Bru to be Hind Lever's mother coffee brand

Hindustan Lever is doing to coffee what it did to tea. The company has decided to position Bru as the mother brand for coffee and run under it several sub brands like it has badged Brook Bond and Lipton for tea.

While it already has the Bru instant and Bru Green Label -- a ground and roast variety -- it has launched a regional flavour Bru Malabar this festive season.

Bru Malabar will be a 90:10 Coffee-Chicory mix, making it a rich coffee variety. HLL officials though not forthcoming, said several regional sub brands under the Bru umbrella is on the cards and Malabar is the first step towards it.

The move to turn Bru into a larger mother brand follows a similar successful exercise in tea. HLL clubbed its numerous tea brands like Taj Mahal, Three Roses and Red Label under the Brooke Bond brand, while positioning Lipton as a higher-end label.

HLL's move comes at a time, the other primary contender Tata Coffee has tasted success with its Mr Bean label. Targetted at the filter coffee drinking population in the south, Mr Bean has been a hit in Kerala, including the Malabar regions and Tamil Nadu. While HLLs Bru Green label competes in this segment, HLL is trying to narrow down on regional choices by unveiling such customised category.

With coffee drinking, outside the coffee chains Barista and Coffee Café Day, now monopolised by South India, observers predict that HLL will come up with south-specific sub categories immediately. Later, based on the experiment, HLL may also extend it to woo northerners, who are increasingly taking a liking to coffee, they added.