Getting to know Rob Berghmans - Founder of Caffènation
How did the journey of Caffènation start?
In 2003, I was tired of people in Antwerp making coffee without love for the product and the people drinking it, and so decided things had to be changed drastically. Based in the city of Antwerp, we seek to challenge the coffee landscape, always striving to be one step ahead in both coffee quality and experience.
Can you share more about your local coffee scene in Antwerp and what Caffènation's approach to sourcing, and serving coffee in the local area?
The local coffee scene is lively, young and with many of coffee lovers. At Caffènation we hope to offer people that home-away-from-home feeling you get with a good cup of coffee.
With coffee sourcing, we look for producers who we know to be ethical growers, who share our values and dedication to quality and seasonal freshness. We travel the world in search of beans whose expressive flavour tells a story – the taste of terroir, that unique combination of soil, altitude, water and climate that makes every bean unique.
Plus, transparency means a lot to us. You can trace your coffee’s journey from cherry to cup and know who’s helped along the way. Our transparent pricing means we have no secrets about what or who we pay for our beans.
What was the inspiration for Caffènation to decide to put coffees into the convenient capsule format?
Nespresso is market leader here in Belgium, but all these people with such a machine had almost no access to capsules with light-roasted specialty coffee and adding to the fact that we used compostable capsules (at that time) was almost unseen.
Coffee is fuel to get us moving throughout the day, especially in the morning. What is your daily morning ritual like?
Drinking one big mug of filter coffee with my breakfast and then later on drinking another big mug of filter coffee at work.
What are you most excited about right now and for the future of Caffènation as a company?
Coffee from origin is constantly improving and this we want to tell the world. We want to become a coffee company leading in transparency, diversity and sustainability - for the Belgium region and beyond.
