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[FamilyMart’s Butter Coffee] The point of Product Development, Interview of Doutor who about product of Butter Coffee
FamilyMart’s Butter Coffee is the topic of the best seller, The Strongest Meal. The commercialization had its ups and downs, so we asked the person in charge of Doutor about its development, the process of finishing the coffee and using butter together with the product.
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The first step to make butter coffee started when Doutor said, “It would probably not be possible.”
Goto: I have a long-term business relationship with FamilyMart as a sales representative for various products, including the FamilyMart Collection. And this butter coffee development idea came to us over one year ago. At that time, I said that it would probably not be possible to arrange it as a packaged product in a convenience store, regardless of the consideration inside the company and having tried it at the store.
――Why did you respond like that?
Goto: Our company was already paying attention to butter coffee. However, we value the first brand that customers can buy with confidence. We had never focused on a trend, so I felt that it would be very difficult to familiarize ourselves with butter coffee. I think people who pay attention to trends may think “Oh, butter coffee is there,” but what kind of impression will people have if they do not know anything about “butter coffee.” As our products are drunk by a wide range of age groups, we were skeptical about making and selling butter coffee.
Read more Butter Coffee on the Official site
※English translation
Morita: Indeed, I was interested in MCT oil for a long time and there was talk about whether we could do anything about the product. When The Strongest Meal became a topic, we also bought grass-fed butter by mail order, I tried making a prototype with the recipe written in the book, but I thought it was difficult to convey this to our customers in an easy-to-understand manner.
Goto: Then, maintaining raw materials was a problem. We were able to arrange coffee ingredients, but we had no experience, and we didn’t know where to purchase grass-fed butter or MCT oil from. In addition, we were not familiar with the technology to emulsify and stabilize coffee and oil, so I thought that commercialization would be difficult.
――What kind of triggers existed from the very beginning to the development start?
Goto: Raw materials including grass-fed butter and MCT oil were developed by Fuji Oil Co. And delivered to us. Therefore, we could choose the ingredients and a coffee bean selection as well, so I thought the development might be possible. That was about May, early summer. We also started making samples. The selection of the emulsifier was somewhat difficult, but we took charge of it.
The most difficult thing is seeking the benchmark of taste nobody knows.
Morita: All development starts from nothing. It was very difficult to determine what would be the benchmark of taste. There are various shapes of coffee, and we could recognize a delicious cafe au lait because our company had experienced it with a combination of milk and coffee, but it was hard to set that kind of benchmark for butter coffee.
Morita: There was no choice but to experiment with various combinations, to select and extract the beans. Technically, to make Fuji Oil’s buttermilk base and emulsify and stabilize coffee are both difficult tasks. These have continued validation all the time. I tried different tastes.
─ ─ I am familiar with milk, but butter is an unknown world. That is a difficult point.
Morita: That’s it. There was only trial and error to make it delicious.
─ ─ In Butter Coffee, you use only Arabica coffee. What does this mean?
Morita: Coffee beans are roughly divided into Arabica and Robusta varieties. Robusta has strong tastes. For this product, we wanted to leave a sweet aftertaste. As the base of butter is solid, the coffee has an aftertaste with an aroma and sweetness. I stuck to the balance between the base and the coffee that I could drink with the most enjoyment. To leave a good impression, I wanted to choose a coffee that people would be motivated to drink. So, I built it based on the Arabica type in Latin America. Guatemalan beans are sweet, Brazilian beans are fragrant and Colombian beans have a solid body. I rearranged the balance and laid out their personalities.
Read more Butter Coffee on the Official site
※English translation
Goto: Butter is not sweet, milk has the sweetness.
Morita: Butter is not sweet, it has a gentle taste. But compared to milk, it lacks flavor. We devised and adjusted the balance with coffee.
—— When Fuji’s oil is emulsified in the first stage of coffee, we then need to emulsify it once more. That process was also difficult.
Morita: Yes. It is verified, and Fuji Oil also validates it. It was the task of selecting the emulsifying agent, the difference of the blending ratio and the importance of the matrix.
Goto: At that time, I disagreed with Development and Sales. I also had a release date and my mission was to launch it to the world on a certain day. But Development did not want to put out something that was incomplete. There were times when we were arguing. Sometimes I was sorry, but I asked them to do something difficult. (Lol)
—— Did you request modifications to the taste from FamilyMart on the way?
Goto: Yes, I did. When I took the first table sample to business negotiations the taste was said to be “OK”, but when I tested it on the factory’s actual machine, I got an indication that the coffee was weak. Although it had been proceeding as proposed, there were slight differences depending on the extraction method and temperature. We fed back the indication that the flavor of the coffee was weak, adjusted it, and finally got the OK.
—— Did you have to have coffee darker than usual?
Goto: The coffee felt thinner than I predicted, but in the end, it was certainly a bit darker than regular cafe au lait.
I would like to establish butter coffee as a new style of coffee for a wide range of people.
Morita: The joy was great. I felt security at last. Since the flavor of the coffee was good, I felt we were finished and had the right balance.
Matsuno: First of all, I felt that I had accomplished what I set out to do. It was a truly new product. And when I was drinking it, I had a sense of security and felt that a lot of people would buy it. I thought it was easy to drink and would be accepted by a lot of people. It had better characteristics.
Morita: There are no other existing products. I think that it is great that people who want to drink butter coffee and are health conscious can buy it reasonably rather than make it every day.
─ ─ Please give us your impressions of this project.
Morita: We can be supported by many customers, and they can drink this coffee every day. As this is a new way to drink coffee, we are grateful as a coffee shop. I am thankful for the opportunity to have participated in this challenge.
Goto: Originally there was talk of quantity limitation. I did not think that it would sell well like this, I was really glad that it was accepted by so many people. Right now I’m talking with FamilyMart about how I can raise daily and weekly sales in the future.
Matsuno: Frankly speaking, it’s selling really well. I don’t think there has been such a product in the chilled cup market up until now. Butter coffee is also on the menu at the shop because of the height of health and diet needs, I realized that it would be interesting to work on such products steadily. Although different companies are doing a lot of different things, health-oriented coffee is quite difficult. There are still many products that appear and disappear, and this way of selling butter coffee is surprising after all. As a successful example of Coffee Plus Alpha, I think that based on this achievement, it is still possible to come up with interesting things in the future.
── Who will like butter coffee in the future?
Goto: When we asked FamilyMart, they said that butter coffee is selling pretty well in urban areas. Going forward, I would like people to better understand the goodness of butter coffee. I would like to introduce it to the wider community and make it a product that will be enjoyed nationwide.
Morita: I also want a wide range of people to drink this coffee.
Matsuno: I am happy that people who love coffee are drinking this product. I would like to spread the word to young people who are not familiar with coffee, and to diet-oriented people as well. I hope butter coffee becomes more popular both in Japan and abroad, and I expect that it will become a product of interest in the future.
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