GoodNews, which was born by Jan Barthe Cuatrecasas and four other partners, has raised 15 million with investors such as Thomas Meyer (Desigual) and Javier Rubió (Barlon Capital)
At the intersection between Carrer de Balmes and Avenida Diagonal, in Barcelona, was the newsstand that the founders of the GoodNews chain transformed into the first of its already 30 coffee (and other products) stalls. They bought the concession from Ferran, the newsstand that ran it, for 30,000 euros. And he “took a motorcycle and went to tour the Peninsula and Morocco.” He sold it convinced that “people don’t shop at newsstands in the 21st century.” That’s how he tells it Jan Barthe CuatrecasasCEO and co-founder of GoodNews.
Barthe and four other friends –Fernando Conde, Alejandro Catasús, Ignacio Campos y Lucas Gispert– were involved in an external project -and paralyzed by the pandemic- when, in September 2020, they decided to venture into their own. They set out to modernize the traditional newsstands and convert them into others where takeaway coffee was the center of attention. The concept of fast coffee, which increasingly attracts young and always busy people who rush down the street with their freshly served coffee in a cardboard container.
In that first Barcelona kiosk, the five members spent a month giving away coffee in exchange for customers telling them good news, as part of an attractive -and perfectly studied- marketing strategy that coincided with a time of confinement in which to go to buying the newspaper was one of the few activities allowed, considering access to information an essential right. It was for that action that the firm received the name of GoodNews.
First level
But the company didn’t get off the ground just by buying a kiosk license. To create the brand, which is present in Barcelona, Madrid and Paris, three investment rounds have been carried out that have raised a total of 15 million euros, 11 of which in a third round closed in 2022. The latter was led by Thomas Meyer, creator of the Desigual brand, and also included the participation of Barlon Capital, Javier Rubió’s venture capital fund.
In addition, GoodNews has the support of investors such as Manuel Puig, from the Puig firm; Antonio Gallardo, from Almirall Laboratories; and Rafael Esteve, who was a director of Danone. And it is that Barthe He owes his second surname to the Cuatrecasas family, founder of the prestigious law firm of the same name in which he worked for some time and which closed the financial year of 2022 with a turnover of 352.66 million euros.
“We compete with the big coffee brands, but our price is much more competitive. We are our own brand and we are very focused on young people, who feel more identified with GoodNews than with Starbucks,” he says. Barthe.
The coffee they sell comes from Colombia, Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica. Although they also sell other types of drinks and food products and multivitamins, as well as coffee beans. In these areas they buy the product “at a price between 35% and 45% more expensive than what is established.” “We eat the profit margin,” he says. “Coffee farmers told us that there was a problem with child labor in those countries.”Instead of taking the children to school, which is far away, they take them to the fields to work.“, he explains. “We took on the challenge of being the first coffee company capable of guaranteeing a coffee free of child labor. We pay them more to hire labor other than their children. And we have local observers who guarantee it.” They can do it because they save on staff – there is only one worker per shift – and their stores are very small, serving only take-out.
pandemic memories
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The five friends spent four months selling the coffee themselves, until they hired the first worker in December. And they still remember some of the good news that the people of the neighborhood gave them in exchange for a coffee. “People who had found work after losing it due to the pandemic or who had recovered from the coronavirus in complicated circumstances,” says the CEO. His fledgling project closed in 2021 with a turnover of one million euros and has not yet made public its accounts for last year.
After three years in operation, the firm is very clear about its growth plans. In the short term, it wants to become “the brand with the most takeaway coffee outlets in Paris”, and also land in Amsterdam. In the middle, around 2026, expand through the main cities in Europe. “We have to be the reference brand for the new generations in the European market”, concludes the CEO.
