MILAN – We discovered a new company that transforms coffee, Kaffee Bueno, extending its economical life to better use the spent coffee grounds as a valuable resource and not as a waste anymore. The three founders are from Colombia, coffee experts and passionate about sustainability, health and technology: Alejandro Franco Co-Founder, CCO, Juan Medina Co-Founder, CEO and Camilo Fernandez, Co-Founder, CFO. We interwied Alejandro Franco about their green company.
kaffe Bueno, when has your project started? What’s the idea behind Kaffe Bueno?
“We started Kaffe Bueno in 2016 in Denmark. The vision is to change the way the world sees coffee; from looking at it as a beverage or caffeine fix, to look at it as what it is: a plant. The most underutilized plant on Earth, yet with the potential to improve people’s lives, the environment and industries.
We are doing this by unlocking coffee’s health potential, by breaking coffee grounds into molecules and using these molecules to produce ingredients for the industries responsible for society’s health and wellbeing; personal care and cosmetics, food & beverage, and nutraceuticals.”
How does your startup work from the beginning to its end?
“We use our patent-pending bio-preservation technology to protect the integrity of our supply (spent coffee grounds, surplus coffee and other coffee by-products). We process this so-called “waste” using green technologies and biotechnology to break down the grounds into their composing molecules. We then add value to these molecules to make them suitable for multiple applications within cosmetics, nutraceuticals and functional foods, as ingredients. We sell these ingredients to finished product manufacturers around the world.”
Which product do you realize from the recycled coffee with Kaffe Bueno?
“We first produce Kaffoil – the lipid fraction of coffee – which is sold as an active ingredient in cosmetics with multiple scientifically-proven benefits such as anti-ageing, moisturizing, wound-healing and UV-protection. This ingredient is also used by the food industry for different applications.
After extracting Kaffoil, we used the defatted fibres in the food and cosmetic industries as Kaffibre. In the food industry it serves as a nutritional ingredient, with high content of insoluble fibre, protein, potassium and magnesium. In the cosmetics industry it serves as an exfoliating agent.
We have quite a strong and innovative product pipeline, derived from the breakdown of Kaffoil and Kaffibre, aimed at improving people’s health.”
What’s the target of Kaffe Bueno?
“We have many targets. The big goal is to change how the world sees coffee. To make people understand that coffee is not a beverage, but rather a historically underutilized resource that can be used for preventing and treating health conditions.
Moreover, myself and my two co-founders Juan and Camilo were born and raised in Colombia, and one of the reasons we started Kaffe Bueno was to balance out the inequialities in coffee’s value chain. How come a coffee shop owner in London or Copenhagen can run a lucrative business while the people who we owe the existence of coffee – farmers – can barely cover costs? By extending coffee’s lifecycle and unlocking its full potential, we will help farmers get paid for the 100% of their crop rather the current 1%.
In 10 years from now, when you hear the word “coffee”, the beverage will be a mere fraction of what people think about. And by then, coffee grounds will no longer be considered a waste, but governments will be sanctioning companies who don’t sort them out for further utilization.”
How could someone reach you?
“Anyone can reach us through our website: https://kaffebueno.com
They can also email us to hej@kaffebueno.com or to me directly to alejandro@kaffebueno.com
