Fresh and Honest to open a chain of 100 coffee shops in the next two years

Fresh and Honest is looking to build a chain of over 100 stores across the country in the next two years with a primary focus in South India.

The company on Thursday announced the launch of its chain of coffee shops 'Suprabha' with the first outlet being inaugurated in Kodambakkam in Chennai.

Jai Ganesh Ramnath, MD, Lavazza India said that the company will be focusing on cities in South India first, like Chennai, Bangalore, Cochin, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Trivandrum, Madurai, Coimbatore and will then gradually move to other tier 2 and 3 cities in South India.

"At a later stage, we plan to open outlets in north, east and west of India - Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Gujarat in order to establish the Suprabha concept pan India in the next 5 years," he said.

The coffee is 100% sourced in South India and manufactured in Sri City AP manufacturing plant by Fresh & Honest.

Ramnath said that while the pandemic is still far from over, people have been missing the experience of having filter coffee in the outdoors - be it while going to work or on after morning walk.

"Keeping in mind the needs of our coffee-loving consumers and to give me access to a set-up that serves the best cup of filter coffee and the right accompaniments along with it, we were driven to execute this model. Hygiene and safety of our consumers and baristas have been our priorities prior to the pandemic, resulting in brewing and serving coffee in the most contactless way possible," he explained.

Ramnath said the market underwent a tremendous transformation in the last one year with a change in people’s preferences with regard to consumption of coffee.

"Coffee emerged as both a productivity enabler and a companion during these challenging times, making it the go-to choice of beverage throughout the day. To bridge this gap between coffee lovers and their need for a fresh quick fix of caffeine, we shifted our focus from a B2B model to a B2C business model where we started focusing our efforts towards increasing our footprint in the home segment," he said.

Ramnath said that the company witnessed an exponential increase in demand for products including capsule machines and coffee equipment like french press, imported coffee grinders and moka pots.

Further, he believed that the beverages market--specifically for coffee and tea--has far from saturated.

"There has always been a demand for both these beverages and it has only seen a sharp rise in the last 16 months. The coffee market has definitely evolved itself by adapting itself to the current situation. We saw a lot of trends that disrupted the coffee industry in many ways which surely is not a sign of a saturating market. Even though coffee shops weren’t operational for dine-ins, we noticed that people found ways to bond with each other through these trends; be it the dalgona coffee trend or simply preparing coffee to get on virtual dates with your friends and loved ones," Ramnath said.