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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future of Drink

CoffeeB Hits 200k Households For Coffee Ball Brewing System That Aims to Replace Capsules

Not bad for a first year. After launching their compostable ball-shaped coffee pod brewing system last fall, CoffeeB has already reached a milestone of two hundred thousand customers who are using the system according to company CEO Frank Wilde. In a recent Linkedin post commerating the company’s one year anniversary, Wilde revealed the milestone and says the company has strong momentum ahead.

“The first year went well … with over 200,000 households having chosen to switch to CoffeeB and we are optimistic that many more will follow suit in the coming years,” wrote Wilde. “Our R&D team is continuously working on making our coffee blends and machines even better, giving consumers the most sustainable solution to conveniently drink high quality coffee.”

Developed over five years, the CoffeeB system is a single-serve coffee machine that does away with the plastic pod or capsule. Instead, the new system utilizes round balls of coffee called Coffee Balls instead of old-school plastic or aluminum capsules. Coffee Balls, which hold the coffee in a compostable layer of algae that keeps the coffee fresh and protected from flavor loss, can be dropped into a compost bin after they are used.

Currently the CoffeeB system is only available in Switzerland (the home of parent company Migros), France and Germany. Wilde has told The Spoon that he expects the CoffeeB to enter the North American market at some point, but hasn’t given a firm timeline.

While pod system giants Keurig and Nespresso have made progress in recent years in developing recycling programs and working on compostable pods, the vast majority of coffee pods used today are still made of plastic or aluminum and end up in the garbage. And sure, 200 thousand households is only a fraction of the single-serve coffee market (Keurig shipped nearly 3 million systems in 2021 alone), but the numbers are significant enough to probably make the big guys take notice.

Barsys Makes Case For Adding Style to Bartender Robot Category With the Barsys 360

Home cocktail-making appliances have gone through lots of phases since we started writing about them in 2016. We’ve seen everything from pod-based systems from Bartesian and Drinkworks to DIY approaches like those from MrBar.io to cocktail robots with names reminiscent of 80s hip-hop artists.

And, if we’re honest, most don’t look that interesting, either presenting as something of an after-dark Keurig or a mini version of the restaurant bar dispensing system.

In other words, cocktail bots nearly always focus on utility over design.

But should that be the case? I mean, shouldn’t home appliances, especially ones focused on entertaining and leisure, actually look good? Barsys, a company that’s been making bartending appliances for the home for the past five years or so, is trying to make precisely that case with its latest product, the Barsys 360. With an interesting-looking ring-shared design allows the cocktail glass to sit within as various ingredients are dispensed from overhead, the Barsys 360 is a significant departure from any home cocktail appliance we’ve seen here at the Spoon

In fact, at first glance, it looked a little heavy on design over function, as I wasn’t sure exactly where the machine’s liquid chambers were located or how to get the liquid inside. According to the specs, it has six, and the company assured me they all sit within the 360’s ring itself. Spirits and mixers are added into the 360 via three holes at the top, using a small adapter called the “spirit funnel” seen in the rendering below. According to the company, each of the six liquid canisters can hold 900 ml in each canister (about 4 cups).

The new Barsys360 looks much different than the previous Barsys 2+, which looks like a 3D printer with a bottle-dispenser mechanism on top. The 360 also comes with a significantly lower price tag (although I’d hesitate to call the 360 cheap) at $475 for pre-orders.

With the 360 succeed? Hard to say, mainly because outside of Bartesian, the home bartender bot market has proven to be a tough market in which to gain traction. Part of the problem is most consumers have a couple of go-to cocktails they like, and, for the most part, they know how to make them. For these folks, introducing a relatively expensive machine to automate the process may seem like an unnecessary step.

However, by focusing on design and something that might look good in the kitchen or entertaining room, Barsys hopes to appeal to craft cocktail nerds who want to add a little technology-powered flair to their cocktail-making routines. And, unlike the pod-based machines, they are removing any need to rely on proprietary supplies from a startup (another big red flag for this category in the mind of consumers).

If you’re interested in a 360, Barsys is launching pre-orders this week. If you do buy one, make sure to let us know how it goes.

