Coffee Design: Tocaya Torradores De Café In Minas Gerais

The coffee roasting company Tocaya Torradores de Café in Itajubá, Minas Gerais serves single-origin specialty coffee from Brazil. The majority of the coffee comes from the Mantiqueira de Minas region and the founder Juliana Ganan maintains relationships with many of the producers they source from. The packaged debuted on July 4th, 2018 as a total rebrand with help from three of Juliana’s friends. We spoke with Ganan to learn more.

Tell us a bit about your company.

Tocaya Torradores de Café is a small coffee roastery located in Itajubá, Minas Gerais (in the Mantiqueira de Minas microregion). I’m actually located in the building right next to the one that used to house my father’s roastery. He roasted commercial-grade coffee produced on our farm until the year he passed away in 2000. Many people still knock on the door because of the smell thinking we are the same company, then I’ll go and explain that I’m his daughter and this roastery only roasts specialty coffee and so on.

Who designed the package?

The package was designed by three friends I made when we did a creative entrepreneurship course together in São Paulo, back in 2015: André Abe, Cristiane Calegaro, and Katia Oliveira. They each work individually as freelance designers but they got together as a collective to create my brand from scratch. Since they already knew me and the previous brand, it only made sense they were the ones responsible for the new packages. Abe is our web designer as well.

What coffee information do you share on the package? 

In the front, we have varying colored labels (following Fabiana Carvalho‘s research mentions on the relationship between color-expectation of taste) showing the farm name, city/state, producer name, variety, elevation, drying process, and roast date. In the back, we share a little bit of our story and encourage customers to pay more attention to coffee quality.

We wanted to show the origin and processing information to the customers. Although we live in a producing country, it’s still somewhat unusual to actually know where your coffee came from. Sometimes they will say the region/state, but it won’t be so accurate as to determine the farm/producer. We are a part of a small group of roasters that want to change that perception. In the back we make a plea: “wherever this coffee takes you, may the efforts of its producing chain be properly acknowledged.”

Why are aesthetics in coffee packaging so important?

Because it’s the first thing you pay attention to. When we participate in events to the general public, sometimes people approach us for the packages, then they get to know what’s inside. In my opinion, aesthetics are a way of honoring what is inside, too.

Where is it currently available?

All our current coffees are available online here.

Thank you!

Disclosure: Juliana Ganan is a contributor for the Sprudge Media Network.

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge.

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