Photo credit: Oswald Elsaboath

---

Indian food and beverage platform Culinary Brands has attained exclusive rights to license the Lavazza brand in India. The deal will also see the Everstone Group subsidiary take a ‘significant majority stake’ in Lavazza’s Fresh & Honest coffee brand, which operates a manufacturing facility in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh, capable of producing 9,000 tons of coffee per year.
 
Fresh & Honest was established as a wholly owned Indian subsidiary by Lavazza in 1996 and operates a bean-to-cup coffee vending and kiosk business across the country. In June 2022 Fresh & Honest set a target to operate more than 100 coffee shops in India within two years.
 
Indian media sources said Lavazza products could be sold within Subway fast food stores, for which Culinary Brands recently attained master franchise rights. Culinary Brands parent company Everstone Group already operates BK Coffee under the Burger King franchise in the country.
 
“Leveraging these strong brands, F&H's manufacturing capability, and our strong leadership team with experience of building large F&B businesses in India, we look forward to making Lavazza and Fresh and Honest the beverage of choice for Indians through distribution, product leadership, partnerships and enhanced presence across channels and consumption opportunities,” said Dev Amritesh, CEO, Culinary Brands.
 
Premium coffee and café culture are growing in popularity among Indian consumers. In December 2021, Lavazza cited an ‘exponential increase’ in demand for premium coffee in India when announcing an at-home coffee partnership with online retail platform, Tata CLiQ Luxury. 
 
2022 saw major international coffee chains, including Starbucks, Dunkin’ and Costa Coffee gain ground in the Indian market. Canada’s Tim Hortons and the UK’s Pret A Manger also made their debut in the vast South Asian country. Meanwhile, Nestlé has said it will invest $613m in India by 2025 to capitalise on growing demand for its products, including its coffee category.