Dubai-based Coffee Planet’s philosophy of creating the perfect cup is about making lasting impressions that keep hotel guests coming back for more

As the UAE’s largest coffee brand, Coffee Planet operates 200 sites roasting more than nine tonnes of Arabica beans every month.

In addition to supplying many luxury hotels in the Middle East, the company founded by Seven Tides managing director for hospitality Mike Scully, supplies retail outlets, offers equipment distribution, food service and HORECA solutions, retail concept design and build, coffee roasting and with its recent acquisition of Dante, it also has its own food company.

Upon establishment, the company’s vision was to provide good-quality coffee to people on the go and it was that ambition that saw Coffee Planet partnering with more than 130 fuel stations and convenience stores, including Adnoc, Enoc and Eppco, to offer Coffee Planet outlets across the emirates.

This positioned the company well to diversify into the hospitality sector, with its core product, coffee beans, and a key focus on coffee-making training, according to Coffee Planet business development manager Robert Jones.

“A multitude of hotel employees need to be able to make consistently good-quality coffee, given that coffee is often the first and the last interaction that a guest has with a hotel,” asserts Jones.

“For our hotel clients we conduct training at our facilities. We take hotel staff to our roastery to give them a full education on coffee so they realise why it’s important and how that knowledge will impact the taste of the end product.

“Our account execs do regular spot checks and give feedback to clients on where they need to improve. It’s in our interest for clients to serve the best-tasting coffee so we do everything we can to help them achieve that,” he says.

Jones says that having its own roastery based in Dubai gives Coffee Planet the flexibility to offer tailored packages to suit each hotel’s individual requirements.



To overcome the challenge of continuity in the supply chain posed by poor regional stockholds, Coffee Planet has also become distributors of most of the coffee equipment it provides, holding local stocks and spare parts.

The company’s green coffee beans, for example, come from as many as 15 coffee-growing regions worldwide.

And with some clients ordering up to 1000kg of coffee at a time, Coffee Planet has to stay prepared by storing ample buffer stocks. Luckily green coffee beans have a shelf life of up to three years, says Jones.

Having built up a good reputation across the region’s hotels, most of Coffee Planet’s marketing is through word of mouth.

“Everybody knows everybody in the hotel industry, so if you’ve got a good-quality product, backed up with consistently high levels of service word gets around,” says Jones. Furthermore, Coffee Planet strives to maintain a close relationship with clients. “Each client has its own dedicated account executive who liaises with F&B managers and I generally maintain communication with hotel general managers,” adds Jones.

As a result, the company continues to see positive growth in spite of the economic downturn; putting its success down to its best-practice foundations, which Jones says have paid dividends in the long-term.

COMPANY INFO

Name: Coffee Planet LLC
Head office: Al Quoz 4, Dubai
Established: 2005
Tel: +971 (0)4 342 5537
Fax: +971 (0)4 342 5536
Email: coffee@mycoffeeplanet.com
Web: www.mycoffeeplanet.com