Lauren Bouden channels Nintendo to make speciality coffee accessible

In Dendermonde, a small Belgian city where speciality coffee remains relatively new territory, Lauren Bouden identified a straightforward problem. When asked if they could easily find their favourite coffee and understand tasting notes, most customers gave the same response: “No, not really.” This simple admission became the foundation for SENMON, a speciality coffee roaster that uses gamification not as decoration but as a genuine navigation tool. Bouden – a Brussels-based designer – approached the brief by looking beyond coffee category conventions. Rather than defaulting to minimalist Scandinavian aesthetics or rustic craft visuals, he built an identity around portals. The concept emerged from conversations with Co-founder Clifford, who described rushing home from school as a child to play his Nintendo console, always curious about what else there was to discover. He now explores speciality coffee with the same approach. The portal functions as both metaphor and practical system. In games like Zelda or Pokémon, players maintain a codex tracking collected items. SENMON works similarly, treating flavour dimensions as portals that customers unlock through tasting. Chocolate notes become a portal to a new experience, with coffee as the gateway. “By taking a narrative approach, we find that customers become enthusiastic more quickly,” Bouden explains. “At the same time, the system had to remain accurate for coffee geeks.”