You can watch the hero reel video provided by the company below:

Ninja’s Thirsti Drink Machine Shows Why It Went Public While Other Countertop Brands Go Out of Business

When I first got the email this morning from the Ninja PR rep, I got excited and thought maybe the company had gone and created a drink replicator similar to the one from Cana.

“SharkNinja’s First Hydration System, Ninja Thirsti, Allows Users to Create Thousands of Drinks at the Touch of a Button,” the press release declared triumphantly.

Ok, Ninja, you’ve got my attention.

Reading further, it became clear that the new Thirsti machine isn’t going to create any drink – coffee, tea, juice, beer, wine – at the push of a button. Instead, we have a machine taking on the Sodastreams and Philips of the world with a new home fizzy drink maker, only with a couple of interesting twists, including the ability to mix two flavors at once and vary the level of carbonation and flavor intensity. The new Thirsti will sell for $179 and will soon be available at major retailers like Walmart, Best Buy, and Amazon.

The product isn’t a bad one – in fact, it looks like an improvement on what you can get from others in the category – it just isn’t a make-anything personalized drink machine like the Cana. But, unlike the Cana, the Thirsti will ship and be available at a competitive price point (the Cana was going to sell for $900).

In other words, the product was made for today, not the future, with a slightly different twist on what’s out on the market. And as I write those words, I may have just summarized SharkNinja’s guiding North Star principle because it seems the company does it repeatedly.

They did it when they offered up their Creami countertop ice cream and smoothie maker in 2021, which the NY Times compared to a professional machine in the Pacjojet in its ability to whip frozen treats in a similar fashion as a professional machine in the Pacojet (though with a few red flags).

They did it again when they entered the BBQ/smoker space, creating an interesting-looking outdoor grill and smoker, about which Home & Garden had to say the following: “Many grills have multiple cooking functions, but there isn’t anything on the market quite like the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Grill. Not only does it grill, but it can roast, bake, air crisp, dehydrate, broil, and best of all – smoke meats and vegetables to perfection.”

And we can’t forget how the company was one of the first to offer a combination air fryer and pressure cooker in 2018, a year before Instant Pot got around to offering the product combo.

And it’s these products that are, in a sense, why Ninja is going public while others are puttering along with lesser market share and, in some cases, going out of business.

If you’d asked anyone back in 2019 who would go public in 2023, most would have pointed to Instant Pot, not SharkNinja. But today, it’s SharkNinja that is growing revenue (it had $3.76 billion in the 12 months ending in March) while Instant Brands is reorganizing its business under chapter 11 and laying off employees.

The spin out comes six years after SharkNinja was acquired by Chinese small appliance entrepreneur (and Joyoung founder) Wang Xuning, who used private equity financing to do the deal and create a new company in JS Global Products with SharkNinja at the center. Now, years later and with hundreds of patents to its name, SharkNinja has plans to go public.

The countertop appliance business is a very tough one to compete in. Still, Ninja has thrived due to its willingness to create new mashup concepts for products, often with interesting design choices, all packaged around unique and memorable brand names for each line. This contrasted with companies like Instant Brands, which would at times create products that seemed derivative of its initial ideas, or like Gourmia and other copycat brands, whose knockoff products didn’t have the same quality feel or brand line cohesiveness.

So while Ninja hasn’t offered a drink replicator, give them time. They’ve shown they can surprise us, and maybe someday, that will be with something straight out of the pages of science fiction.

Spinn Coffee is Burning Through Cash, But Says It Will Reach Profitability as It Raises More Money

Spinn, the maker of a grind and brew coffee machine that uses centrifugal force to extract brewed coffee, is currently raising money via Wefunder to fund ongoing operations.

The company, which we followed closely in the past to determine when and if they’d finally ship their product, looks like it’s shipping lots of machines nowadays, albeit at a fairly significant loss per unit. And now, with the company’s disclosures via WeFunder, we have a pretty good idea of the company’s current sales volume and its overall financial picture.

