Dubai, United Arab Emirates– Coffee Planet, a leading home-grown UAE specialty coffee provider and part of the Ludlow Coffee Group, secured top honours in the recent awards season. The company’s commitment to quality, innovation, and excellence has been recognised as it clinched four prestigious awards in the Middle East across categories. These accolades are a testament to the dedication and hard work of the Coffee Planet team, its strategic mission, and the ongoing investments made towards improving products, people, and processes.
Coffee Planet was recognised as a “UAE Superbrand” at the 19th Annual Superbrands Tribute at Dubai Festival City. The Superbrand title is given to brands that offer consumers significant emotional and/or physical advantages over their competitors.
The company was also recognised by the Asian Business Review, receiving two awards in the Food and Beverage category. Team Coffee Planet won “Team of the Year – Food & Beverage” at the Middle East Management Excellence Awards in recognition of its passion for investing in people through training, development, employee engagement, and ensuring that Coffee Planet is ultimately an employer of choice. The judges acknowledged Coffee Planet’s collective focus on delivering to customers and working strategically with partners, which led to a record-breaking commercial performance in 2022 with 2023 likely to surpass those levels.
Coffee Planet also took home the “National Business Award for Food and Beverage” in recognition of its steadfast endeavour to develop new products and propositions, including the revamped brand identity and packaging, Campus by Coffee Planet, and the introduction of aluminium capsules and Instant coffee. Both Asian Business Review awards acknowledged the strong commercial growth of the business.
The phenomenal growth story of Coffee Planet has been wedded to a strategy of making specialty coffee inclusive whilst constantly reinventing the brand to be more people-centric and customer-focused. The winning spree was completed with CEO Jamie Brown’s recognition as a “Food Service Icon” at the Retail Middle East Magazine Food Service Icons Awards.
Coffee Planet started a new chapter in May 2023 with a resolution to make specialty coffee accessible to all customers, channels, and markets globally. This strategy propelled the company to new heights, and it expanded its offerings locally, regionally, and globally. The SCA (Specialty Coffee Association) – accredited educational facility, Campus by Coffee Planet continues to attract aspiring and practising talents from the world of coffee to turn their passions into vocations or enhance their coffee careers with a diverse range of brewing, barista, latte art end expert training courses.
Coffee Planet continues to grow internationally through its expanding network of distributors and partners allowing customers in 14 countries to enjoy their specialty coffee offering across many channels such as hotels, airlines, offices, restaurants as well as the opportunity to purchase in the retail market. Firmly establishing itself as a force to be reckoned with, Coffee Planet enjoyed sizeable revenue growth in 2022. This winning streak will continue into the remainder of 2023 and the years that follow with a clear strategic plan in place.
The rewards and recognition are testimony to the company’s overall approach towards growth and strategic investments as it celebrated the best year in its 18-year history. Jamie Brown said about the year’s successes, “We attribute this phenomenal year to the efforts of our wonderful team, our strategic investments in the business and people, and the unique proposition of striving to make specialty coffee accessible to all”
Furthermore, Coffee Planet has reinforced its leadership team with three strong additions to keep the growth momentum going into the new year. Rob Saunders, who has operated as Non-Executive Director for several years, joins as the Chief Finance Officer, Wesley Morrissey as Sales Director, and Matthew Yorke Smith, a founding member of Coffee Planet, moving into his new role as Chief Operating Officer.
