From cascara to green coffee
My biggest respect to the perseverance of the founding team! In 2015 they started with Selo Soda – a really delicious coffee cherry lemonade. End of 2016 and 50,000 bottles later threatened to end, because coffee cherries were classified by the EU Food Safety Authority as novel food. Thus, the coffee cherry must first be approved by a costly proceeding lasting several months before it is allowed to enter production and then trade. I have already written a blog post about this. However, the Selo team did not give up.
At the end of 2017, the startup raised € 15,000 through crowdfunding to produce lemonade from unroasted green coffee beans – 100% organic and transparent traded. There are now 3 varieties of lemonade.
- Green coffee with ginger and gentian
- Green coffee with turmeric and orange
- Green coffee with hibiscus
My personal favorite is the version with hibiscus. But try it yourself.
What is inside?
Sun-dried coffee beans from Colombia, from the Co-operative Coocafé in the Sierra Nevada region. Here, 38 farmers cultivate, harvest and process the organically grown Arabica coffee. Fair prices support quality-promoting structures of the cooperative.
All other ingredients are of biological origin. The lemonades do not contain any industrial sugars, flavors or preservatives. The production and filling takes over a family business in Niedersachsen, which work exclusively with electricity from renewable energies. So you can really drink the lemonade with a good conscience.