A&E is reinvented as Rare Breed
Emeran Langmaid has been on a voyage of reinvention.
Langmaid is the owner of Rare Breed Coffee (2 Pittsburgh Ave., Nashua, 578-3338, rarebreedcoffee.com), one of New England’s most innovative coffee and tea companies. For more than 20 years it went by a different name: A&E Coffee and Tea. At the 10-year point, Langmaid felt that her company needed to go in a new direction, but she was advised against it.
“I was working with a marketing company at the time,” Langmaid remembered, “and they told me, ‘Don’t change your name because you already have a loyal customer base and it gets confusing. So just stick with your name,’ which was probably not great advice. It makes sense on the surface, but then the specialty coffee market became a big thing. Like craft beer, a lot more people were opening in on it. And so we actually wanted to rebrand to tell more of what our story was and to connect with people and to really have a much better online presence.”
By 2021 it had become clear to Langmaid that she needed to tap into a new pool of customers, and she made the decision to not only change the name of her company but also completely change the look and marketing of her products.
“We were doing something that was different in our area than really anybody else,” Langmaid said. “Green Mountain [Coffee] was the region’s first or second most popular coffee brand out there, behind Dunkin’ Donuts. Dunkin’ was predominantly a drive-thru business and Green Mountain was Keurig and a brew-at-home business. So they didn’t really compete in terms of who their end user was necessarily. So the genesis of Rare Breed is stepping outside of the lines and doing something different and following your own passage.” A company like hers needs to be unique and vibrant, she said — a Rare Breed.
Langmaid was confident about her coffee. She is one of very few certified coffee specialists to pass the prestigious Q Grader exam, making her one of the most qualified coffee producers in the world. She knew she could depend on her team.
“I totally depend and rely on everybody that’s part of the team,” she said. “We all are moving in the same direction.”
Langmaid knew that roasting and processing Rare Breed’s coffee and tea would involve continual fine-tuning, but one of the highest priorities for her and her team in reinventing themselves was the look of their products. They decided to adopt an audacious brightly-colored look for their packaging, with strong graphics and bold images on the containers.
“You have to really market and brand your company to get attention and to get noticed,” Langmaid said. “It’s a very fast-paced world and eye candy is so important.”
Rare Breed worked with a branding company that was known primarily for its work for craft beer companies with the same market that Rare Breed wanted to target.
“Our core customer is about 25 to 40, whereas it used to be like 35 to 60. As kids mature and grow up, they move away from energy drinks and some of the other caffeinated sugar products into a more sophisticated palate. We wanted to be their first choice. That’s our target audience.”
“If you go to the beer store and you see all of the cans, those labels are bright and fun and dynamic and a little irreverent at times, and that was our inspiration,” Langmaid said. “We wanted to push the envelope a little bit within the coffee space. We also want to be in grocery [stores]. And again, when you walk through the coffee aisle, it’s all in bags. So we ended up going with cans, kind of a throwback to the old coffee can, where it’s completely recyclable, it retains its shape, so regardless of how it’s stocked on the shelf it will look really sharp and clean.”
A&E Coffee and Tea officially became Rare Breed in October 2023. The visual changes have been just a small part of Rare Breed’s rebranding, but so far the results have been promising.
“At times it is an uphill battle,” Langmaid sighed. “You’re swimming upstream. Or against the tide. I’m sure there’s like a lot of phrases that kind of define what we’re doing. We’re just pulling it into coffee.”
Featured Photo: Courtesy photo.
