Coffaina Cola

Energy drinks proliferated during the 2000s, most of them sweet, sugary concoctions with a flavor somewhere in the vicinity of bubblegum. That was not for Hakan Özcan. In Berlin, he came up with another way of getting caffeine into a drink: Coffaina, a caffeine powder that could be mixed into whatever you actually wanted to drink.

The powder appeared in 2011 and was sold in small packets around Berlin, particularly in the late-night convenience stores known locally as Spätis. Two years later, Özcan took the idea in a new direction. In 2013, Coffaina Cola arrived in a 500 ml glass bottle with 32 mg of caffeine per 100 ml, the same concentration as Red Bull and the maximum permitted for caffeinated soft drinks in Germany.

After just about a year, the cola disappeared.

The cola had, however, found its way to Switzerland, where Laurent Burst and Joachim Seewer sold it. The two were partners in Zurich beverage importer Herr Rizzi, and would eventually become part of Coffaina’s second act.

In spring 2018, Burst and Seewer relaunched Coffaina Cola through their Berlin-based company Mister Speed GmbH. The old 500 ml bottle was replaced by a smaller 250 ml version, still containing 32 mg of caffeine per 100 ml.

The syrup was produced in Berlin and sent to Austria for bottling after the company was unable to find a German bottler willing to take the job. The first run consisted of 21,000 bottles. By September 2018, eight of 13 pallets had been sold, including one sent to Budapest, while talks were underway about bringing Coffaina Cola to Denmark. Sales through Amazon briefly exhausted the available stock, and new supplies were announced in September. Verified Amazon customers were still reviewing the cola as late as June 2019.

After that, the trail went cold.

Primary sources: “Der neue Red Bull-Konkurrent hat zwei Schwächen” (Die Welt, 5 Sep. 2018), Coffaina.com, facebook.com/coffaina.