A French premium coffee house, taken into German-speaking retail through its own concept stores.
Malongo is one of the reference names in French premium coffee — a house from Nice that roasts to its own standard and has built its reputation on sourcing, fair trade and the craft of the roast rather than on volume.
The European premium beverage market is loyal and slow to convert. A coffee drinker who has settled on a house does not change lightly, which makes placement decide more than volume does: the question is not how many doors a brand is behind, but which ones, and whether the encounter with the product happens on the brand's own terms.
Our work with Malongo followed that logic. We built the retail and market strategy for the German-speaking markets, and the commercial core was the concept-store rollout — opening the right locations and managing the flagship openings, so that the first meeting between the brand and a new market took place in a room the brand controlled. The buyer and trade relationships behind that footprint ran alongside, as did the category and lifestyle media that gave the name recognition before a customer reached the counter.
It is the same method we have applied to every specialty beverage brand we have taken into DACH: the placement first, the presence around it, and the patience to let a loyal market come round in its own time.