Coffee Bean opens 2nd store at SM Lanang

THEY started the cold coffee beverage that is now popular all over the world, and they just opened their second branch in Davao City at SM Lanang Premier.

The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (CBTL) was started by Herb and Mona Hyman in 1963 in Los Angeles, California in USA. Coffee lovers themselves, the couple toured Europe for the best coffee shops and decided to bring the specialty coffeehouse concept to America.

Over the next 35 years, the couple has continued to grow their coffee business throughout Southern California. Flavor and handcrafted feel became the cornerstone of their business.

They blended coffee varieties per customer requests and roasted them to their liking. These personalized roasts have even been used in formulating some of their more popular blends today.

In 1996 the company was franchised in Asia. The business did so well in Singapore and Malaysia that the company was purchased from the Hymans and the first franchisee now became the franchisor.

Walden Chu, president of the Philippine Franchisor of CBTL, said their newly-opened branch at SM Lanang is their 50th store in the country. CBTL is now existing in 20 countries with 900 stores worldwide. Next year, they will be celebrating their 50th year of serving good coffee and tea to the world.

Pioneering cold coffee beverage

Chu said that in the mid-80's, nobody drank cold coffee. Then one of the CBTL baristas started creating a cold coffee drink that instantly became a hit in America, and the rest is history.

"CBTL institutionalized the creation of the cold coffee genre. No less than Starbucks acknowledged us as the pioneer in cold coffee beverage," Chu said.

Asked what makes their coffee and tea beverages apart from the rest, Chu said they source their coffee from the best.

"We buy the top one percent of the coffee special blend arabica and we search them from the best producers all over the world," he said.

At present, CBTL offer over 22 varieties of coffee and 20 kinds of tea.

"Over the years, we have worked hard to build relationships with individual farms and estates so that we can be assured of the best coffee and tea harvests available. Our coffee is roasted fresh daily in small batches in a manual European roast style, then packed using state-of-the art equipment for shipment in our own roasting facility and delivered fresh daily to our stores," the CBTL stated in its website.