I Didn't Like Coffee. The Story Behind BeNergy.

Originally posted on Facebook: September 2026.

An assignment I never expected

Then my mentor gave me an assignment: develop a coffee product. He felt coffee had great potential. I was surprised to be asked to create something I had always disliked.

My challenge was to make coffee people could enjoy, with a taste that was neither too sweet nor too heavy. I wanted to find that balance in the product we were developing.

I met a chemist with a PhD and experience in coffee formulation. That was when I began to see how difficult it was to balance taste and formulation.

Sample after sample

We spent months trying. Many samples were rejected. My mentor was one of the testers, and he was meticulous. Some samples didn't taste good, were too sweet, weren't quite right or lacked richness.

After about seven months, I almost gave up. But I told Iyzah and the team we should try again.

I didn't want to rush a product to market just to sell it. If my name was on the product, I had to be willing to drink it myself. That kept me trying even when the earlier samples had not met my expectations.

We kept trying and reassessing the taste. Every comment from the testers became feedback for the next attempt.

Finally, I finished a cup

After more than 20 attempts, there was finally a sample I drank to the last drop. To me, it was rich and creamy, not too sweet, with the coffee flavour still coming through.

But I still wanted to hear from people who loved coffee. We gathered feedback from several coffee lovers. Some said it tasted good and asked when it would launch.

The product was named BeNergy. From someone who disliked coffee, I ended up with a coffee product of my own. Behind that name were months of trials, rejected samples and the decision to keep trying.