AGROPARISTECH L’Institut Agro Montpellier AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS BIOTECHNICAL FACULTY, UNIVERSITY OF LJUBLJANA UNIVERSIDAD DE VALENCIA BOKU UNIVERSITY VIENNA  

Boisson

REFRESH

“REFRESH” is a beverage made from tiger nuts, spirulina, peppermint, and orange peel alginate bubble.

The European Boba Company was founded by eleven international students to turn knowledge, ideas, and experiences into a food product that better suits the changing demands of the consumers, but at the same time, helps to adopt a healthier lifestyle. The mission of the “bubble tea drink” called REFRESH, is to satisfy modern and busy consumers’ needs, by providing a healthy to-go drink which is engaging and refreshing. REFRESH’s vision is to shape the rising trend of bubble tea consumption and to benefit from it. REFRESH contributes to the consumer's need for its daily intake of dietary fiber, calcium, and vitamins while being low in sodium and sugars and offering a low caloric value. Its singular blue color is obtained using spirulina, which is a type of blue algae with strong antioxidant effects. An additional innovative characteristic of the beverage is its holistic environmental approach, which is revealed throughout the whole production chain, starting from its ingredients (i.e., use of orange peels and pulp, sustainable plants) and ending with its packaging (PLA bottle – compostable bioplastic). The energy demand will be met with solar panels installed on our roof. As a preservation method, we decided to use high-pressure pasteurization as it is a very gentle way to extend the shelf life of our product up to two weeks. With this novel technique, it is possible to maintain the original ocean blue color and all the nutrients inside our beverage after pasteurization.