Here is some of what we learned:

Sales

The company sells a decent number of coffee machines. According to their disclosure, they had revenue of $9.375 million in the calendar year 2022, which translates – at an assumed $800 per machine – about 11,718 or so coffee machines sold last year. The number is probably slightly lower since the company also makes revenue selling coffee to its customers.

The company’s sales were a significant leap over its 2021 number when it had annual revenue of $4.1 million, and it forecasts $13 to $17 million in sales in 2023.

Expenses

The bad news for Spinn is it is still losing a lot of money. According to the disclosure, Spinn had a net loss of $8.95 million in 2022, compared to a loss of $12.3 million in 2021. The company says it had a 22% gross margin in 2022, which is the total left over after the cost of the machines and related services. Where it’s going deep into the red is with the operating expenses, which led to a negative 95% net margin (derived by dividing the profit or, in this case, loss by revenue). In short, in 2022, their total cost of doing business was almost twice as much as their annual revenue. In other words, the company would have needed to make over $18 million in revenue on the same overall expenses to break even.

According to the company, as of May of this year, their burn rate is currently $657 thousand per month, which translates to about $7.9 million annually.

Financing

With that kind of burn rate, the company needs to keep lots of cash on the books, something it has managed to do for the last couple of years via a mix of venture funding and debt.

In 2021 the company raised two venture rounds: $24 million (May 2021) and $12.5 million (October 2021). Last year, the company secured $10.5 million in debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank and Triplepoint Capital. They also secured an additional $2.85 million in SAFE financing, a form of convertible note that is later converted to equity.

But while the company has managed to raise a lot of money, it looks like the till is starting to get a little low. The company had about $1.3 million cash on hand as of May 2023, or roughly two months of money to fund its current burn rate. This short runway makes the company’s recent efforts to raise via WeFunder critical, and the good news is they have raised about $3.55 million via small equity investments via the platform as of today.

The company says they are also currently raising another venture round of $15 million, of which they claim that they have $6-$7 million “soft-circled,” which means they have that much in soft commitments from potential investors but have yet to nail down final terms or issue a term sheet.

Other Interesting Data Points:

  • 11M+ servings made & 65,000 active users – I assume the 65 thousand users are total user profiles and not machines sold, but still, that’s a decent number.
  • Ninety thousand bags of coffee sold & 120+ local roasting partners – at about $20 a bag, that’s about $1.8 million (cumulative) in coffee sales.

So Will They Make It?

That’s the big question. The company has some decent sales momentum, but ongoing sales demand depends heavily on continued spending on marketing and selling machines at or below their current price points of $800 – $999 per machine.

To reach profitability, the company will need significantly higher sales volumes so its accumulated gross margin can overtake its somewhat more fixed operating expenses. Spinn’s management thinks they can do it in 17 or so months, but to get there, they’ll need to raise enough new financing to fund their ongoing burn rate in the meantime.

Another complication is they also have to pay back their lenders in 2024. Unlike equity funding, the company’s debt requires that it be paid back by the maturity dates, which are March and August of next year. If they can’t pay it back and fail to renegotiate new terms with the lenders, the banks can seize the company’s assets.

The bottom line is it looks like the company is currently in a race against the clock to ramp up sales, which means its survival will depend almost entirely on how they do this holiday season when the company does the bulk of its business.

As a Spinn owner, I hope they can make it. I paid for my Spinn way back in 2016 (it was finally delivered in 2020) because back then, I felt plastic-based pod machines were pretty horrible for the planet, and grind and brew was the future of single-serve home coffee. I still think that, and while Spinn has a lot more competition nowadays than it did back then, I still think if it can scale its manufacturing and get over the financial hump, it could be an interesting company to follow well into the future.

Ansā’s New Roaster Uses Radio Waves To Roast Coffee on The Countertop

While we know fresh-roasted coffee tastes better, by the time store-bought beans make it into our coffee machines, chances are they were roasted months ago. But what if we could roast the beans right before they enter the brewer?

If a new company called Ansā has its way, coffee roasting will come to our office breakroom with its new e23 microroaster. The e23 takes green beans sent from the company and roasts them on the countertop without any smoke or ambient heat associated with traditional gas-fired roasting systems.

