In March of this year, award-winning luxury specialty coffee brand Mokha 1450 tasked its baristas with curating a coffee experience like no other, one that uniquely targets the flavour profile preferences of UAE coffee connoisseurs.
After an exciting internal competition, three finalists were selected, and their coffee creations will feature at all Mokha 1450 locations for a limited time. The baristas will also receive a percentage of the revenue from coffee bag sales and will feature as the cover story in Mokha 1450’s compendium Barista Craft Magazine that guests receive when they purchase a bag of the coffee.
Each of the three specially created coffees will feature at all Mokha 1450 locations for a limited time only, with emphasis only on the baristas, as no information on the origin of the coffees will be provided so as not to influence the guest’s palate or detract from the experience the barista has crafted. This is the first initiative of its kind in the UAE and, indeed, across the specialty coffee industry globally.
Garfield Kerr, CEO of Mokha 1450, explains, ‘Baristas in the UAE are some of the most talented in the world, as exemplified through their work in one of the world’s leading specialty coffee markets. Yet, because of inscrutable market conditions, baristas in the UAE are not paid a salary that is commensurate with their counterparts in other leading specialty coffee regions. To solve this dilemma, we offer an innovative and new approach. One that rewards our championship-winning baristas and, indeed, our customers through a unique speciality coffee experience available nowhere else in the world.
THE MINRAN COFFEE
The first coffee featured in the Barista Craft Series is from Mohammed Minran. One can expect tasting notes of cherries, honey, exceptional sweetness, and fruity flavours, with a milk chocolate finish and an added dose of innovation and luxury.
While numerous studies have shown that coffee preferences amongst countries can be identified and quantified, there are differences, of course, within any populace. Hence, each similar segment of the UAE coffee-consuming public represents a discrete circle in a Venn Diagram.
Therefore, the monumental task of the barista is identifying where those circles overlap and curating a coffee whose flavour profile highlights these unions. The result of this exploration is an experience like no other, a coffee entirely new that would not exist had the challenge not been presented and accepted in the first place, a coffee whose origin will not be shared to remove the limitations of expectations as well as to highlight the barista alone.
The outcome is a unique coffee that is a luxury to be shared with our clients, whom we recognize as the connoisseurs that they are and who will be the final arbiters of whether our baristas have truly hit the mark. The Minran coffee as an espresso, milk-based, or brewed coffee is priced from AED20 to AED88, and each bag costs AED245. The Minran Coffee will be available to the public as of Monday, 8th of May 2023.
THE MAGAZINE
Created, edited, and published entirely by the Mokha 1450 team, the Barista Craft Magazine is a conceptual and artistic method of communicating the innovations, creativity, and ethos of the Mokha 1450 brand, as well as a means to highlight the integral role the baristas play in crafting unforgettably unique and luxurious bespoke experiences for our connoisseurs.
The magazine is a limited edition run and will only be available with each bag of coffee within the Barista Craft Series.