Salada develops coffee-less brew for revenue boost
STILL SMARTING from a shortage of Jamaican coffee needed as input for its products, Salada Foods Jamaica is trying to entice non-coffee drinkers with a new brew to stimulate sales revenue.
Shareholders of the company, whose main business is the making of instant coffee, got the first look at the new Golden Turmeric Latte on Wednesday when Salada’s General Manager, Tamii Brown, took the wrappers off at the annual general meeting in New Kingston.
That’s to be followed on Saturday by a l aunch at Hope Gardens in Kingston.
Brown said the turmeric latte product underwent nearly a year of testing and development. It’s targeted at the younger demographic, but also consumers generally who don’t drink coffee but will consume hot or cold beverages that they deem as tasty.
As for the level of spending on the new product, “I don’t have a dollar value to share” but that the company has been “forward investing” in the product and expected it to do well based on the ratings from sensory evaluations.
The product will be handled by Lasco Distributors, which is Salada’s distribution partner. Brown said that over the next few weeks, Salada will be working closely with Lasco to have the latte product placed in large account outlets and local corner shops.
“If you notice, each sachet has a bar code on it. This allows the mom-andpop shops to sell the product as single packets, rather than requiring persons to buy a whole box of sachets,” Brown said.
That design fitted with the trend that Salada had noted among the consumers of its flavoured coffee products. They want single products or single sachets in order to experiment with the different flavours.
Salada’s main line of business is coffee processing, but it also does teas on a small scale.
Over the past five years, from 2019 to 2023, sales revenue has meandered at the coffee processing company, between $1 billion and $1.4 billion in 2023, when yearon-year revenue growth was five per cent.
Brown has pegged the swing to “the chronic inconsistency in supply of Jamaican coffee”, as the company struggled to meet demand in the marketplace. Salada is bound by regulatory requirements in having at least 30 per cent Jamaican coffee as part of the blended product it sells to the market.
During the past financial year, Salada launched the Grounds for Growth coffee initiative, where the company forged an alliance with the Jamaica Coffee Growers Association to utilise spent coffee grounds, that would otherwise have been dumped, as fertiliser.
Brown says in addition to product innovation, Salada will be looking to do more exports as it seeks to grow revenue. The company sells products to Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, St Lucia, and Antigua & Barbuda, among other Caricom countries. It has also secured shelf space in Publix supermarket in the United States.