TAIWAN – Sea Salt Latte: is 85C the next coffee craze?

TAIWAN – Sea Salt Latte: is 85C the next coffee craze?
 
A coffee
company from Taiwan hopes to teach Americans to love squid-ink buns and iced sea
salt lattes. Stores in the 85C chain also sell cheap, and unusual, pastries.
Just as Starbucks brought venti triple lattes to Main Street, U.S.A., 85C hopes
that adding a little saltiness to the caffeine is a hit with American consumers.

 
\”It\’s really unique,\” says Stephanie Peng, manager of the
company\’s flagship U.S. store in Irvine, Calif. \”The sea salt\’s in the cream,
the foam part, so it just brings out more coffee essence.\”
 
The
lattes sound exotic, but the salt flavor is incredibly subtle — you have to
tease it out with your tongue. Sea salt lattes have helped establish 85C as the
\”Starbucks of Asia.\” The chain has more than 300 stores across Taiwan, and it
plans to expand its presence across China, Australia and the U.S. over the next
few years.
 
Key to the company\’s U.S. outreach is Peng, 24, a
Taiwanese-American who grew up in Orange County. She\’s helped 85C work out its
kinks since the Irvine store opened about a year and a half ago, by finding
local sources and working with company chefs to tweak the menu to appeal to U.S.
palates.
 
\”We made it a little sweeter here, a little saltier here
— more flavor actually,\” Peng says of the American version of 85C\’s coffee.
The chain\’s name comes from the centigrade temperature at which it brews its
coffee.
Unlike Starbucks, with its oft-criticized slight and dry pastry
selection, 85C is also a bustling, high-powered bakery. Every few minutes,
workers burst from the kitchen with trays of fragrant golden rolls, to cries of,
\”Fresh bread! Fresh bread!\”
 
Some trays don\’t even reach their
destination before eager customers snatch up every steaming roll. While bread
and coffee may not sound typically Taiwanese, the food reflects our global era.
Some soft buns come stuffed with red bean paste or dried pork; alternately,
muffin- or pizza-like offerings feature fruit or hot dogs.
 
One
surprise crossover hit is a black squid-ink bread, made with Vermont sharp
cheddar cheese and garlic paste. Each roll costs less than a dollar, meaning
there\’s incentive to stray outside your flavor comfort zone.

 
According to Julia Huang, CEO of a company that tracks Asian
trends in the United States, 85C could gain real traction in the U.S. market.

\”For some reason, in the past four to five years, American tastes — and
we\’re not talking about cuisine, we\’re talking about snacks — [and] comfort
food has changed so much,\” she says.
 
Now, I like Sriracha hot
sauce and bubble tea as much as the next Midwestern gal — probably even more.
But comfort food, for me, is generally not the same color as Barney. So I was
skeptical when faced with a deeply purple piece of bread flavored with taro
root.
 
\”Marbled taro is actually one of our top sellers,\” Peng
said. \”We make our own taro filling, so it\’s really soft, really flaky. Our
customers love it.\”
And I\’ll be damned if it didn\’t taste like an
incredible soft, flaky, tasty — purple — donut. A week later, and I\’m still
craving another one.
 
Peng says that when the store first opened,
most of their customers were Asian. Now, almost 50 percent are non-Asian.
Catalina Jiménez, originally from Spain, works in finance. She says she spends a
disproportionate amount of time waiting in 85C\’s regularly long lunch line.

 
\”It\’s horrible,\” Jiménez says. \”When [85C] first opened, I
would see the crowds outside and say, \’Oh my god,\’ and I would say,
\’Losers!\’ — and now here I am. I do the line every day.\”
Jiménez is
partial to the chain\’s blueberry brioche. Another 85C regular is Abraham
Walker, a South African native who never expected to enjoy Taiwanese coffee and
cake in the United States.
 
\”Quite honestly, I wouldn\’t mind
having a share in this business,\” he says, \”because it\’s busy all the time.\”

Walker may get his chance. 85C goes public in Hong Kong later this year,
timed to coincide with the planned opening of its second U.S. store, in Hacienda
Heights, Calif.
 
In a phone call from Taiwan, spokeswoman Kathy
Chung said that company executives occasionally joke that their \”ultimate
dream\” would be to open an 85C across the street from a Starbucks store in
Seattle. But, she said, \”That would also be an honor.\”
 
More: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127474607