Café brand · Retail
Bourbon Coffee
Rwanda’s first barista-led café brand, built to make coffee part of daily life at home and a symbol of the country abroad.
First three Kigali stores; the blueprint for the rest
Rwanda exported some of the world’s finest specialty Arabica, yet fewer than 1% of Rwandans drank it. Bourbon Coffee was created to change that: to make coffee part of daily life at home and to give Rwanda a café brand that could represent the country abroad.
Brought in as Director of Brand Development, Marketing and Design from 2006 to 2009, Deborah worked with the leadership team to build Rwanda’s first barista-led café brand. She led its positioning, identity, interiors, merchandising and campaigns, presenting coffee as a source of national pride and an example of modern African enterprise, and helped open its first three stores in Kigali.
The brand and design template became the blueprint for the stores that followed: two more in Kigali, three in the United States and one in the United Kingdom. Today, hundreds of coffee-shop businesses are registered with RDB across Rwanda, a sign of the café culture Bourbon helped start.
Deborah Kakoma, strategic creative director. Interested in work like this? Work with Deborah.