So how does the company’s roaster work? According to Ansā, the company uses dielectric heating, which usually refers to microwave heating-based systems. According to the company, the system’s computer vision (provided via a built-in camera) coordinates roasting with precision application of the radio waves to transmit the energy to individual beans, creating a highly precise and homogeneously applied roast.

When asked if the system uses an older magnetron-based heating (the heating system for the traditional microwave oven) or newer solid-state heating systems, Ansā wouldn’t specify, instead telling The Spoon, “We’ve designed a purpose-built EM system that allows us to digitally control the intensity and location of the energy concentration within the roasting chamber, in real-time.” My guess is since the system can direct energy with high precision, the system uses a solid-state amplifier to transmit the energy via radio waves.

The company also wouldn’t disclose pricing, saying, “Price is set by the distributors, and at their discretion.” I would estimate the machine would cost anywhere from $5 to $10 thousand, but will be offered at a much lower initial price, subsidized via a built-in coffee supply contract in which Ansā supplies the unroasted green beans for a fixed term.

The e23 is the first we’ve seen using RF radiation to roast the beans on the market. Coffee is traditionally roasted in big drums over gas-powered flames, an energy-intensive roasting process that produces lots of CO2, while newer electric small-footprint roasters like the Bellwether uses convection and conduction heating. According to sources I spoke to this week at the International Microwave Power Institute’s annual conference, microwave-powered coffee roasting is a topic the coffee industry is intrigued by, but it has yet to be commercialized (at least until this week).

According to Ansā, the company is working with a network of distributors across the US focused on the office/workplace segment. These Office Coffee Service (OCS) companies will sell the solution as a bundled service of ansā’s specialty green coffee beans and the e23 micro roaster.

Thirsty For a Beer? Let’s Print You Up a Frothy Cold One

Say it’s Friday night, and you’re having friends over to have a beer and watch the game. You ask your buddy what type of beer she likes, and when she tells you she wants a hoppy IPA, you say no problem.

While you don’t have one in the fridge, within a few minutes you return from your kitchen and hand your friend a pint of freshly-made American-style IPA.

That’s the vision for a new startup out of Belgium called Bar.on, which claims to have created the world’s first molecular beer printer. The machine, which the company calls One Tap, can produce a variety of beer styles such as blond, brown, IPA, and tripel, as well as make high, low, or even no-alcohol beer.

Beer printing “cartridges” from Bar.on

The One Tap uses what the company calls “beer cartridges,” small vials of flavor compounds that can dial up or down a beer’s hoppiness, sweetness, fruitiness, and aroma. The machine, which can fit on a kitchen countertop, allows the user to adjust the parameters and have a beer ready to drink within a couple of minutes.

If the idea sounds similar to the Cana, it is, only unlike the Cana, the Bar.on system just makes beer. And unlike the long list of startups that have come (and mostly gone) focused on building home brewing appliances, the One Tap makes beer instantly, without the bother of going through the days (or even weeks) long process of brewing and fermenting up the sudsy stuff.

A big part of the Bar.on pitch is also similar to Cana’s in that it plays up the sustainability angle of avoiding shipping vast amounts of liquid and the elimination of beverage containers. It’s a smart pitch, though one that will likely resonate more with Europeans, who tend to be more mindful of the environmental impact of their consumption habits than Americans.

Of course, the big test is how the beer tastes. While I have my doubts about the machine making anything resembling a Pliny the Elder or Bodhizafa quality brew, Bar.on claims that their molecular beer recipes have performed well in blind taste tests.

And then there’s the slight weirdness around the idea of ‘printing’ a beer. Still, one strong argument in its favor is that the concept overcomes the most significant deterrent for home beer crafting, which is that it’s a messy process that takes a long time to make a consumable beverage. In this sense, the One Tap takes home beer making out of the realm of a dedicated hobby and brings it something closer to the convenience of a Sodastream or Keurig coffee maker.

The Bar.on team, which raised €.1.8 million last fall, has developed its home machine prototype and is also working on a professional machine for bars called the One Tap Pro, which it plans to put into field test later this year. The company says it is raising a Series A to scale up operations and the production of its system.

