Doutor Coffee


Doutor Coffee is a Japanese retail company that specializes in coffee roasting and coffee shop franchising. It was founded by Toriba Hiromichi.

Information

The company currently has over 900 locations in Japan, has begun expansion in Taiwan and most recently in Malaysia and Singapore. It is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Altogether, Doutor Coffee has over 1,300 outlets.

History

Doutor Coffee opened the first European styled café in Harajuku, Japan on 18 April 1980. The size of the small shop was only nine square meters. Despite the small size and local competition, the Doutor Coffee shop succeeded and has expanded to the company that it is now.
Doutor Coffee opened its own coffee plantation in 1991 in Kona District, Hawaii. It opened a second plantation in 1995.

Roasting coffee

Roasting coffee using hot air is a commonly used method by most roasting plants, but it takes away the original flavor of the coffee. Doutor Coffee explored other ways to roast the coffee, but in a more effective way that retains the flavor in the coffee. Doutor Coffee utilizes the flame roasting approach which is laborious and time-extensive, but it allows richly flavored coffee beans. Since flame roasting is used more for small shops due to the fact that it can only roast 5 kg to 20 kg of beans at a time, Doutor Coffee is trying to create an industrialized flame roasting technique.