Coffee is facing serious challenges. Rising prices and environmental issues are threatening the future of one of the world’s most popular drinks—ranking just behind water and tea in global consumption. For many people, that morning cup of coffee might soon come with more concerns than comfort.
But for one Singapore-based start-up, this crisis is a chance to innovate. Prefer, founded in 2022 by Tan Ding Jie and Jake Berber, is rethinking coffee by removing the coffee bean entirely from the equation.
Tan and Berber met through Entrepreneur First, a UK-based startup accelerator that has since shut down its operations in Singapore. “DJ (Ding Jie) and I believed fermentation could help us create ingredients that are both affordable and sustainable,” Berber told Options magazine.
Tan had already earned the nickname “Prince of Fermentation” for his work with bars and restaurants, developing unique recipes using fermented ingredients. The pair soon focused on making a sustainable coffee alternative—one that doesn’t rely on a crop increasingly threatened by climate change, and which itself contributes to environmental damage.
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