Singapore startup Prefer has introduced the first and only bean-free coffee that repurposes food waste into environmentally friendly cups of coffee.
Prefer’s bean-free coffee is available at cafes including Dough, Brash Boys, First Story Cafe, Foreword Coffee Roasters, SaladStop, and Parched by Parchmen in the city-state.
According to the brand, the process takes around 48 hours to complete, as opposed to annual harvests and an average of five years for freshly planted trees to produce their first crop.
While Prefer’s grounds are caffeine-free, customers can add caffeine from tea and modify the levels as desired. Fermentation also allows Prefer to generate tastes that duplicate coffee qualities from countries like Ethiopia and Columbia in the same facility. This reduces import markups, allowing Prefer to keep costs low for enterprises.
“Our mission is to create coffee variants that are delicious, affordable, and sustainable in the long run,” said Jake Berber, CEO of Prefer.
“Today, we start as a climate-friendly option on the menu. But as coffee farmlands diminish and prices continue to rise in future while our production remains scalable to meet demand, we believe Prefer will be the next generation of the commodity we know as coffee.”
Prefer, founded in late 2022 by food scientist Tan Ding Jie and former neuroscientist Jake Berber, uses locally sourced ingredients such as day-old bread from Gardenia, Okara or soybean pulp from Mr Bean – a soya bean franchise, and spent barley grains from local breweries such as The 1925 Brewing Co and Brewerkz.
Further reading: Singapore startup creates dairy-free canned RTD coffee range