Air-to-Water Technology Maker ‘The Air Water Company’ To Go Public Via SPAC

Today, Air Water Ventures (previously known as Eshara Water) and the publicly listed SPAC Athena Technology Acquisition Corp. II announced a business combination agreement, resulting in a new company called The Air Water Company. This merger will establish the first publicly traded air-to-water technology pure-play when the combined company begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange, anticipated in the first quarter of 2024.

Air Water Venture’s technology uses an airflow system that extracts the water from the environment using its atmospheric water generators. According to Air Water’s CEO Alex Guy, the technology makes sense for places like the Middle East that have little access to groundwater or surface water.

Guy first encountered air-to-water technology while working in private equity in the Middle East. In 2018, he was introduced to a UK company with air-to-water technology that soon went bankrupt. Guy recognized the interest in this technology in the UAE and began exploring the creation of an air-to-water company.

“No one had heard about it,” Guy told The Spoon. “It almost sounds too good to be true. You look at an air-to-water unit, you look around the back to see where the hose pipe is plugged in, because no one quite believes it produces water just from extracting humidity in the air.”

After founding the company in 2019, the first project involved developing a 1,000-liter per day air-to-water generator in partnership with Raytheon. The founding team initially believed this technology would primarily benefit military and disaster relief efforts.

“The basic thesis of the project was it was an attempt to reduce the cost of transporting plastic bottled water for the frontline military personnel.”

However, Guy and his co-founders soon realized the potential for a consumer and commercial product portfolio.

“Hotels and schools were under pressure to remove plastic,” Guy said. “Big corporates in the UAE all made commitments to eradicate plastic bottles by 2022-2023. So we saw an opportunity there to try and help with that movement away from plastic.”

Today, the company’s technology is being deployed in the Middle East, where the company recently completed a water production facility at a hotel in Abu Dhabi named the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr. The Fairmont’s installation includes both an air-to-water generator that can produce up to 4 thousand liters of drinking water per day and a bottling plant.

Guy anticipates that the IPO via SPAC with Athena will provide the working capital to increase production of air-to-water generators and expand the product line. The company is developing residential and hotel room generators that can produce 2 or 5 liters per day. The 2-liter residential unit, which Air Water is looking to roll out in the US market in the next year, will retail for around $145. The 5-liter unit, which could go into hotel rooms in places like the Middle East or the American Southwest, would produce water in-room and replace “all of those plastic bottles that sit next to a Nespresso machine.”

The company plans to expand its commercial offerings, producing a range of products capable of generating 10, 20, 30 liters up to 50,000 liters. Guy envisions their solution as a comprehensive offering for larger commercial installations seeking to eliminate plastic, partly due to the company’s ability to create automated bottling plants.

Guy believes that while the initial attraction of their technology is to reduce plastic usage, the growing water crisis in areas like the US Southwest will become an additional driving force over time.

“The sustainability-driven consumer is going to focus on plastic consumption, but ultimately, I think that focus is going to shift to the source of water,” Guy said. “You know, where is the water actually coming from?”

Guy believes that their product will work well in locations with sufficient humidity to produce water from air, such as Florida or Arizona in the US. In contrast, states like Washington may not provide enough humidity during certain seasons like winter for the technology to function effectively. Internationally, countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, which have suitable environmental conditions and insufficient traditional water infrastructure, could benefit from their solution.

“I think air-to-water technology is a much cheaper solution (there), because you get rid of all of that traditional water infrastructure that you usually have to build.”

The Air Water Company isn’t the only company focused on building air-to-water generators. Arizona-based Source Water, originally called Zero Mass Water, is building air-to-water technology using solar panels that extract water from air. The company has raised $150 million from the likes of Bill Gates and Black Rock. Israel-based WaterGen, which has received funding from the Israel government, has deployed its technology into numerous countries which lack clean drinking water. And at this year’s CES, Kara Water showed off its 10L home and office unit that can produce alkaline-rich water from air.

According to the announcement, the newly formed company will have a pre-money equity value of $300 million and will have up to $60 million in financing to fund the growth of the company.

