Business Times – 10 May 2008
By CHEAH UI-HOON
LIKE Illy and Lavazza, there’s another coffee company that has created a machine designed to work only with its own brand of coffee.
Enter Nespresso – one of Nestle’s ‘billionaire brands’ which has made its official entrance in Singapore despite being around for 20 years. The award-winning machines like Essenza and Le Cube – and endorsed by actor George Clooney – makes espresso from Nespresso’s hermetically sealed capsules.
These capsules are the heart of Nespresso, which contain the right portions of roasted and ground coffee blends. To discover your favourite blend, you can taste all you want at Nespresso’s new ’boutique’ coffee counter at Takashimaya’s basement. The staff will show you the beans and the different types of grinds they have in the capsules that look like gaily wrapped chocolates in a box.
When they’re popped into the machine, just a press of a button kicks off the patented high pressure extraction and brewing system, for that perfect brew. There’s no fussing around with filters, measuring your spoons of coffee powder, and figuring which buttons to press and when. Nespresso sources its coffee beans from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Togo, Kenya, and Ethiopia. Its experts then create blends with different proportions of arabica and robusta beans for different taste profiles.
The Nespresso boutique in Singapore is the first for the South-east Asian region, as the company is riding on the growth of the coffee market in key Asian cities, which has been rising by over 25 per cent in the last five years.
‘There is an unprecedented growth rate in the demand for premium coffee in the region,’ says Stanley Samuel, country manager for South-east Asia.
With this boutique, the company adds Singapore members – you automatically become a member of the worldwide Nespresso club when you buy a machine – to its nearly four million Nespresso Club members worldwide.