Photos: Sapo Alado Project - Paula Veloso, founder of the brand, with boxes of Cafellow
Cafellow is an emerging brand in the Brazilian coffee scene, continually pushing forward with innovative and captivating solutions. Founded by Paula Veloso, Cafellow is more than just a coffee brand—it's a complete experience that fuses family tradition with a modern and creative vision. As the inheritor of a family that has cultivated coffee for over 50 years, Paula leveraged the legacy passed down by her grandfather and previous generations to create truly unique, novel products.
Paula Veloso’s journey is truly unique. Raised in the world of coffee, she developed her passion through years of study and hands-on experience. Even as a teenager, Paula knew she wanted to work in international trade and connect her family’s coffee to global markets. At a young age, she represented her family in New York, building connections with importers and participating in international exhibitions.
However, when the pandemic disrupted exports, Paula sought new experiences and spent four years working in the financial markets in both Brazil and the United States, broadening her entrepreneurial perspective.
This blend of international and financial expertise ultimately fueled the creation of Cafellow. During her years working in offices, Paula noticed the lack of practical, delicious coffee options for those with active lifestyles. This inspired her to develop an alternative that could offer both quality and convenience: coffee in sachets. Convenient, quick, and sustainable, Cafellow’s corn-fiber sachets make it easy to brew high-quality, pour-over coffee without extra equipment—an innovative solution perfectly suited to the fast-paced lives of today’s consumers.
Cafellow stands out with its colorful, nostalgic aesthetic, and its coffee breaks away from traditional norms. By combining unexpected ingredients and bold flavors, the brand steps outside the realms of espresso and bitter coffee, offering a medium roast that preserves the coffee’s natural sweetness and acidity. Cafellow aims to create an image that blends creativity and fun, positioning itself as a touch of magic and energy in its customers' daily lives.
Consumer education has been a priority for Cafellow, especially given that it's a new product in the Brazilian market. The brand uses its packaging, social media, and website to explain the ideal preparation method for its coffee sachets, ensuring an unmatched flavor experience. To attract a younger audience, Cafellow introduced the “fellows”—charming mascots symbolizing creativity, determination, and sensuality, all key qualities of the Cafellow brand.
Initially focused on the Brazilian market, Paula has watched the brand’s growth and plans to expand its product line with exciting new offerings and collaborations. Cafellow's future promises further innovations, unexpected flavors, and experiences that celebrate the legacy of Brazilian coffee, now reimagined for a new generation.
Check out this exclusive interview with the brand's founder, Paula Veloso:
1. You come from a family with a legacy of over 50 years in coffee cultivation. What was it like growing up with this heritage, and what inspired you to create your own brand, Cafellow, focused on the Brazilian market?
"Coffee cultivation has always been a big part of my life. I was born in Belo Horizonte but lived on the farm until I was three years old. During harvest season, my favorite thing was playing on the drying patio where the coffee would dry—definitely some of my best childhood memories!
I’ve always been passionate about coffee. I was constantly interested and sought to learn from my grandfather. Even before college, I decided to take courses to deepen my technical knowledge. Since early in high school, I knew I wanted to go into foreign trade to work in coffee exports. At that time, most high-quality coffee was exported, and what we consumed in Brazil was ‘the leftovers.’ That was in 2017, but today, the scene has changed significantly, and specialty coffee culture is becoming more popular.
After gaining experience in coffee exports and the financial market, I became certain that coffee was my passion. I also felt a strong ambition to be an entrepreneur and create something of my own, where I could fully explore my creativity. (Those two experiences were very institutional and structured, and I missed working on something innovative, outside the box, and fun.) That’s when I decided to create Cafellow, to bring my family’s coffee to the Brazilian market!"
2. Your journey is marked by experiences in the financial market, both in Brazil and New York, before founding Cafellow. How did these experiences influence your entrepreneurial vision and the construction of the brand?
These two experiences were essential for the birth of Cafellow. Working in a bank for four years made me realize how difficult it is to find good coffee in offices (both in the U.S. and Brazil). The coffee served from office machines is always terrible and of poor quality. They usually have espresso machines too, but personally, I don’t like the taste of espresso—it’s too strong and bitter—and I noticed that many of my coworkers felt the same way; they only drank it for convenience. That’s when I started to question why there wasn’t an easy way to enjoy a good cup of coffee. I began to research and discovered the method of using sachets made from corn fiber, which is the perfect solution for making “filtered” coffee that is both extremely practical and flavorful.
