Mexico’s Food for Well-Being program has introduced a new product to its inventory: “Wellness Coffee.” This product follows the recent launch of other “Wellness” foods like honey, chocolate, and beans.
In Mexico, where instant coffee is more popular than ground coffee, the new product is aimed at appealing to the majority of consumers.
“I would like to explain to you why we’re launching instant coffee: because 84% of Mexican families prefer instant coffee,” said María Luisa Albores González, head of the government program Food for Well-Being, during President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Wednesday morning press conference.
Albores said that the coffee will be available in three presentations: a 50-gram jar priced at 35 pesos (US $1.86), a 90-gram jar for 65 pesos (US $3.46) and a 205-gram jar will be priced at 110 pesos (US $5.86).
Although the Mexican standard allows instant coffee to contain up to 30% non-coffee ingredients, the Wellness Coffee is a “pure product,” Albores noted.
“It [the product] has no additives or colorings, no artificial flavors, and its only ingredient is coffee,” she said, adding that the blend is predominantly Arabica and parchment coffee, with a small proportion of Robusta.
Albores explained that the beans are harvested using agroforestry systems that benefit both the environment and the local economy.
This initiative required an investment of 59.4 million pesos (US $3 million) to purchase 913.56 tons of coffee, primarily sourced from producers who are members of the government’s Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) program. According to Albores, the coffee is purchased at a fair price from over 6,600 small producers in Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz, and Guerrero, with 50% of these producers located in the region known as the Guerrero Mountains.
She further added that six of every 10 producers are women.
“It’s very meaningful for us to know that we’re working with Indigenous peoples, with Mixes, Mixtecs, Nahuas and Otomis,” Albores stated.
Like other products in the Food for Well-Being program, the Wellness Coffee will be marketed nationwide through the Wellness Stores network, with a distribution occurring in stages. The product will first arrive in central Mexico, including Mexico City, México state, Michoacán, Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala before rolling out in the rest of the country.
Mexico News Daily
