Australia continues its legacy of leading the world coffee market with some of its leading roasters signing up to a world first initiative to influence the next phase of business.
#TheColLABorationExperiment is an initiative that will feature 10 of Australia’s leading specialty coffee roasters who will work together to develop some of the country’s first milk-based cold brew coffee products, especially designed for chilled consumption across multiple milk types.
Lead by the launch of Australian milk-brand MILKLAB, the initiative aims to inspire the global coffee market with ways to innovate the way they sell specialty coffee ahead of the summer coffee season.
Cold Brew coffee is currently taking the niche speciality space by storm with coffee houses charging upwards of $7 for a glass of the liquid gold. Premium Café’s in Australia, New York, Shanghai, London and Paris are quickly investing in manual “Cold Brew” devices that slowly distil premium coffee, with it taking up to 12 hours to make 1 simple litre of coffee. Every recipe is different and #TheColLABorationExperiment will showcase each of the participating roasters cold brew based on the brew ratio they provide.
Australians now purchase over 4 billion cups of espresso based coffee every year. While the majority of this coffee is consumed outside of the specialty channel, it is the small and exciting niche players, like the team brought together for this initiative, who help single handily influence players on the world coffee stage and the evolution of tomorrow’s coffee drinkers.
One has to only look to the competitive coffee space to see Australia’s influence: with Canberran local Sasa Sestic who was crowned this year’s World Barista Champions in Seattle and Melbourne’s Caleb Cha as World Latte Art Champion. The world now turns to Australia to see how we can innovate this lucrative industry.
Over 90% of Australian espresso based coffees are served with milk. Having quality milks to compliment coffee (hot & cold) is critical to every cafés business. The new range of products launched under the MILKLAB brand will be the first in every key milk-type being used in speciality coffee (including Coconut Milk) and craft a special formula designed exclusively for the specialty channel.
The range was developed by emerging Australian Health Food company Freedom Foods in consultation with some of Australia’s hottest baristas including Gemma Fusca (Melbourne), Andy Liu (China) and Jag Sekhon (Darwin) and Instagram barista celebrity Matthew Lakajev (Sydney) who is tracked by over 14 thousand global social media followers for his daily displays of latte art.
The roasters will come together at 5pm on the 18th of September in Sydney to showcase their offers #colLABoration and set the wheels in motion for another Australian lead first.
Rick Willis
Network Four
M: 0411839344
E: rick@networkfour.com.au
