More than a year in the making, Canberra's specialty coffee roasters Ona Coffee have launched their rebranding.
The rebranding centres around changing the famous flavour names, and getting back on track with their sustainability goals.
The new names for the flavours are Raspberry Candy, Gateway (formerly the Founder), Aspen (formerly Black Betty), Maple (formerly the Hitman), and Unwind (decaf).
Part of the rebrand is to connect with their origins said Ona marketing manager Viridiana Ortiz.
"We decided to change one of our names from Black Betty to Aspen as it was a reminder for our founder Sasa Sestic of the poplar trees found around Canberra," said Ortiz.
"We spent six months working on the names, we wanted to make them more meaningful.
"We used the names Aspen and Maple not only to show our connection to Canberra, but also to reflect our relationship with nature, and our commitment to sustainability."
Prior to the coronavirus lockdowns hitting Australia's shores, Ona began 2020 by installing solar panels to their Canberra roastery and head office, and committing to eradicating single-use cups from its wholesale distribution and other venues.
Due to the pandemic, Ona's #giveupthecup campaign hit a road block with a ban on reusable cups.
Ortiz said that while there have been setbacks, Ona was still committed to sustainability, and this commitment was one of the other inspirations behind the rebranding.
Ortiz said that the idea for the rebrand first came in January of last year.
"We needed to change our bags [of coffee] to remove the excess cardboard that was being wasted, and we thought, 'What else can we change?'" she said.
"Unfortunately our bags still use plastic and at this stage we can't change that without changing the quality of the coffee, but we plan in the future to change them to being biodegradable when we can change without sacrificing flavour. Our next step is to get rid of the sleeves."
Ona Coffee founder Sasa Sestic has previously said "on the consumer end of the coffee chain, there are many ways we can be more sustainable."
Ortiz said that a lot of thought went into the names that were changing after 12 years.
"We were 100 per cent sure that people wouldn't have any problems with the name changes, but the response we've had so far is even more positive than we'd expected," she said.
Ortiz said the name changes were merely the first stage of the rebranding, with plans to develop more exotic processes and even creating more flavours of both coffee and decaf.
"We also wanted to give a name to our decaf coffee, we've been working with a farm in Columbia to improve our decaf flavour," she said.
"We want to add more decaf flavours as well, so people can enjoy the taste of coffee later in the day or in the evening, without then staying up all night.
"These names are also easier to remember."
