Fensterccino

Fensterccino is a cappuccino in a waffle cone covered with chocolate. That is how its inventor, that is me, defines this product. In fact, the drink is not really a cappuccino, it is rather what the Spaniards call a cortado, but it has no meaning and nothing to do with Fenster’s success.

The idea of Fensterccino was born very simply and quickly. Even before Fenster appeared, but already when I understood that he would appear, I was flipping through my Facebook or something and saw something interesting. It was a report about a hype product – coffee in a cone, actually cones. It was something completely new and attracted attention. I remember this moment very well. It was then that I noticed that this product would make Fenster unrealistically cool and famous. Actually, that’s exactly what happened.

I started looking for contacts with the manufacturer of these cones. At that time it was not so easy. But in a few days I contacted them. It turned out that everything is real and the horns can be ordered.

But… Delivery from the other side of the world, you need to buy a huge amount at once. Also, the cost was very high. So, I decided that I would buy them anyway, but I would try to find an alternative.

And I found it. Guys from Bucharest also did something similar. In fact, endlessly searching for other options for cones on social networks, I came across a photo of a cone, which is different from coffee in a cone. I asked the owners of the coffee shop, in whose profile I saw what I was looking for, to share the manufacturer’s contacts. They replied that they would pass my request on to them and they would contact me. Weeks passed, but no one contacted me. I began to persistently remind. Time was passing. But suddenly one day I received an email.

We quickly came to an agreement. The price was half the price and you can buy even 100 pieces. I took advantage of this opportunity. But it was only the beginning of our journey to our Fensterccino.

It turned out that there is no convenient delivery from Bucharest to Vienna. So the guys sent me boxes of cones by bus Bucharest-London, which passes near Vienna, making a stop at some gas station in the fields outside the city, at an unspecified time. So I spent hours waiting for the bus at the gas station, trying to figure out the arrival time in Romanian-English-German-Ukrainian. It was a lot of fun.

There was also a problem that the cones often came broken. Sometimes less, sometimes a lot. It was clear that they were damaged on the way. So we started working on the packaging. Step by step, we found the right combination of shock-absorbing and stabilizing pads and other tricks to ensure that the cornets arrived undamaged. As a result, the last batches came with less than 1% of broken products, which is really cool.

To be fair, the guys always compensated for broken cones, but I did not always demand such compensation – I was just afraid that they would get bored at some point and would not send them to me.

Also at the start there were problems with leaking cones. They were not always as they are now and could leak in just 1-2 minutes. Therefore, we spent a lot of time and attempts to find the right chocolate and the thickness of its layer. Today, when we test each batch for leakage, the indicator is not often less than 1.5 hours of boiling water retention. This is one of our secrets.

We have been working with a company from Bucharest for quite a long time, but at some point they informed us that due to certain circumstances they were ceasing their work. For good. I was in despair, of course. We had just established everything and came to the perfect process, when everything collapses completely.

I started actively looking for a replacement and found, among others, manufacturers of waffle cups, also covered with chocolate, but with a flat bottom, which I ordered a couple of times to try. They were also interesting and not bad at all, but in the end I decided to find our classic cone-shaped ones. It’s simple – they were already known and they held more coffee. Interestingly, for a year there were people who asked for cups with a flat bottom.

So, when I already had a substitute for our cones, I still continued to look for ways to bring back our usual cones. And, among others, I was attracted by the following option. Fate brought me together with a manufacturer of sweets, which also poured chocolate. We tried several different waffle cones and settled on a variant of those that were made in one of the bakeries nearby. The scheme is very simple. Waffle cones are bought, sent to the confectionery shop, and filled with chocolate. We have already learned how to pack and transport.

So, to this day we use just such cones. Of course, there were some initial debugging attempts, when something did not work, something broke and leaked. But very quickly we came to the necessary indicators.

Of course, I already know so much about all these things that we could produce such cones on our own. However, I am a supporter of the idea that everyone should do their job. We are not a sugar factory or a bakery. We roast and sell coffee and coffee drinks. So cones are made for us by our partners, whose work we are very satisfied with.

I will tell about the life and fate of Fensterccino in Fenster in the next issue.

Run for coffee!!!