Ian Reynolds-Young meets Richard Ashton at Aimia HQ To Compare Milfresh Gold With Fresh Milk.
Milfresh: The Back Story
Ever since the dim and distant, when a certain Mike Kane was Sales Director at N&W and I was a wage-slave at a PR company, I’ve championed the quality of granulated milk and the role it has to play in vending.
In fact, in a publicity coup that hasn’t been bettered since, (imho), I persuaded the now defunct Channel M TV, of Manchester, to undertake, live on air, a taste test to compare a cappuccino from a NECTA K Range coffee machine with those of the High Street.
And so it came to pass that a studio runner was despatched to three coffee shops in the vicinity, to return with a frothy coffee from each of them. Two presenters, together with vending expert Amanda Roberts, proceeded to do the deed and to the great delight of Mike and me, they chose the K Range beverages over the others. And if you don’t believe me, look what I found on YouTube…
I can’t remember which coffee we used, but it was a bean-to-cup machine and the milk we used was Milfresh. So, when we received a Press Release at PV Headquarters, detailing the results of a taste test and entitled ‘Latest Research suggests fresh milk is not necessarily the consumers’ choice’, it was a seed falling on fertile soil.
However, something in the small print of the press release got my back up.
The headline told readers that Milfresh had been ‘preferred to fresh milk by a sample of consumers’; the small print admitted that Milfresh had been compared to fresh skimmed milk. To the best of my knowledge, there’s not a single coffee shop, High street or otherwise, that uses fresh skimmed milk as standard; so naturally, I thought ‘fix’. I fired off a testy e-mail to manufacturer Aimia Foods’ PR agency and so began a process that culminated in a meeting between yours truly and Aimia’s affable vending man, Richard Ashton…
The Confrontation
To be fair, I’ve got shirts older than Richard, which is not to say that he isn’t ideally qualified for the job – he’s knowledgeable, confident, positive and much more besides – but it is indicative of the fact that I’m no spring chicken and that I can come across as a nowty, grumpy Victor Meldrew type. At any rate, I suspect Richard may have girded his loins for a confrontation, because the sense of relief that flowed from him when he realised that a confrontation wasn’t, in fact, on the cards, was palpable. Despite the age gap we got on rather well, (although at times I was almost overwhelmed by the urge to offer him a Werthers Original).
We went through the intrinsic benefits of using granulated milk over the fresh stuff and the powdered stuff and he got no argument from me. Cleanliness? Tick. Low calorie? Tick. Easy to use, no clogged up canisters? Tick. Fewer visits to refill the machine? Tick; etcetera, etcetera.
After the first 15 minutes then, the tension had evaporated. In fact, I was probably more worried about the meeting than Richard was. (As he told me a few days later, ‘we never worry when it comes to Milfresh, because we know how strongly it performs. We’ve done probably 150 cold Milfresh tests just like the one you did over the past ten years or so, and in 8 or 9 cases out of 10 we come up trumps.’)
Richard’s presentation was next and here’s how it began: ‘Milfresh is the single most effective way to create premium drinks. It tastes like fresh, and because of that, you (Mr&Mrs Operator), can command premium prices.’ He explained that 80% of the UK’s hot drinks are served with milk, which didn’t surprise me, and that 55% percent of those consumers insist that their drink is made ‘skinny’; which did surprise me. Then, we got down to the day’s pressing business. It was time for me to take the taste test.
Milfresh: A Matter Of Taste
Richard began by explaining how the survey that I’d rather poo-pooed had been managed.
‘We asked the University of Oxford Brookes to carry out independent taste testing between: Milfresh Gold and fresh skimmed milk’, he said. ‘This was a direct comparison to gauge peoples’ responses when comparing Milfresh to fresh milk, to see if they could distinguish between the two. The Milfresh was mixed and chilled for 2 hours before each taste test session and the fresh milk was also chilled for the same period. Both milks were presented in clear glass jugs and served in clear plastic cups.’
So, it was all above board.
Sufficient people had answered the survey questions for the results to be robust. You can see them in a previous PV article, here.
Now though, it was my turn. First was a comparison between Milfresh and fresh semi-skimmed. I swirled and sniffed and then I pointed out the one I thought looked more appealing and had the creamier taste of the two.
It was Milfresh.
Next in the challenger’s corner was fresh semi-skimmed milk. To cut a long story short, semi-skimmed is my usual domestic tipple and I preferred it to the Milfresh.
But here’s the thing: I’d just done something that I would never have contemplated doing; I’d drunk granulated milk, on its own, with nothing else. And it was OK. Ok, it was good. I’m absolutely sure that I’d have struggled to tell the difference at all if the milk had been a constituent part of a decent ‘Italian’ coffee, made by a decent machine.
The Best Possible Taste
In short what Aimia has done is a triumph. The company claims that Milfresh tastes as good as fresh and do you know what? I hold my hands up. It does.
There are venues out there that would love to serve ‘real’ coffee to customers, but they have neither the staff nor the resources to do so. To entrust a machine that uses liquid milk to such a place would be to court disaster. I once spent an afternoon at a firm that restores coffee machines and some of the horror stories I was told were stomach churning. That’s why potential users of fully automatic fresh milk machines are vetted to within an inch of their lives before responsible manufacturers will sell them one.
Coupled with the increasing capabilities of contemporary HoReCa machines, for the vast majority of ‘vending’ operators who are determined to deliver top-tasting coffee, without the risks incumbent in the use of fresh milk, Aimia’s Milfresh Gold delivers perfect answer. It’s made with the best possible taste.
