Adding a new taste to coffee
Icons Coffee Couture aims to make a difference with its steviasweetened, sugarfree fare
Serving organic coffee, from regular espresso and Americano to the Dh180 per cup Kapi Luwak, one of the world’s most exclusive coffees, the just- opened Icons Coffee Couture at Souq Al Bahar aims to be a fashionable lifestyle concept that serves healthy fare, but not in a mundane way.
While you have the choice of “sweetener” — sugar or stevia for your cuppa — all pastries and cakes here are baked with stevia. Browse through the menu and you’ll feel you are looking at a mini version of a fashion magazine, says Elena Weber, a former model and the CEO and founder of Icons.
On a regular menu you’d find 700- calorie frappuccinos, at Icons you’ll get 200- 250- calorie steviachinos.
“You can get every sugar- free option in the UAE, but it’s with chemical sweeteners. We are the first ones to focus on stevia, a natural sweetener,” explained Weber. “Our hot white chocolate is 160 calories as compared to 450- 500 calories for regular ones. A frappuccino here is 200- 250 whereas somewhere else it would be close to 700. So there’s definitely a difference. We also try to use low- fat milk, low- fat butter in our cakes and combine the ingredients to keep the calorie count a minimum while keeping the taste”.
Weber said it was on one of her modelling stints in Argentina that she discovered a “wonder” called stevia.
“Stevia is grown in Argentina. In my profession it’s difficult to eat sweets or chocolates because of the fear of weight gain. Stevia is sweet but, unlike aspartame or other sweeteners, natural. It was like a dream come true. I came home from this trip and thought, why not bake with stevia? I hired a pastry chef who, over six months, re- worked classic recipes using stevia. It took this long because stevia is 300 times more sweet than sugar. From here I put the concept together. As my profession was my motivation to create something healthy, I created a package that’s a fashionable lifestyle concept”.
As a German national, it was hard to digest that Weber would choose a place such as Dubai to open her first store.
“I had met an investment company while doing an internship here. So, I sent them a business plan. I wanted to start in Germany but they wanted it here. We’ve spent almost two years building the plan and menu. But we have to educate people about stevia, as it only entered the market a year ago. We had sold our products in Germany to check the market but in terms of outlets this is our first one. We are already in talks with Qatar and Bahrain. Even though there are so many brands in the market, they are all successful. So if we are offering something special why shouldn’t we be successful too?”