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Coffee supplier shares story behind McDonald's McCafe success
July 6, 2009
NEW YORK — Family-owned Gavina Gourmet Coffee is one of the major brands behind McDonald's success in the coffee segment.
Los Angeles-based Gavina Gourmet Coffee has served as one of the major coffee suppliers to the global restaurant chain since 1983 and helped formulate the company's recently completed national launch of its line of McCafe specialty coffee drinks.
With Gavina's help, McDonald's share of the beverage segment has jumped to more than 10 percent, fueled largely by the introduction of Premium Roast Coffee in 2005. In May, the company expanded its lineup of coffee offerings with espresso-based hot beverages and iced coffee drinks.
McDonald's partnership
Gavina's relationship with McDonald's began in 1983 when it became the supplier for 10 local restaurants. The account soon grew to include all of Southern California, and eventually almost the entire West division.
When McDonald's decided to pursue the beverage business and reformulate its coffee, Gavina was ready for the task. The Gavina and McDonald's teams worked closely together to devise the perfect blend of beans that became Premium Roast Coffee. The result has been a dramatic surge in coffee sales that quenched the country's thirst for convenient, quality, affordably priced coffee.
Gavina's commitment to its community is as strong as its commitment to quality. The company supports organizations that assist small coffee growers in Latin America, provides funding for local education and cancer organizations, and supplies coffee to Ronald McDonald Houses and supports the charity and other McDonald's causes.
Company history
In the 1860s, the Gavina brothers left their homeland in Spain for the coffee-bearing soil of the southern Cuban mountains. The Gavina's plantation in Cuba, Hacienda Buenos Aires, produced the finest coffee on the island and established the region's coffee community.
Company patriarch Don Francisco was born on the plantation and learned the intricacies of growing and roasting the highest quality coffee beans. When the Castro regime took control of the island in 1959, Don Francisco moved the family to Southern California. He found work as a restaurant busboy, but the lure of the coffee business pulled hard, and in 1967 he purchased used roasting equipment and launched the Gavina brand.
Don Francisco's commitment to quality lives on today under the leadership of his four children, Leonor, Pedro, Jose, and Francisco "Paco," who oversee all aspects of the operation from a gleaming new 240,000 square-foot plant in Vernon, Calif., that houses 250 employees.
Today, Gavina is the largest privately owned coffee roaster in the country. The company's three primary brands, Don Francisco's Gourmet Coffee, Cafe La Llave Espresso, and Gavina Gourmet Coffee, are available in markets across the country and account for more than $100 million in sales annually.
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