Two decades ago, in 2005, Coffee Planet began its story with little more than a single coffee machine and a bold ambition: to bring world-class specialty coffee to the UAE. Today, the company stands as one of the region’s most respected roasters, a brand with international recognition and deep local roots.

Marking its 20th anniversary this year, Coffee Planet is not only celebrating the journey so far but also looking firmly toward the future. At the center of this story is the dynamic partnership between chairman Allan Jones and his son, CEO William Jones, two leaders whose different approaches have shaped the company into what it is today. Their shared belief in quality and innovation has been the foundation for Coffee Planet’s steady growth, its entry into international markets, and its expansion into retail outlets across the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

From a small start to a coffee powerhouse

Coffee Planet’s beginnings were humble. Allan Jones and his co-founder, Matthew Yorke Smith, first introduced the idea of specialty coffee in a market that was still finding its appreciation for high-quality brews. What started with 30 cups a day from a single machine inside a petrol station quickly grew into something larger, driven by the rising demand for better coffee experiences.

Today, Coffee Planet operates a state-of-the-art roasting facility in Dubai, sourcing beans from more than 23 origins around the globe. Its coffees now reach consumers not only in the UAE but also in multiple international markets, proving that a local idea can grow into a global name while staying true to its heritage.

“From those early days to now, the scale of what we’ve achieved is extraordinary,” Allan reflects. “But what matters most is that we’ve remained true to our principles, Coffee Planet has always been a UAE brand with international ambition.”

The strength of two perspectives

What sets Coffee Planet apart is not just its coffee but also its leadership. Allan Jones brings with him decades of business experience and a deep respect for tradition. For him, the essentials of business, integrity, reliability, and longterm relationships, are non-negotiable.

“Businesses that endure do so because they stay consistent with their values,” Allan notes. “Quality and trust have kept us here for 20 years, and they’ll keep us going for decades more.”

His son William, however, represents the other half of Coffee Planet’s strength: innovation and adaptability. Since stepping into his role, William has pushed the company toward digital transformation, embraced new consumer trends, and explored international opportunities.

“The way people experience coffee today is very different from 20 years ago,” William explains.

“Our customers are informed, adventurous, and expect more from their cup. My role is to ensure Coffee Planet continues to lead with innovation, whether that’s through technology, sustainability, or creative new products.”

This balance, Allan’s focus on heritage and William’s focus on reinvention, has become Coffee Planet’s signature advantage, ensuring the business remains both grounded and progressive.

Blending tradition with progress

Coffee Planet’s operations reflect this philosophy of balance. On one hand, the company maintains long-standing ties with coffee farmers, supporting traditional methods of cultivation and ethical sourcing. On the other hand, it invests in cutting-edge roasting equipment, barista training, and product development to stay ahead of changing customer tastes.

Allan explains it simply: “We’ve always believed that great coffee should not be an exclusive luxury. Our goal has been to make specialty coffee accessible, and that belief has guided our innovation every step of the way.”

William builds on that: “For us, innovation doesn’t mean ignoring tradition. It means celebrating the history of coffee while finding new ways to connect with today’s and tomorrow’s consumers.”

Expanding the coffee planet experience

In addition to supplying hotels, restaurants, and retailers, Coffee Planet has made significant strides in its own retail presence. Over the past few years, the company has opened 12 coffee shops across the UAE through its trusted partners DASH Hospitality.

These outlets have allowed the brand to create direct connections with customers, offering them a taste of Coffee Planet’s craftsmanship in carefully designed spaces.

The company has also looked beyond the UAE, with exciting growth in Saudi Arabia. In partnership with HB Brands, Coffee Planet recently opened its 5th coffee shop in Riyadh’s King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD), one of the capital’s most prestigious business hubs.

These ventures highlight Coffee Planet’s ability to adapt its model to new markets while keeping its identity consistent.

The next 20 years

While the anniversary is an opportunity to look back, the Jones family is focused on what lies ahead. For Allan, the priority is legacy. “Reaching 20 years proves that our foundations are strong. The next step is ensuring those values endure as we continue to expand.”