Meticulous Espresso Machine Appears on Track to Become Most Funded Food-Related Kickstarter

The heyday of hardware Kickstarter may be behind us (Coolest Cooler anyone?), but occasionally, a project emerges with the right blend of a captivating promotional video, impressive specs, and promise of a better life to lure in thousands of backers.

Meticulous Espresso seems to tick all those boxes, and as of this writing, the result is 2,700+ backers pledging over $3.5 million for the sleek-looking coffee machine.

Why all the excitement? A couple of thoughts:

First, the Meticulous Espresso machine boasts an eye-catching industrial design packed with cool features. It appears sleeker and more futuristic than your average metal knob-laden home espresso machine, and this design is paired with impressive-sounding technology, including six temperature sensors, a pressure sensor, an integrated scale, and a satisfyingly straightforward digital interface.

Second, the intro video. I usually get bored watching long Kickstarter intro videos, but this one weaved together a nice enough mix of creator vision story, intriguing product features, and attention to the coffee-making craft to keep me glued to the end of its 5 minutes plus. The video was made by Adam Lisagor, a well-known ad whiz, actor, and podcaster that’s been in demand for his commercials via his Sandwich video production shop for over a decade. Lisagor often appears in the ads he makes (and sometimes takes equity in the companies in exchange for video work), and in this video, he costars next to company founder Carlos Pendas.

Pendas himself does a good job of describing his mission and talking up the machine’s features, including the ability for users to create, save and share personalized espresso profiles through the Meticulous app. While profile sharing to different locations would require others to also own a Meticulous – a tall order given the machine’s $2,000 MSRP ($1,500 on Kickstarter) – I do like the idea of being to replicate my best espresso formulations and also sharing a profile with others using the same machine.

Whatever the reason for Meticulous’s fast start on Kickstarter, the machine has already entered rarified air in terms of funding raised, already eclipsing several top campaigns in the food category, including PicoBrew and Anova. With about 30 days remaining in the campaign, Meticulous could become the highest-funded food-related hardware campaign if it reaches around $5 million in backing, which would allow it to overtake the Otto G32 grill.

However, it’s important to note that Kickstarter success doesn’t always translate to successful products or companies. We all know what happened to PicoBrew, and while both Otto and Silo appear to still be breathing, the companies’ backers have been complaining for years as the companies behind them delay and delay delivery.

But who knows? Maybe the Meticulous will be different and ship the product on time. For its backers, here’s hoping they get their machines by December 2023

Meticulous Espresso is LIVE!

CES 2023: GROW UP Wants You To Make Plant-Based Milk at Home

If you’re an adult, there’s a good chance you’ve weaned yourself off of cow milk in favor of a plant-based alternative. After all, not only is plant-based milk less disruptive to the digestive tract, but it’s also often healthier.

But it’s not all good news. Plant-based milk is often filled with weird-sounding additives like xanthan gum and lecithin, while some have more recognizable ingredients like sugar and salt that you may want to cut out of your diet.

So if you want plant-based milk but want more control over what goes in it, one option is to make your own. One way to make your own is to try using your blender and a milk nut bag. But if you want to automate the process and have less mess to clean up, you might want to buy a countertop machine to create nut milk for you.

The latest nut milk machine to make its debut is from GROW UP. The machine, which was at CES last week in Vegas, “brews” up to 10 different kinds of plant-based milk. To do so, it uses what its creator calls a “cold extraction” process in which it grinds the ingredients and then vacuums the liquid through a built-in filtration system. Once the milk is dispensed – which takes about 3-4 minutes – the leftover pulp can be taken out and dried to use in baked goods.

The person behind the GROW UP Milk Brewer is Luiz Felipe Rapacci, a former F&B industry veteran who has worked for big CPG brands such as Coca-Cola and General Mills in Brazil. In 2017 Rappaci moved to the US to attend UC Irvine, where he studied innovation management and entrepreneurship. After working for a food tech startup and a basmati rice producer, Rapacci started working on what would become the Milk Brewer in 2020. GROW UP is beginning to manufacture the Milk Brewer for customers and expects to have it to market by mid-spring of this year.

