In 2020, the great-grandson of the founder of Cafés Maurice breathed new life into the artisanal roaster, starting from scratch. A high-end positioning, targeted marketing, and commercial redeployment accompanied this renaissance.
This portrait is part of our series dedicated to retailers who have reinvented their concept to adapt to changing shopping habits. To consult all the episodes, go here.
This isn’t a takeover, it’s a rebirth. Nearly 40 years after Cafés Maurice disappeared, Boris Touaty, the great-grandson of its founder, decided to revive it in 2020. The roasting company, founded in 1875, enjoyed its heyday in the 1960s and 70s, before declining and disappearing definitively in 1982. The oldest residents still remember the scent of coffee that permeated the streets of Toulon. Up to 10,000 tonnes of roasted coffee were produced each month from the factory! Cafés Maurice was a factory and a shop.
When Boris Touaty decided to resurrect the business, he started from scratch, with the idea of “establishing himself as a coffee specialist,” and riding the local notoriety of the brand. “It was an emblematic brand, even at the national level,” he insists. Same name, same color code. All that remained was to clarify the concept. Boris Touaty wasn’t a coffee specialist at the time, and he claims he hadn’t even tasted a drop of it. But he knows communication; he heads Com n’Diff, a company specializing in advertising. When he launched, he was almost certain that there was a consumer enthusiasm for products with a strong identity. And the time was right for the rise of coffee shops. Five years of perform, notably to understand the sector, but no market study. “The positioning was clear: the approach had to make sense and the product had to be of high quality, with the promise of working differently from industrial companies,” he explains. Artisanal roasting, therefore a high-end positioning.
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