Coffee, Tea & Nespresso: Bonhomia's Pods Make One Machine, Two Beverages A Reality

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

NESPRESSO users who keep complaining about how difficult it is to get replacement 'pods' (the single-serve capsules that have to be inserted into the machine for a perfect cup of coffee) can now take it easy.

Bonhomia opened its account with two coffee
blends in Delhi-NCR in March. It's now headed
to Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune,
and is all set to roll out its tea pods.  

Bonhomia, a brand of Nespresso-compatible coffee pods, is going places after its March launch in Delhi-NCR, where it is available in Godrej Nature's Basket and Modern Bazaar outlets as well as specialty shops such as Defence Store and The Taste at the Defence Colony Main Market. From next month, the pods, which are produced locally at Okhla, packed in aluminum-lined paper pouches to protect them from extreme heat and humidity, and sold in smartly designed boxes, will be available in stores in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune. A box of 10 pods is priced at Rs 350, which makes Bonhomia more expensive than its competition Lavazza and Cafe Coffee Day.

The bigger news is that Bonhomia, by the next month, will also retail English Breakfast and green teas (Darjeeling and Earl Grey are next in the line), making it possible for you to have your morning cuppa ready in 12 seconds without worrying about the leaves being overcooked or the serving temperature not being right. The tea pods have whole leaves, not dust (as in tea bags), and therefore pack in real flavours. This new feature will gladden the hearts not only of early morning risers who hate having to make their own tea, but also of hotels, which now have started putting Nespresso coffee-makers in rooms.

With Nespresso, which controls 85 per cent of Europe's coffee machine market, introducing a low-cost model, priced at £89 in the UK, Bonhomia's promoters are confident that their market can only head in one direction -- north. Nespresso, according to Business Today, has made Nestle Europe's top coffee-seller and its annual revenues exceed $3 billion, powered mainly by 10 million daily refills.

Who, then, are the promoters of this new brand that promises to change the way we approach our early-morning brews? Bonhomia is the brainchild of Kunal Bhagat, an MBA from Insead who has worked with EME/Dar Capital, Bank of America and Barclays Capital in the UK; Tuhin Jain, a Hindu College-XLRI alumnus and Pepsico whiz kid; and Elena Petrova, a marketing specialist from Ireland of Moldovan origin, who's the brand's global marketing head.

Petrova is behind the tantalising names of the Bonhomia lines. Free Love is what she has named the Intensity 4 arabica-dominant coffee and the Intensity 7 line (a mix of arabica and robusta) is called Dark Deeds. The higher the intensity, the greater the body, and the more lingering is the bitter after-taste. Likewise, she has christened the English Breakfast tea (a blend of Assams), Black Pot, and the green tea, Green Peace.

The coffees left an everlasting impression on my palate. I took to Bonhomia instantly after seeing the perfect crema, which is so hard to find in most espressos (even, sadly, in five-star hotels), and the distinctive flavour profile of each coffee. The coffee beans are sourced from Karnataka's higher-elevation plantations, but as Jain points out, the contents of each pod are like a blended whisky -- a mix of coffees from different elevations and different locations delivering the intended taste profile.

Bhagat says Bonhomia brings the best of two worlds to the table. "Everyone associates India with tea, but we are also the world's fourth largest coffee producer -- and our robusta is considered the best around the globe," says the former investment banker and venture funding professional.

His hope is sustained by the 40 per cent growth being clocked year on year by the coffee market in north and west India, and the fact that "innvoation will drive change," even if it means that he has to drink at least 15 cups of espresso a day. The tea pods, according to him, are going to be the "game-changers" by making it possible for one machine to produce two beverages. Will the market wake up to Bonhomia's promise of delivering convenience and quality to Nespresso owners? That, as they say, only time will tell.

Leading Delhi-NCR Chefs Welcome Grown-Up Meat Products from Indo-Australian Venture

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Le Carne Cuts is wholly owned by Primo Foods,
which is backed by one of the country's leading
meat exporters, Moin Akhtar Qureshi. Its
Master Butcher, Sigi Maletzki, has previously
been associated with Top Cut, Australia's
quality meat producer, and its East Asian
subsidiary, Tender Plus.

IT WAS Tanveer Kwatra, the extremely creative Executive Chef of Pullman Central Park Gurgaon in whose passion I see shades of Bill Marchetti, who first volunteered to take me to the Le Carne Cuts production facility in Manesar, the upcoming industrial suburb of India's 'Millennium City', Gurgaon. He said he knew the Le Carne Cuts Master Butcher Sigi Maletzki from his days in Melbourne, Australia, and showcased sausages from the company on the popular Sunday brunch menu of Sen5es. Maletzki, whose wife Gilly is the Head of Sales at Le Carne Cuts, previously had a long stint with Australia's quality meat producer, Top Cut, and its East Asian subsidiary, Tender Plus.

The conversation came back to me a couple of days back, when I visited Aahar 2014, India's premier food show at Pragati Maidan, and met the gregarious Tarsillo Natalone, the owner of Flavors, who was effusive in his praise for the chicken pepperoni that he had sourced from Le Carne Cuts for his pizzas. It was finally the busy restaurant consultant, Ramindar Bakshi, who put me in touch with Bharat Singh, a former executive at the independent private equity advisory firm, Campbell Lutyens, and now one of the five directors of Primo Foods Private Limited, the holding company of Le Carne Cuts.

Primo Foods is a privately held Indo-Australian joint venture company led by Moin Akhtar Qureshi, one of the country's leading meat exporters and President of the Doon School Old Boys Society. The company's Australian directors are Marvin Fayman, Joshua Fayman and David Joshua Grajzman. It was incorporated on January 18, 2013, and its production facility, an out-of-work garment-manufacturing factory, is studded with state-of-the-art German and Australian machinery.

Bharat and I connected at the busy Hall No. 10 at Pragati Maidan, he took me to the Le Carne Cuts stall, and then started what I can only describe as a meat feast. Tanveer was around and so was Andrew Parsons, Executive Chef at the Official Residence, High Commission of Canada. What struck me instantly was that I was having sausages that actually tasted and felt like meat in the mouth and not like some rubbery, synthetic mock meat.

My favourite was the juicy pork kransky, a sausage that's hugely popular in Australia -- mildly hot and best eaten in a roll with rustic mustard. Giving it competition were the chicken chorizo sausages, which my boys polished off in a matter of minutes; lamb kabana, which are modelled after the Polish sausages made with pork drawn from pigs fed on potatoes; and the pork krakauer, sausages made from cuts of lean pork, seasoned with pepper, allspice, coriander and garlic, and packed into large casings. The winner, though, was the birchwood-smoked whole chicken, which you can simply microwave and add to your Caesar's salad, or just have by itself. I preferred the second option -- the chicken was too wholesome to need any sexing up.

Finally, we have grown-up meat products in our city. Let us fall in love with them -- like I have. You can get them at Modern Bazaar outlets and at the Japanese store, Yamatoya, in Humayanpur, in the neighbourhood of Safdarjung Enclave.