Café Creations has been five years in development to complete its full range of barista quality milks before coming to market. We are proud to announce Massachusetts-based HP Hood has taken three of its well-known retail milk brands and formulated them - with the help of coffee industry professionals - into well designed barista milks.
Covid-19 slowed down the project a little, but helped give us extra time to iron out distribution pathways, as the cafe/coffee world continues to evolve and adjust in 2021. The brands are Planet Oat, Almond Breeze Unsweetened and Rolling Hills Soy, all barista editions. Lactaid and Hood whole milk are also a part of the range and should be available by Q1 of 2022.
Designing a barista milk from scratch has been a big process. To get a milk that you can steam and stretch for latte art requires lots of development. There is constant testing between food scientists and baristas to formulate a milk that tastes good when heated, which doesn’t split when combined with acidic coffees and can hold up well when doing latte art.
The other areas Café Creations needed to tick was sourcing North American grown ingredients and being manufactured in the US, as many other designer barista milks on the market come out of Europe, which goes directly against our sustainability ethos.
Product availability (scarcity) has been another problem in the market, so Café Creations have made sure their target predictions are over scheduled for the launch period and beyond.
Café Solutions North America have been the lead consultant on this project and worked closely with Café Creations marketing and sales department in getting all facets of the launch right for this large market. We utilized some of North America's most well-known baristas and Coffee Roasters in the development phase to get high-quality usable milk in the cafe environment.
The USA has over 35,000 cafes so it’s a big market to service and we have used our contacts via the last two years of trade events to target interested businesses.
Recently you should have received a welcome pack of Café Creations samples for you to taste test with your staff and customers. We are now looking for businesses to partner with us as operators or distributors. Having headed up similar global launches of plant-based products to the cafe market, experience has shown this opportunity will not be available for a long period of time, so early adopters will reap the benefits.
Barista milks are huge in other areas like Australia and Japan and as the trends for more espresso beverages grow you will see alternative milks pushing hard in this space - as 25% of all milk-based coffees served in cafes are made using alternative milk.
Please pick up the phone and have a chat with me - I would love to connect and discuss how we can work together. This might only be a small part of your business model, but we don’t want to see you lose out on this opportunity by not being on trend with these products.
Yours in Sustainable Business,
Greg Davis - Head Milkman, Café Solutions North America