For William, the vision is about growth and reinvention. “We want Coffee Planet to be more than a roaster. Our ambition is to shape how people experience coffee globally. That means pushing into new territories, exploring sustainability in deeper ways, and delivering experiences that surprise and delight.”

More than just coffee

Ultimately, Coffee Planet’s story is not only about coffee beans and machines. It is about family, perseverance, and the strength of combining different perspectives. Allan and William’s contrasting philosophies sometimes pull in different directions, but together they have given the company resilience, character, and staying power.

As Coffee Planet celebrates its 20th anniversary, it is clear that its success has come not just from great coffee but from human values, integrity, vision, and the belief that a family-run business can thrive on the world stage.

Allan sums it up: “At the heart of everything we’ve done is the fact that we are, and always will be, a family business. That’s what makes Coffee Planet special. It’s why we’ve lasted 20 years, and why we’ll continue to grow.”

With two decades behind it and an exciting future ahead, Coffee Planet is ready to continue its mission: to honor coffee’s traditions while constantly innovating for a new generation of drinkers.

The journey that began with one machine now spans countries and cultures, and this is only the beginning.

We sat down with renowned serial entrepreneur Alex Reinhardt to unpack the vision behind his ‘digital economic highway’: a blockchain ecosystem built to be fast, simple and invisible to everyday users.

Read more-Not just for traders: How Ultima Chain is bringing blockchain to the people

From anxiety-free UX to real-world payments and rewards, Reinhardt explains why the UAE is the ideal launchpad for mass adoption. What follows is an in-depth Q and A on trust, regulation, real utility, and the future of decentralised tech.

For readers who use a smartphone every day but don’t follow blockchain at all: how do you personally explain what your current blockchain initiative is about, and what an ordinary person can actually do with it in daily life?

If I strip away all the jargon, I would say we are building a kind of digital economic highway that quietly runs in the background of everyday life. In my view, a good blockchain shouldn’t feel like “technology” at all. For an ordinary person it’s just a way to send assets across borders as easily as sending a message, to pay in a shop with a regular card while everything on the back end is settled automatically, to earn rewards for supporting the network or using certain apps, and to move value between different tools without friction.

From my own experience, when people first interact with what we build, they don’t say, “What a clever consensus algorithm.” They usually say, “It’s fast, it’s simple, and I feel in control.” For me, that is the real definition of a next-generation blockchain.

You’ve chosen the UAE, and Dubai in particular, as your home base. From your own experience building tech companies here, what does this region give you and your team that Europe or the US couldn’t?

I’ve lived and worked in different cities, from Germany to different European hubs, and I’ve learned that where you build can be just as important as what you build. Dubai, and the UAE more broadly, give us a combination that is very hard to find elsewhere. There is a real willingness from regulators to sit down, listen, and say, “Explain what you’re building and let’s find a responsible framework.” For a young and often misunderstood industry, that attitude is priceless.

At the same time, the UAE is a natural bridge between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Our users, partners, and community members come from all of those regions, and this is one of the few places where their paths cross constantly. On top of that, the culture here is extremely entrepreneurial. As someone who spends a lot of time with founders and investors, and has been recognised in regional business rankings, I feel that energy every day, and it pushes our team to move faster and think bigger.

When you and your team design products, who do you really have in mind beyond traders and early blockchain enthusiasts? Can you share a couple of concrete stories from your own projects of how people or businesses already use your solutions in everyday life?

I never wanted to build technology only for traders and early blockchain enthusiasts. In every project we start, we ask a simple question: how can this make life easier for as many people as possible? For me it’s about simplifying everyday payments, removing borders from the way value moves, and giving people additional ways to grow their capital in a disciplined and transparent way. If someone can send transactions, pay, save and get extra profit inside one clear system, then the technology is doing its job.

