Why turn specialty coffee into capsules?

A single cup of coffee can change your life.

That might sound like an exaggeration. But for me, it was truly the case. The place was Fuglen Tokyo in Tomigaya, Shibuya. If it weren't for that one cup, I wouldn't have flown to Norway alone, I wouldn't have imported a roasting machine personally, and I wouldn't have gotten involved in a capsule factory.

Everything started with a single cup of coffee.

The day coffee became a fruit

Hello, this is Ohashi from OTC.

To be honest, when I was in high school, I wasn't a fan of coffee.

Canned coffee was too bitter to drink. I could barely manage a cafe latte. I only had this image of coffee as a bitter, dark drink that adults drank out of habit.

That version of me had his perception completely shattered after drinking a single light-roast cup at Fuglen Tokyo in Tomigaya, Shibuya.

It wasn't bitter. It wasn't dark. It had a fruit-like acidity and an aroma that passed through the nose. The moment I thought, 'Is this coffee?', I felt as if everything I had previously thought was 'coffee' was actually a completely different drink.

From then on, I started attending Fuglen's Public Cupping every Thursday. Learning about the origin of the beans, the depth of the roast, and the differences in extraction—it was purely fun to see words and flavors gradually connect.

Oslo, a baptism of 28 cups of coffee

As I became obsessed with specialty coffee, there was a place I knew I had to visit someday: Oslo, Norway. In the context of specialty coffee, it is a city that could be called a kind of holy land.

I got on a plane by myself.

I spent the day visiting seven shops representing the Oslo specialty coffee scene, including Fuglen's headquarters, Tim Wendelboe, Supreme Roastworks, Java, and Solberg & Hansen. On my first day in Norway, I couldn't contain my excitement and drank 28 cups. You can't drink espresso without proper equipment and a barista. But I was so curious about the filter coffee that I drank that too.

My head was spinning, my sense of balance was off, and I just crashed. The next day, I didn't learn my lesson and drank over 10 more cups. I think even I would admit that was going too far. But I couldn't stop. Every time the roast changed, every time the extraction changed, there was a world I didn't know inside the cup. Everything was fresh.

Espresso can only be drunk at a shop

When I became a university student, my exploration turned into practice.

I started getting involved in managing restaurants and began exploring coffee roasting by trial and error. I personally imported the 'Bullet' from Ailio, which didn't have an import agent in Japan at the time, and started using it through self-study. I think I was probably the first person in Japan to touch a Bullet.

The concept of the shop I was involved in was 'acidic liquids and something else.' Centered around drinks with complex flavors that had undergone fermentation or processing, such as specialty coffee, natural wine, and craft beer, we also served tacos and crepes. Even though the genres were different, I felt they were connected at the root.

However, when I looked into the reality, I immediately hit a wall.

To properly extract specialty coffee espresso, you need high-precision commercial espresso machines and grinders. Standard machines like La Marzocco or Slayer cost over 1 million yen even for entry-level models. It's not uncommon for the cost to reach the 2 to 3 million yen range just to set up a decent environment, including the grinder.

For a small shop where coffee wasn't the main focus, those numbers were far too unrealistic. The feeling of 'I want to deliver this to more people' and the reality of 'does it really cost this much just for equipment?' were constantly clashing in my head.

The simple answer of a capsule

That was when I encountered specialty coffee capsules from Colonna Coffee in the UK.

Colonna Coffee is a roaster based in Bath that is highly regarded in the industry. Their capsules are Nespresso-compatible, allowing anyone to drink specialty coffee espresso just by setting it in the machine and pressing a button, without needing any specialized knowledge.

I felt something after visiting those seven shops in Oslo. The espresso at those shops can only be drunk by going to those shops. It is a cup that can only be realized with a skilled barista and expensive equipment. When that becomes a capsule, it can be drunk at home with simple equipment at the touch of a button.

Simplicity and quality were properly balanced.

After that, I ended up serving as the Japanese import agent for Colonna Coffee as OTC COFFEE, but one question never left my mind.

'Why are there almost no specialty coffee capsules in Japan?'

In the West and Southeast Asia, capsules are already taking root in the market in the context of third-wave coffee. But in Japan, the perception that capsule coffee equals mass-produced products from major brands occupied almost everything.

Interest in specialty coffee is definitely rising. The need to drink good coffee at home is also growing. Yet, there are no options.
So, I thought, 'We have no choice but to do it ourselves.'

A high school student who could only drink cafe lattes was turned upside down by a cup from Fuglen, traveled alone to 7 shops in Norway, drank 28 cups, and crashed. This might have been the place I had been trying to reach all along.