At complete beverage brand Naked Syrups, the customer experience is a whole lot more than simply being sold single products.
Cafés are in the DNA of Naked Syrups. Its range of flavourings, powders, and sweet sauce products have been created by a team of people who have owned cafés, worked at coffee roasters, sold café equipment, and supplied the foodservice industry for decades.
Naked Syrups Sales Manager Vince Monardo says this combination of staff experience and quality products makes it possible to help operators find a way to add value to their menus, to drive turnover, and boost profits.
“Each café needs a slight point of difference from the next one, and maybe, by drawing on our experience, we can help,” Vince says.
“We’ve got feet on the ground. We see what’s working in different markets and we can share those ideas with our partners, suggest maybe they give this, or that, a go.
“Our products are versatile. They can be used all year round, across the menu, and blended with other staples already in use at cafés to produce unique menu items.”
The Naked Syrups’ range can be used in baking, as toppings, in hot and cold beverages, or cocktails and mocktails. Its range of flavourings includes caramel, gingerbread, hazelnut, spiced chai, strawberry, vanilla, and traditional lemonade flavours.
Powders on offer include beetroot, chai powder, chocolate, frappe, matcha, and turmeric.
On the sauce front, Naked Syrups takes a nostalgic approach, aiming to deliver toppings that bring back memories of milkshakes drunk in tall, ice cold, stainless steel cups at the local milk bar. Chocolate, salty caramel and wild strawberry are the hero flavours for now, with a new addition on the way, likely to be unveiled in time for the Melbourne International Coffee Expo in August.
For Naked Syrups Business Development Manager Ryan Kalatzis, there is a genuine excitement about having the opportunity to work with partners to showcase the Naked Syrups range and help them grow their businesses.
“What we offer is a personalised service, a ‘no one shoe fits all’ approach.
We are extremely partnership focused and aligning with likeminded businesses is extremely important to us,” Ryan says.
“We’re there to support, and we’re very passionate about that. We’re out in the field constantly supporting our partners.”
On the product side, attention to detail and a desire to deliver the very best quality to the market shines through.
“Our products are Australian-made with no artificial colours or flavours, gluten-free, and Vegan Australia Certified across the majority of the range,” Ryan says.
He says partners with Naked Syrups can expect to have regular contact with the brand and a focus on open and clear communication.
“We’re going out there with our partners, seeing their customers, presenting ideas to them and helping them understand how they can take full advantage of our products,” Ryan says.
“Business owners need to be really clever about how they position their menus, think of different ideas, and think outside the square a little bit, and our range allows you to do that. Our products are multi-purpose. If you’re using a sauce in a milkshake, what other menu items can you use it in?”
Melbourne-based wholesale café supplier Bean Around Town has been selling Naked Syrups products to its customer base of more than 500 specialty cafés for several years.
Bean Around Town Director Chris Bollard says Naked Syrups’ naturally flavoured syrups have been particularly popular with his customers, followed by their dessert sauces.
“Our biggest selling flavourings are their caramel, vanilla and hazelnut flavours,” Chris says. “Their dessert sauces, once people get hold of them, they love them, and they don’t go back.”
Chris says ultimately, Bean Around Town’s customers determine what stays on the wholesale catalogue, and Naked Syrups coffee flavourings have been there longer than any other coffee syrup brand in the 10-year history of his business.
Chris says he had found Naked Syrups to be an honest business partner that shares Bean Around Town’s determination to offer high quality specialty products to the market.
As for just how the cafés out there may be able to use the Naked Syrups range, Vince says they are limited only by their imagination.
“You can bake a matcha muffin or make a turmeric soup. You could make a beetroot donut if you wanted to,” he says.
“It’s about giving options to entice people to come back and try something. Hopefully they come in and buy that drink once, or
try that menu item, and then come back and buy a coffee or a meal next time.”
For more information, visit www.nakedsyrups.com.au
This article appears in the August 2023 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.
