E305 That Great Business Show - George Clooney Made Coffee Pods Sexy. Sofia Kalfa Is Cleaning Up the Mess

George Clooney helped make the coffee pod glamorous.

Unfortunately, the estimated 30 billion pods going into landfill every year are considerably less glamorous.

Sofia Kalfa spent almost 20 years working with companies including Dell, PepsiCo, Wayfair and CRH. She then brought that corporate experience into Fzin Coffee, a growing Cork business taking on some of the biggest names in the global coffee industry.

Fzin has developed an independently certified, bio-based and home-compostable coffee capsule that can go into a home compost heap, food bin, flowerpot or garden rather than joining the plastic and aluminium mountain. But this is not simply a sustainability story. Sofia explains:

How Fzin built an 80-plus-product coffee and beverage portfolio. Why a customer told her that Fzin needed to be available through Musgrave. How she followed up through LinkedIn and effectively told Musgrave: “You have to list us.” Why seven business awards changed the type of people visiting the Fzin website. How a UK customer arrived shortly afterwards. Why she rejected the traditional van-and-sales-representative model. How she plans to build a national and international commission-based sales network. Why Fzin has avoided outside investment. How hotels could dramatically reduce the waste created by in-room coffee machines.

There is also palm-oil-free drinking chocolate, coffee syrups moved from plastic into glass, grants, exports, rural Ireland, a Cork-via-Greece accent and a small Irish business refusing to wait for the giant competitors to change first.

In HIRE IN A HEARTBEAT, Sofia chooses former Glanbia Group Managing Director and current CRH board member Siobhán Talbot — and offers her a completely blank sheet of paper. That Great Business Show with Conall O Morain is sponsored by De Facto® Shaving Oil, the world’s best all-natural shaving oil. No cans. No unnecessary waste. Made in Mayo and sold to the world.

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