A cup of quality coffee is known for making our mornings easier to bear. We drink it with standard milk, soy milk, white sugar, brown sugar, honey, cinnamon and even cacao. We care about the beans, the grinder and, of course, the coffee maker, but we keep forgetting about the one ingredient without which coffee wouldn’t exist at all. That ingredient is water.
Frank Manale, the founder of Toxicological & Environmental Associates (TEA), shows how important that by far forgotten ingredient is for the taste of coffee. After long research, Manale came up with the perfect formula, which contains an optimal combination of minerals such as lead, fluoride, chlorine, magnesium and zinc.
The startup, called Aquiem, debuted in January, selling their water in upscale groceries. A 1-liter carton of Aquiem costs $2,5 – quite a lot for a casual coffee drinker, but for the real enthusiasts, it’s not a factor that would scare them away. Actually, the price may never come up as a problem, since this startup’s main target, for now, are luxury hotels.
Aquiem’s project was financed with $400,000 and is expected to generate 1 million in one year. Considering the fact that barely anybody thinks about the water in their coffee, this project might be a revolution for coffee aficionados, but for the typical John Doe, it might be nothing more but a quirk.
