Review: Cafe con Leche

Like so many ready to drink coffee drinks out there, Madrinas’ Cafe con Leche is probably better compared to chocolate milk than it is coffee in the sense that it’s so milk heavy. It’s very sweet and rich, with a very standard tasting coffee flavor. There are so many other products out there that have the same flavor -- so why would anyone choose this product? That’s something that the marketer really needs to give some thought to. For us, it’s certainly not going to be because of the branding, which feels stark and easy to miss. It screams “value price,” with perhaps the only meaningful point of differentiation being the Spanish text on the front of the can. However, we don’t think that’s enough to build this product (at least as it stands today) into a real brand. And considering that Starbucks still has 90%-plus of the RTD coffee category, we think it’s going to take a completely different approach than this to be successful.