Today your ecosystem includes a non-custodial wallet, payment cards linked to digital assets, automated trading bots, and reward tools where users freeze tokens and receive rewards. From your point of view, which of these turned out to be the real “game changer” for mass adoption, and why?

When I explain what we are building, I usually describe it in layers. At the foundation there is the network itself, the chain that is responsible for security, consensus, transaction speed, and the economic rules of the system. On top of that sits what I call the blockchain utility layer: the non-custodial wallet in your pocket, payment cards that connect digital assets to the traditional payment world, and automated trading tools that let people participate in markets without staring at charts all day.

Above that there is the experience layer. This is where you find games, loyalty programmes, marketplaces and other applications that make the technology tangible. From my perspective, a well-designed tap-to-earn game or a very simple subscription product can teach more people about blockchain than a stack of whitepapers. Inside the team we constantly test how these layers interact. Can a reward earned in a game end up on a card? Can profit from a bot be used directly for everyday purchases? For me, this fluid movement of value between layers is where the real magic happens.

On the technical side, you work with delegated proof-of-stake, short block times and the ability to process thousands of transactions per second. In your own projects, how do you personally balance speed, security and decentralisation so that the system stays robust, but doesn’t become a black box for users?

My background is in economics rather than pure computer science, so I always look at technology through incentives and trade-offs. On the consensus side, we use a delegated model that allows the network to confirm blocks in a few seconds and process a very large number of transactions while consuming only a fraction of the energy that traditional mining would require.

Many people still think blockchain means high fees and a painful onboarding. Based on your team’s experience, what are the two or three concrete design decisions that actually made things simpler and cheaper for first-time users, for example, here in the UAE?

If I’m completely honest, the main user-experience problem in blockchain is not speed but anxiety. People are afraid of pressing the wrong button, losing funds, or suddenly paying a fee they didn’t expect. That’s why inside our projects we treat UX almost like aviation safety. We try to minimise the number of critical decisions a user has to make, we reduce the amount of risky actions, and we build guardrails around fees and transactions.

You often say that without clear rules there is no mass adoption. How do you and your companies work with regulators, banks and payment partners in the region today? And what were the toughest lessons for you personally on the regulatory side?

We operate at the intersection of digital technologies, data, and modern blockchain infrastructure, so regulation is simply part of the game.In our team we work with specialised legal partners in the region and internationally to make sure that what we do fits into existing frameworks.

In practice this means building proper KYC and AML flows where they are needed, clearly separating technology providers from regulated entities, and maintaining an ongoing dialogue with regulators as the rules evolve. I’ve learned that it is much easier to design products with compliance in mind from day one than it is to retrofit them later. It can slow you down in the short term, but in the long term it builds trust with users, institutions, and governments, and that trust becomes a real competitive advantage.

You’ve spoken about global fintech partnerships, merchant integrations, multi-token support, and an NFT marketplace.

Which of these is your immediate priority, and how do you plan to scale adoption across the Middle East?

I often say that a blockchain without an ecosystem is just an expensive database. Our strategy is to build what I call a virtuous cycle, where users, developers, merchants, and partners all reinforce each other. On the one hand, we focus on payments and everyday utility: cards, merchant tools, and integrations that let people actually spend and receive value instead of just holding it. On the other hand, we develop automated trading tools, so that users can put their assets to work through structured strategies rather than emotional manual trading.

Around this core we grow developer and partner programmes that offer grants, technical help, and go-to-market support to teams that decide to build with us. In the GCC, for example, I see particularly strong potential in remittances, travel, and solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. My view is that ecosystems grow fastest where they solve real, painful problems, not where they simply chase the latest narrative on social media.

You often talk about making blockchain understandable for ordinary people, not just developers. What are the biggest barriers to adoption from a community perspective, and how are you and your team addressing them through education and communication?

Education has never been a side activity for me. Long before this particular blockchain initiative, I spent years speaking and teaching in different countries, and that experience strongly shaped how I think about community today. Together with my team, we put a lot of effort into creating materials that make blockchain and its tools understandable for anyone, not only for people with a specialised professional background.

