Industry Voices with Alejandro Franco of Kaffe Bueno

The Canadian Cosmetic Cluster had the pleasure of speaking with Alejandro Franco of Kaffe Bueno. Alejandro is an inspiring individual who is one of the co-founders of Kaffe Bueno. We ask him to share his story and vision to making the world a better place through upcycled ingredients.  

​1. History of the company - why did you start?
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I’m from Colombia, as well as my two co-founders, Juan Medina and Camilo Fernandez. Growing up there enabled us to see coffee as more than just a beverage. As a kid in Colombia, if you fall and get a wound, you can be almost certain some coffee grounds are going onto that wound. As an adult in Colombia, coffee is used to dye your hair when grey hairs start to pop up. 
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When we were studying business together in London (2013-2016), we realized how people from around the world have different perceptions of coffee. Most of our friends were from Scandinavia, and they saw coffee as a symbol of time with friends and family, as well as their caffeine fix. No more than that. While we ask ourselves, how come a coffee shop owner in London runs a lucrative business while the people who we owe the existence of coffee – farmers in Colombia – cannot even cover costs?

How much coffee grounds are thrown to waste when they can be put to good use. Less than 1% of coffee's health promoting molecules end up in your cup, the rest remain intact in the spent coffee grounds, which often end up in landfills, emitting 340m3 of methane per ton. Or in less bad cases, being incinerated or used for fertilizers. There are 10 bn kgs of coffee consumed yearly worldwide, 30% in the EU.

The cosmetics industry is full of synthetics and petrochemicals. Could coffee serve as a bridge to transition into natural? Then, we started getting deep into coffee from a biochemistry perspective, looking into all the molecules that compose it and what could they be used for to help humans improve and extend their lives, technologies to make this happen, etc.

We established Kaffe Bueno in 2016 in Copenhagen, Denmark. We’ve never been here before, but after analyzing many countries, we decided Denmark was the most suitable for us to start our business.

2. Why is your ingredient different?
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Currently, we have two ingredients, derived from coffee grounds: Kaffoil – an active ingredient in cosmetics and food & beverage – and, Kaffibre – a natural exfoliant in cosmetics, and a nutritious fiber in food & beverage. There are many vegetable oils in the cosmetics industry. However, most of them are derived from virgin crops, meaning the land is used exclusively for the production of the ingredient. Furthermore, Kaffoil, and all Kaffe Bueno ingredients, allow coffee (the plant) to go through its whole lifecycle, before using for a higher purpose. Moreover, its unique mix of polyphenols, tocopherols, and essential fatty acids position it as a high-performance ingredient.
On the other hand, we are soon launching new ingredients derived from the downstream of defatted coffee fibers (Kaffibre). These new ingredients will come into markets urging high-performing natural and sustainable alternatives to synthetics and petrochemicals.
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​3. Do you consider your ingredients green/clean?

Yes, I do. Not only because they are upcycled, but because we meticulously select the technologies we use to ensure we have the least amount of emissions possible while recycling our own inputs through purifications steps throughout our biorefinery process.

​4. What is your opinion on studies done on ingredients vs. how they act in the actual formula? Can you guarantee the same results? 
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I assume you refer to efficacy studies, and not toxicology. About efficacy, it is important that results obtained in-vitro are further studied not only using the pure ingredient but also in various formulations, to avoid misleading claims. It is of course very difficult to perform studies on different formulations for every single application of your ingredient. So it is important to understand how your ingredient behaves with other ingredient families and the impact on its efficacy. In the case of our ingredients in the market, we have performed numerous in-vitro’s and in-vivo’s both on the pure ingredient and formulations. Thereby, on the specific formulations tested, we can guarantee the same results.