a farm that has been awarded global heritage by UNESCO.
“It only gives us crops once a year in February. This is how premium and selective this product is, this is really is our crown jewel at Lavazza.”