My philosophy is simple: if people don’t understand what they are using, they will not trust it. So we focus on very clear, human language, without unnecessary buzzwords. We produce guides, videos, live sessions and in-app explanations that show how things work step by step, and what the real benefits are in everyday life. We also rely heavily on local community leaders and ambassadors who know their culture, their language and their audience, and can adapt our message to their reality.

In my experience, the best promotion for this industry is not hype, but a well-informed community member who can explain, in their own words, how this technology made something in their life simpler or more convenient.

The splitting technology (rewards model you use can offer rewards to users who freeze their assets), very attractive in the short term. Many people, however, still associate blockchain rewards with energy-hungry mining farms and environmental concerns. How do you make sure your approach to rewards remains sustainable from an energy and environmental perspective in the long run?

As an economist, I am naturally sceptical of any model that promises high rewards forever without a clear source of value. Over the years I’ve seen several cycles where systems collapsed the moment the hype faded. That’s why, in our projects, we design rewards around a few principles that I always come back to.

First, over time the rewards have to be increasingly backed by real economic activity: transaction fees, services, spreads, and not just new tokens printed out of thin air. Second, the rules around supply need to be transparent and long-term, so people understand that today’s incentives are a trade-off with tomorrow’s. And third, we try to reward actions that genuinely strengthen the ecosystem, such as running infrastructure, providing liquidity, or using trading strategies responsibly. For me, a sustainable model is one that can survive a multi-year bear market without collapsing and where users feel they are helping to build something durable, not just chasing the flavour of the month.

What are your near-term goals for user growth, transaction volume, and
merchant adoption? Can you share any current milestones or numbers that
demonstrate momentum?

Price will always dominate headlines, but for me it is actually the least interesting metric. When I look at our internal dashboards, I’m much more focused on how many people are active every week across the different parts of the ecosystem, how quickly the number of accounts in the network is growing, how many smart contracts and tokens are being created and used, and how many independent teams choose this infrastructure for their own products. I also pay a lot of attention to the health of the ecosystem around us: how many independent teams are building products on top of this infrastructure, how many merchants decide to accept it in their daily operations, and how many developers choose to commit their time and creativity here. If, in five years, we can show that millions of people use this infrastructure every week without even thinking about it, they just pay, save, and run businesses, that will be a much bigger success in my eyes than any single price chart going vertical.

If we fast-forward five years, what would have to happen for you to say: “Yes, this was worth decades of work”? And what is, in your view, the single biggest obstacle between today’s blockchain industry and that future?

If I had to put my vision into one sentence, I would say that I want blockchain to become invisible. In five years, I don’t want people to walk around saying, “I used a blockchain today.” I want them to say, “I sent transfer home instantly,” or “I launched a product and got paid from three continents,” or “I joined a game and my in-game items really belong to me,” and only later discover that all of this was powered by decentralised infrastructure.

The biggest challenge, in my opinion, is rebuilding trust after the scandals and failures that the industry has gone through, while still moving quickly enough to stay relevant. That requires a very delicate balance between technological ambition, regulatory maturity, and a genuinely human-centred approach to product design. If my team and I can help show that this industry can be both bold and responsible at the same time, then I will feel that we’ve used this decade well.

The Formula 1 season decider has arrived in Abu Dhabi, with fans from 105 countries descending on the UAE capital to witness what is expected to be one of the most dramatic finales in recent years. The title showdown between Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri has set the stage for a high-stakes weekend at Yas Marina Circuit.

Here are five key things visitors need to know about the venue during race weekend:

1. A circuit built for championship drama
Yas Marina Circuit is among the most technically advanced tracks in Formula 1, featuring a 1.2-kilometre straight where cars surpass 330 km/h, an underground pit-lane exit tunnel, and a fan-centric layout. It has hosted several iconic championship moments, including Sebastian Vettel’s first title win in 2010, Nico Rosberg’s emotional win-and-retire moment in 2016, and Verstappen’s last-lap title battle in 2021. As the final race of the season, the track is poised to add another historic chapter.

