A CUPPA QUALITY

Coffee's fourth wave is old news. Moving away from mass produced brands, restaurants are now strengthening the caffeine muscle of the country by turning to specialty coffee to create experiential programs

- SAMREEN TUNGEKAR

Towards the end of 2022, Mumbai’s suburb, Bandra, saw a new addition to its list of clean eating restaurants with Project Hum, a farm-to-table casual restaurant. Moment of truth: Most healthy eating places don’t serve coffee that, well, tastes great or is of a certain quality. At Project Hum, though, the coffee was nuanced and flavourful. Pleasantly surprised, we investigated, and found out that they get their coffee from specialty coffee brand, Subko.

“We love drinking good coffee. Since we focus a lot of accountability and transparency of ingredients, serving coffee was no less important. Project Hum is a collaboration driven restaurant, and working with Subko is an outcome of shared commitment that both teams have towards an ethical, traceable ingredient sourcing model. This empowers us with a curated speciality coffee program,” shares Jatin Talreja, co-founder and business head at Project Hum.

This is not an anomaly. As the coffee drinking consumer has evolved, thanks to the onset of artisanal coffee brands, cafes, and internet-driven coffee ASMRs, the need to have premium quality coffee and baristas that understand how to serve the perfect cup has shot up – it doesn’t matter if the restaurant’s USP isn’t coffee, the idea is that if someone decides to have a cuppa with their meal, they shouldn’t be disappointed. In the spirit of the same, restaurants have done what the next best thing for coffee in this country could be – bringing artisanal brands to their menus.

IT’S A DEAL