Living in the United States for five years helped me realize how traditional and conservative the coffee market in Brazil is, while there are many young, fun, and innovative brands that resonate with younger generations. When I was in college in New York, all my classmates had their favorite coffee brands, and I noticed this gap in the Brazilian market. Even as a coffee lover myself, I didn’t have a strong attachment to any brand. That’s why I decided to create a brand with a fun and nostalgic communication style, one that deserves to be a part of your daily routine and aims to be the favorite among young coffee enthusiasts!
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3. Cafellow stands out by bringing innovation to traditional coffee, with unique flavors, a vibrant visual identity, and a nostalgic approach. How did you develop this unique identity for the brand?
Brazil is the largest coffee-producing country in the world, and consequently, the coffee market is also very saturated. Cafellow emerged from a strong desire to differentiate itself through creativity, originality, and innovation! That’s why we chose a colorful visual identity, combining powerful ingredients with coffee and completely unique and surprising flavors. Our communication is nostalgic because we want to be a brand that brings magic as well as energy to our consumers.
We understand that coffee drinkers consume it daily, and we want to be a brand that adds value to their routines: with fun and cheerful packaging, along with cool and creative content, always bringing entertainment and enjoyment to our consumers’ everyday lives.
4. The coffee market in Brazil is extremely saturated, and Cafellow seeks to differentiate itself with sachet coffee and the “fellows” as symbols. What have been the main challenges, and how do you see the public's reception of this innovative proposal?
Our biggest challenge is definitely educating the market on how to consume the fellows. We are trying to redefine the term "chafe," which is associated very negatively in Brazil. I find it a fascinating challenge because it's the first time we are preparing coffee as if it were tea—it's very practical, but at first, it feels strange to change that habit.
Additionally, Brazilians are used to drinking very strong coffee because for many decades, coffee in Brazil was of poor quality. To disguise this, the industry would roast it very dark, leading Brazilians to acclimate their palates to extra-strong coffee, believing that this is the traditional coffee flavor. But in reality, coffee is a sweet fruit, and the ideal beverage should have a balanced sweetness and acidity, which is very different from the bitterness of extra-strong coffee. The worst part is that many people tend to believe that the stronger the coffee, the more caffeine it contains, when in fact, the longer you roast the bean, the more caffeine it loses. So, we also need to educate consumers about flavor because our coffee is medium roast, which is milder than the traditional market coffee.
5. The brand focuses on practicality and quality for consumers with dynamic routines, especially in the workplace. What are the advantages of Cafellow's sachets, and how are you educating consumers for the ideal preparation?
The preparation method is quite simple; it's the most practical way to make coffee. So, the educational effort is really just at the beginning to help people learn the three essential specifics for the best results: the amount and temperature of the water, and waiting 5 minutes for the infusion to occur so the coffee reaches the perfect intensity!
To assist with this, we include the preparation method on all our packaging, both on the box and individual sachets. Our website has a page dedicated to explaining the method. We post at least three times a week on Instagram with videos or graphics that detail the preparation process, and we are also continuously teaching how to make it on TikTok. Additionally, I respond to every video I see posted on Instagram, asking what people thought and ensuring they made it the right way!
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6. What are your goals for the future of Cafellow? Do you envision expanding the brand beyond Brazil or exploring new products and flavors that continue to bring magic and innovation to the coffee market?
At this moment, our focus is entirely on the Brazilian market. We want to explore and deepen our national customer base as we see it as where we have the most room to grow, especially since we are the first brand to introduce this innovative sachet coffee method and focus on providing magic and fun for the new generations. We have many exciting plans for 2025, and we are committed to continuing to be the most innovative and fun coffee brand in Brazil! Therefore, we are producing highly elaborate and authentic content to provide entertainment with a lot of magic for our consumers. We will also have collaborations with incredible brands that we admire, events that promote sensuality, creativity, and determination. Plus, we will be developing our own new products, including a new fellow that will soon be introduced, featuring an unusual flavor combined with another powerful ingredient!
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