2. Seamless movement around the circuit
Navigating the venue has been made simple through a circular shuttle system operating throughout race weekend. Fans can move easily between main access gates, fan zones, Yas Marina, and Etihad Park for the Emirates NBD Yasalam After-Race Concerts. The Abu Dhabi GP mobile app also provides instant wayfinding tools.

3. Fans can arrive by yacht
Visitors docking at Yas Marina or staying onboard one of the moored yachts can reach the circuit using dedicated water taxis. Those on the marina vessels will have exclusive, trackside vantage points with clear visibility of several high-action sections of the circuit.

4. Hospitality, entertainment, and nightlife at scale
Purpose-built for hospitality, Yas Marina Circuit features more than 40 trackside suites integrated into its architecture, alongside the W Abu Dhabi – Yas Island hotel, which sits directly above Sector 3. Unlike circuits that retrofit hospitality offerings, Yas Marina was designed from inception as an entertainment destination.

New this year is 360 at Sixteen, an elevated multi-level open-air lounge above Turn 16. Returning favourites include Deck at Two featuring Dani García’s LEÑA, Deck at Nine with OPA’s Greek-inspired menu, and Luna Lounge by Cé La Vi. The circuit’s unique podium placement also turns post-race celebrations into a large-scale, visible trackside party.

5. One ticket unlocks experiences across the venue
All ticket holders gain access to multiple on- and off-track experiences. Family Fridays allow free entry for children, offering interactive racing activities, roaming performers, and entertainment zones. Fans can also upgrade their access to premium grandstands and fan zones.

Every attendee also receives entry to the Emirates NBD Yasalam After-Race Concerts, which bring global performers to the heart of race weekend.

Beyond the finale, Yas Marina Circuit operates year-round, offering public driving programmes, karting, drag racing, guided tours, community fitness activities, and motorsport events.

For the latest updates and timings, fans are advised to check the Abu Dhabi GP app.

Encryption rarely makes headlines, yet it quietly underpins almost every digital system that powers modern economies, from banking and aviation to healthcare and national security. Now, the UAE is pushing it out of the shadows and into the centre of national strategy with its forthcoming National Encryption Policy. It is a move that signals more than technical compliance, it points to how seriously the country is treating digital trust as core infrastructure.

To unpack why this matters, and what it means in practical terms for governments and businesses, we speak with Mohammed Aboul-Magd, VP of Product at SandboxAQ’s Cybersecurity Group, on the risks hiding in today’s cryptographic systems, the looming impact of quantum computing, and why automation may be the only way nations can realistically become quantum-safe at scale.

Encryption is usually viewed as a deeply technical field, so it’s striking to see an entire national policy dedicated to it. Why is the UAE taking this step now?

It’s rare to see encryption elevated to the level of national strategy — and that’s exactly why this move matters. But in many ways, this is exactly what a forward-looking digital economy should be doing.

The UAE understands that encryption is not a niche technical safeguard but rather the silent infrastructure that secures everything from government communications and financial transactions to aviation systems, healthcare records and critical national assets.

Every digital interaction we rely on involves encryption in some form. Yet despite this dependency, cryptography is still, in most organisations, a largely manual and neglected discipline. Companies deploy encryption algorithms, implement keys and certificates, and then, over time, lose visibility and control over them. It’s a bit like fitting every door in your home with strong locks but never checking whether those locks are still secure as technology evolves and attackers become more sophisticated.

A national policy forces a change in mindset. It recognises that secure cryptography is as fundamental to economic competitiveness and national security as reliable power or transport infrastructure. By placing encryption at the centre of strategy, the UAE is signalling that digital trust is now a matter of national resilience and that it intends to lead, rather than follow, in securing the foundations of its economy. This is the UAE treating cryptography the same way it treats aviation, energy, or finance: as critical national infrastructure.

You mentioned encryption algorithms eventually becoming insecure. Should businesses simply accept that as inevitable?

