Coffee Design:

innovation and creativity meet coffee

Coffee is a simple product. It’s precisely because of this simplicity that, when handled with creativity and a desire to experiment, it can change appearance and consistency entirely to result in surprising experiences. We in the Lavazza Group have always embraced innovation, in every sector, but experimenting with coffee is still our greatest passion. It’s this very passion that has given rise to Coffee Design. The idea sprang from food design, which is the process of developing and creating new foodstuffs. In other words, it’s the full range of analysis, research, and creative solutions that come into play between the time when a raw material is harvested and when it reaches us in the form of an entirely different, perhaps unexpected, product. In our case, it’s an approach that combines a thorough understanding of coffee with disciplines like biology, chemistry, aesthetics, haute cuisine, and the history of culinary traditions.

The concept emerged at the dawn of the millennium thanks to our collaboration with food philosopher Ferran Adrià, who helped us to look at coffee with fresh eyes and develop products like the Èspesso, the first solid espresso ever created, and Passion me, an alcohol-free shaken cocktail based on coffee and passion fruit juice. This process of development was supported by our Training Center and advanced with the help of many culinary masters, leading us to break down the barriers of taste and design cutting-edge tools for preparing and serving our product. With chef Carlo Cracco, for example, we played with structure and consistency to create the Coffee Lens, a coffee gelée in the form of a contact lens, served in typical lens cases. With Davide Oldani, meanwhile, we have produced a line of accessories designed to enhance the tasting experience, like the Espoon: a unique spoon with a hole in the middle for stirring sugar into coffee without breaking up the crema, thus preserving the full aroma of the espresso.

Research and design have enabled us to transform a simple material like coffee, exploring aromas, tastes, forms and even uses that had never been considered before. Our Cappuccino Bite is another example: a freeze-dried mousse that melts in the mouth, producing the delicious taste of a cappuccino but with the consistency of a biscuit. It was chosen by the astronauts of the International Space Station for the ease with which it can be eaten even in zero gravity.

Our commitment to the world of Coffee Design has also spread its influence to other forms of art, including a special edition of the Lavazza Calendar entitled “Inspiring Chefs”. This project celebrates the role of coffee in haute cuisine as well as in our lifestyles, compiling photographs of the most celebrated master chefs who took inspiration from this beverage to create signature recipes.

We do all of this because the quest for originality, harmony, sculptural forms and unusual combinations brings us immense joy and satisfaction. Our ultimate goal is to drive innovation forward, step by step, in the belief that creativity is not a spontaneous outpouring of genius, but a deliberate process to be continuously pursued.