Bo's Coffee Club

Bo's Coffee Club to create own brand
By Ehda M. Dagooc
The Freeman 05/15/2006

http://www.philstar.com/philstar/Freeman200605152001.htm

Cebuano-owned Bo's Coffee Club is going to create its own brand of coffee bean product to further push the Philippine coffee beans in the world.

"We will be developing a Bo's Coffee Bean brand in the next few months. We are going to push for stronger branding strategy in order to also promote our own Philippine coffee," said Bo's Coffee Club president Steve Benitez.

This means that the close to 30 Bo's Coffee outlets in the Philippines will soon be offering a Bo's Coffee Bean product that will be sourced out directly from farmers across the country.

"This will encourage Filipinos to brew Philippine-harvested coffee bean, and help farmers increase their livelihood," Benitez said.

The availability of Philippine coffee bean that will be pushed by Bo's Coffee Club chain will also encourage farmers to plant more coffee, and make the prices more attractive to them, eliminating the middlemen cost of distribution," Benitez said.

Bo's will be creating a new team to directly partner with coffee farmers in the Philippines to push the Filipino coffee produce, he added.

In the past, the Philippines is one of the top coffee bean suppliers in the world. Because of weak promotional support, the coffee farming industry in the Philippines became a dying industry, thus most coffee farms were converted for other agricultural purposes.

Benitez said because of the tremendous growth of coffee bean demand in recent years, the Philippines, instead of sourcing its own coffee products, is forced to export coffee beans to other countries.

"We have one of the best coffees in the world. We should help revive this position," he added.

Today, the Philippines is demanding at least 55,000 tons of coffee bean annually. The country's coffee farmers can only produce a little over 22,000 tons every year.

"We should create a way to make the coffee farming more profitable and feasible for the farmers. We will make the prices attractive to them to encourage them to increase their coffee produce," he said.

According to Benitez, just like any imported coffee bean that is mostly patronized by Filipinos, soon the Philippine Coffee brand, initially promoted by Bo's Coffee will take the center stage and is expected to make waves in the worldwide market.

But first he said, Bo's is committed to make the Philippine Coffee Bean brand strong in its home-ground, that will also get the attention of the visiting foreign tourists to take home a Philippine Coffee bean product.

Dubbed as 'Moving the Beans-Filipino Beans," through this effort, Bo's is undertaking a much braver move, to (once again) compete with the international coffee bean brands, which are sold expensively in the Philippine market.

There are different kinds of Coffee bean in the Philippines, these are the Arabica, Cape Barako, Robusta, among others. Benitez said these are all of more competitive quality that those coming from other countries.