The mall bar is changing

In the landscape of Bucharest and beyond, we already had a number of cafes established as benchmarks for good coffee taste, places that managed to convert thousands of consumers from a poor Jacobs or Julius Meinl to a freshly roasted, origin or specialty coffee. Names like Origo, Guido, Coftale, Steam, Black Eye, in some places also Tucano, etc. they have already entered the folklore of those looking for quality coffee shops. Everything these pioneers do is to be applauded and much has been written about each of them on the Espressoman forum. But what drives me to write on the blog, a place of less concentrated synthesis, on everyone’s understanding, of Doncafe and what is this brand looking for among the names mentioned above? No, I’m not even thinking about the advertorial 🙂 It’s just that I was struck by how quickly Starbucks’ unexpected venture of creating a cafe with a micro-bakery in Seattle spread to Romania.

The McCann PR agency (among the best in the world) oversaw the launch of the first Manufaktura by Doncafe location, inside the Mega Mall, where you can drink something completely different from the well-known artemisia of the brand in question, the new name of these beans is «Doncafe Fresh». Among others, I also received an invitation, to an event with a smart casual dress code, where at the beginning I felt like I didn’t know anyone, being a little awkward among so many white collar workers, clams, crabs, delicacies… in short, I expected there to be more people from the «café», some of them eventually arrived (Silvia SCAE, Paul and Alex Hotspot, Katy Beatrice, etc.)

Let’s start directly from what interests us, coffee.

The plans for the analysis of this place, Manufaktura Doncafe, can run parallel up to a certain point, after which they inevitably part ways, the road of artisan roasting being paved with very few compromises in terms of taste, and that of consumption in shopping centers being on another road. For now.

I can’t say after the launch experience that I drank bad coffees, but I also didn’t feel like it came close to Sarkis, Ecuator, Origo, Yume, Hot Spot, Guido, Papajacques, etc. (random). Of the origins I tried, I liked Kenya Gitura the best, but it had a roast bordering on crack, so the acidity wasn’t found in one of the more acidic coffees. I’m not surprised, because once I also drank a sweet Kenya from the Gourmet Café (Dolce Nera), almost chocolate 🙂 (i.e. a kind of Brazilian santos with 5/5 acidity). The Sidamo from Ethiopia was eliminated, far from a classic and fruity Sidamo, and I gave the Guatemala a mid bar because it exceeded certain bitter limits, somewhat unacceptable to most espresso drinkers. If it were about the money, a double would cost 14 lei, but it was the opening… 1 kg in bulk will be 140 lei. I also opened the Kenya package at home to fish out some doubles and compared to a Sarkis Ethiopia (that’s what I had at home today) there was a difference in roasting, color and taste… very big! In favor of the craftsman, obviously. More precisely, from the beginning you get the feeling that we are not talking about the same quality of green beans as the good small roasters, who bring original coffees (not to mention the specialty ones), but some adjustments in the degree of roasting I think would make those coffees stand out more. It’s just up to them, with the caveat that the average person at the mall wants bitter and «strong» coffees, without any acidic undertones, so I don’t know if anyone takes the risk of not taking the beans to the limit of second crack 🙂

It would be unfair not to look at the other half of the glass and sincerely appreciate them for what they have done in this bar/restaurant. Let’s not forget that the location is on the ground floor of a very busy shopping center in the Pantelimon/Iancului district, and many of the people who pass by will be simply «normal». And this contact of the «normal» man with a freshly roasted coffee of origin is essential as an educational path in the coffee field. Furthermore, in a matter of months/years, these people will become more demanding and will look for the next level of quality, i.e. micro-bakeries. Extrapolating, what would it be like if Doncafe or a competing brand built a cafe like this in every shopping center in Romania?! We would reach Cafedocti as a people faster than we expected. For me it was a real surprise to hear from the mouth of a coffee brand, whatever it was, «coffee roasted for 4 days», «to be consumed within 5 weeks maximum», «the freshest coffee in Romania» (an enormity, of course), all topped off with 8 high-performance coffee grinders for each origin or blend separately, something more important than the two Black Eagles of the Victoria Arduino:

It’s gratifying that a leap has been made from origins marketing, because many coffee brands, somehow realizing that the third wave of coffee is blowing from behind, have moved from shiny packaging with unknown beans to painted packaging with Arabica beans from Country Or please, if there were blends with robusta in the portfolio, the switch would have been great. Strauss had the courage to dive straight into the boat of freshly fried origins. This is a sparsely populated area for now, due to the notoriety of the concept, because micro-roasteries do not (unfortunately) generate even 0.5% of Romania’s coffee consumption, nor do they have funds for the mass popularization of real coffee. So, like a trailblazer with a lot of money in his pocket, he falls to the ground. I have said the same thing in the past about Lavazza, a coffee that many don’t like, but which had the initiative to put the roasting/packaging date on the packaging, not just the expiry date, which could also be a starting point for the competition. Even if you don’t necessarily like the final result, it’s important that someone with power in the market talks about the phenomenon and takes the novel out of the capsules and dust they see every day on TV.

And to see what the power of a company means when it puts its team at the service of an objective (relatively noble this time), the technological part was also attacked, with the implementation of a touch screen for coffee selection, an artifice that could have also been a generator of success for our roasters. As evolution leads us towards digitalization, I’m curious who will copy this idea in the most elegant way possible, as a menu on their website 🙂

Even though the prices are slightly above average, Romanians leave money at the shopping center without too much resentment, so they won’t have any problems here.

From a strictly technical point of view, I understood that the beans would be roasted at their headquarters near Bucharest, on a 15kg Probat, with automatic settings. After 4 days they reach the bar silos, built like a network of stainless steel pipes and containers, from where they go to the control station and there is probably a passage to the bar. Not everyone has a million euros to invest in something like this, but nowadays, if you have money and find a good architect, these ideas come to life. Existing implementation budget.

I look forward to more locations of this type in shopping centers, because the potential is there and the way has been paved. Maybe the first bakery in a busy shopping mall, who knows… Until then, Manufaktura takes an important step and opens up the appetite for such a business, which until now was considered suicidal. If it seems like I have something with shopping malls, it’s true, they are places overly populated by Romanians, full of all kinds of horrible cafes, and the traffic of 100,000 people on the weekend is no small amount of mass to try to address.

Photos with better resolution, here.