COFFEE TABLE TRANSCRIPT
Conversations pull up
at
Four exhibitors
S
pecialty Coffee Retailer was at Coffee Fest Seattle at the Washington State Convention Center late last year, and
we had the chance to catch up with four companies looking to make a splash with attendees. Here's what the
vendors had to share about their companies, products and brand positioning.
SOWDEN SOFT BREW
"George Sowden is an industrial designer who's worked
in house wares for over 40 years. He decided start his own
brand and founded this company, which makes stainless steel
microfilters – and so Sowden Brands was born.
Specialty coffee retailers are our primary market, but we also
sell in gourmet house ware retailers. The wholesale cost for our
4-cup filter is $25, and the 8-cup is $30. The suggested retail
prices are double that. There is no equipment investment at all, so
retailers just need a device that boils water to use the product.
We believe the difference between our company and
others in the marketplace is that there's no over-filtration,
so there's no agitation to the beans. It's an all-natural process
and that's where by keeping the steeping of the bean, you get
oil properties that you don't get from short contact time or
traditional filtration."
THIRD STREET CHAI
"We've been around for 17 years. Here at Coffee Fest we're
sampling a spicy ginger and honey vanilla. We're a microbrewed company so we buy spices from all over the world and
we mill them in our factory, and have a brew master who stirs
and steeps all the spices and makes it a very smooth Chai.
We started in the organic market and we've moved in the
direction of all-natural launching new products every day. We
just launched a national product with Whole Foods, which is a
ready-to-drink iced tea, and it's done very well for us.
Coffee shops is where we play the best. Pretty much every
coffee shop has Chai so we're going after shops that want an
authentic Chai, which is higher in spice and lower in sugar.
We sell mostly to distributors, not to the end coffee shop, but
today we're selling to roasters and they distribute out to their
customers. We are in retail, so the consumers can go into a
store like Whole Foods and purchase as well."
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