Difference Coffee Only Uses The Top One Percent Of Coffee Beans

Difference Coffee is an entry in our Great British Brands 2024 book. 

Difference Coffee: Great British Brand 2024

‘I founded Difference Coffee with one aim: to make the world’s best coffees available to discerning coffee lovers who, like me, have a capsule machine.

Coffee loses its flavours and turns stale quickly with exposure to air. Airtight capsules keep every portion of ground coffee oxygen-free, at the peak of freshness.

Coffee is a fresh product – 90 percent of its taste depends on the quality of the beans. Arabica coffee is graded on a 100-point system. We only source beans scoring 80+ (the top one percent), deemed Specialty Arabica grade, from legendary estates, elite competitions and auctions, and farms cultivating rare varietals. Like our Panama Geisha, our Hawaiian Kona from the annual Kona Cupping competition winner, or our current product from the Cup of Excellence Nicaragua champion.

By then packing the world’s rarest, tastiest, most aromatic coffees into capsules, we have created a collection revered by coffee industry critics and top chefs alike.

Great restaurants can be small, but fewer guests mean less coffee served. Investing in expensive equipment and baristas is prohibitive. Over 100 Michelin-starred chefs, eight with the prestigious three stars, now serve our capsule coffees. One quarter of 194 UK Michelin restaurants in 2023 serve our coffee, including the National Restaurant Association Awards’ Top Three: Ynyshir, Moor Hall and Da Terra.

Technology certainly helps: Chat GPT drafts press releases for us; we tell our story through our Little eBook of Coffee Essentials; video calls make communication and relationships more personal, reducing global travel, saving money and precious planetary resources. But the human touch remains paramount for success: identify exceptional farmers, give them the right remuneration for their hard work, and others will follow suit. That is how we encourage coffee-growing excellence, make a massive difference to farmers’ sustainable livelihoods and give delight to coffee connoisseurs across the world.’

Amir Gehl, Founder

Five Proudest Moments

1. In 2017, a year after launch, we received our first request from a chef of a Michelin-starred restaurant to try our coffee. It’s no mean feat to sell to such prestigious establishments.
2. We gained our 100th Michelin-starred client in 2021. That client is in Italy, our fastest growing market. Italians know their coffee.
3. We proudly became a Climate Positive company, also in 2021. Our carbon footprint is calculated and offset via Earthly, a market leader in the field.
4. In 2022, Walpole selected us for its Brands of Tomorrow programme, bestowed on just 12 of 100+ applicants, marking our entry to the British luxury brand arena.
5. Our coffees won multiple taste awards from the Aurora Taste Challenge and the Monde Selection, making us the most awarded of all coffee companies in 2023.

What I’ve Learnt

• There are always more challenging days than joyous ones, so it’s all the more important to genuinely love and believe in what you do to create a successful brand.
• Never give up! Tenacity is the ultimate currency when it comes to driving and leading a business forward.
• People + Planet = Profit.

DIFFERENCE COFFEE

+44 (0)20 7873 2062

differencecoffee.com

@differencecoffee