Algorithms age, and history shows that even widely trusted standards eventually become vulnerable. Encryption algorithms are essentially mathematical puzzles. As computing power advances, and as cryptanalysis improves, puzzles that were once impossible to solve can, over time, be cracked. We’ve seen this with early versions of RSA, with MD5. When these algorithms failed, the fallout for organisations was severe, potentially resulting in data exposures, compliance failures and, in some cases, complete system overhauls.

The real challenge today is that many organisations don’t know where outdated algorithms are still hiding. Without an automated inventory of their cryptography, they can’t say whether parts of their systems are secured by algorithms that have already been compromised. That blind spot is where real risk lives.

This is why the UAE’s forthcoming National Encryption Policy will likely include several critical measures. First, automated cryptographic inventory will become mandatory. Manual spreadsheets will no longer be acceptable. Entities will need real-time visibility of every key, certificate and algorithm across their environments. You cannot modernise what you cannot see.

Second, we should expect the National Encryption Policy to set phased and risk-based timelines for retiring vulnerable algorithms. Some sectors, especially those with legacy industrial systems, may need more time. What matters is that organisations follow a clear roadmap, beginning with systems that protect long-lived or mission-critical data.

And third, the policy will also mandate crypto-agility, meaning systems must be able to rotate keys or upgrade algorithms without rewriting applications or taking services offline. Crypto-agility prevents the accumulation of legacy cryptographic risk: outdated keys, certificates and algorithms that quietly accumulate risk over time.

Quantum computing always comes up in conversations about encryption. How real is this threat, and what could it mean for a country like the UAE?

Quantum computing is no longer a distant theoretical concern. Recent progress, such as IBM’s “Loon” chip, shows a credible engineering pathway to fault-tolerant quantum machines before the end of the decade. That shifts quantum risk from abstract to strategic planning territory.

I wouldn’t say Q-Day has a fixed date, but we now have realistic trajectories that place it well within the investment and technology cycles that governments care about. And the risk isn’t only future: harvest-now, decrypt-later attacks are already happening. Adversaries are collecting encrypted data today to decrypt the moment quantum capabilities arrive.

That’s why the UAE’s timing is so important. By preparing early, the country turns a challenge into an opportunity. A nation that can demonstrate it is quantum-safe becomes a far more attractive destination for global business, investment and innovation. The UAE clearly sees that future and is positioning itself ahead of the curve.

The global shortage of advanced cybersecurity talent is well known. With post-quantum cryptography now on the agenda, how can the UAE build the skills required for national readiness?

This is one of the most important aspects of the national strategy, because no country can hire its way out of this challenge. There simply aren’t enough cryptographers in the global workforce. The UAE will likely find the answer in combining targeted upskilling with intelligent automation.

Platforms like SandboxAQ’s AQtive Guard are designed to democratise complex security practices. They allow generalist IT and security teams to manage cryptographic upgrades, automation and PQC transitions without needing a PhD in mathematics. In parallel, capabilities such as AskAI and integrated security knowledge graphs help turn operators into specialists on the fly, supporting continuous learning within organisations.

This “human plus automation” model is how nations will scale quantum-safe capability. Not by expanding headcount, but by expanding capability.

Finally, what role should the private sector play in supporting the UAE’s National Encryption Policy?

The private sector will be instrumental. The government sets the standards, but companies provide the infrastructure that allows those standards to be implemented at scale. The UAE is likely to align its policy with global frameworks such as NIST’s PQC algorithms, and the private sector’s role will be to ensure these standards can be adopted seamlessly across legacy systems.

This means solving what we often call the “last-mile integration problem” by making sure that banks, telcos, government entities and critical-infrastructure operators can upgrade cryptography without operational disruption. Private-sector platforms will provide the automation required to rotate keys, replace algorithms and manage cryptographic policy at enterprise level.

By working hand in hand, government and industry can accelerate the UAE’s transformation into a quantum-safe economy and position the country as a global leader in digital trust.