Page 51 - #62 eng e-mag

Bean

Brothers

Co-creating
Customer Experience

w hen you hear a name “Bean Brothers” you might think

of some brotherhood created around coffee beans and
you would be totally right. The company was founded
in 2009 and the first brand was ABLESQUARE, an of-
fline co-working/studying cafe. As three co-founders of the
company, Seongho Park, Hoonshik Sung and Wonil Nam, met
while studying in Seoul National University and noticed there
were not many co-working spaces. Later on, they have learned
that coffee experience in Korean coffee shops was very limited:
over 200 types of green beans were imported to South Korea
every year, but customers were not able to experience most of
them as franchise cafes used only 1- 2 types of blends; moreover,
from a customer side, the understanding of coffee was low as
customers lacked opportunities to develop their own taste due to
limitation of high quality coffee. As business grew and owners
were focusing on customer experience and coffee more and more
they decided to open their second brand, Bean Brothers.
The new brand was born in 2013, with the help of 3 guides:
Jackie Chang, head roaster and founder of BEAN PROJECT and
judge for KBC, Jenny Lee, champion of Korea Barista Champion-
ship 2012, and Leo Lee, member of ABLE COFFEE GROUP, head
of wholesales. It first started as an online subscription platform,
and enabled customers to experience variety of beans every month,

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