The price for the countertop milk maker will be $599 and is available for pre-order. The price is a bit on the high-end, considering there are other plant-based milk makers on the market today for less than half that. That said, none of the ones I’ve seen make as many types of plant-based milk as Grown Up claims their brewer will make (10). GROW UP also has what looks like an easy-to-use touchscreen with pre-configured options that allow users to easily choose different types of plant-milk.

You can watch our interview with Rapacci from the show floor at CES below.

Milk Brewer Makes 10 Types of Plant-Based Milk!

Beer Brewing Startup iGulu is Back from the Dead, Plans to Split Brewing Machine Into Two

Like something out of a horror movie, beer brewing automation startup iGulu has come back from the dead, reanimating into something resembling a startup trying to bring a product to market.

The company, whose demise was well-documented here on The Spoon, apparently never gave up on its dream of delivering a beer-brewing appliance. Over the last year, the company’s CEO,  Shu Zhang, has been posting updates on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo (they raised funds on both platforms) about the company’s progress in paying down its debt and cobbling a new team together.

In an April update, Zhang said the company had paid down its debt and was hunting for new financing. Zhang also said the company had hired new product designers.

At present, our team of Home-machine Project includes professional, experienced and top-notch specialists in software, hardware, beer technology, structure, etc., constituting the strong R&D lineup of related products.

In a July update, Zhang said the team numbered ten and that they had decided to change the machine’s design from its original all-in-one brewing concept into two pieces of hardware.

There will be two products. One is the mashing machine for enthusiasts and deep players, from whole malt to wort; Another one is the beer capsule appliance, from wort to beer; The design capacity of the machine is about 1 gallon.

In an October update, Zhang gives a volume production date (end of 2023) and more details on the two-machine concept:

…the new machine will be implemented in two products. The first product will Mash making wort from grain. This product is designed for traditional home brewing enthusiasts. It supports high efficiency and high quality wort generation with your own recipes. The other machine is a fermentor and dispensing machine, this will support fermentation of both wort, and malt extract. The dispensing tap will be a disposable pipe design. It will also be capable of holding some existing commercial beer capsules (like 5L Heineken Beer Keg) for instant drinking. We are currently mid way through the design process for the new product. 

Zhang’s explanation of the transition from one brewing appliance to two is a little confusing since he never clarifies if iGulu intends to send both machines to original backers. The original machine takes care of the entire brew process from grains to glass, but one needs both of iGulu’s new product family to create a drinkable glass of beer from scratch. It appears most backers are assuming they will get both, but strangely Zhang talks about the two machines as if they are targeting different audiences when he explains the wort-making appliance as being designed “for enthusiasts.”

With all the confusion, product pauses, restarts, and time passed (nearly seven years at this point), I expected most backers to dismiss Zhang’s reboot on the iGulu. Instead, while a good chunk is predictably skeptical, some encourage Zhang to keep plugging.

For my part, I’m doubtful iGulu ever makes it to market and would advise against any new or existing backer giving the company any money. With the likelihood of little to no new crowdfund money coming in, the company has a tough road ahead in raising additional capital to help get it over the finish line. The success rate of home brewing appliances has not been encouraging, and investors are taking an ever-more-skeptical eye toward every investment nowadays.

All that said, the company has survived longer than anyone could have predicted and still has a pulse, so we’ll be keeping an eye on how things shake out next year.

Capsule-Killer CoffeeB Continues Momentum With German Retail Partnership

The Coffee Ball just keeps on rolling.

Swiss retail giant Migros, the company behind the CoffeeB coffee brewing system, announced this week it has struck a deal with Germany’s largest retailer in EDEKA. According to the release, EDEKA will begin rolling out the capsule-less coffee system to its 11,000 stores in April 2023.

When it was announced in early September, CoffeeB was a surprise to many (including me) who aren’t accustomed to seeing big retailers create potentially disruptive, innovative technology. Developed over five years, the CoffeeB system is a single-serve coffee machine that does away with the plastic pod or capsule. Instead, the new system utilizes round balls of coffee called (what else?) Coffee Balls instead of old-school plastic or aluminum capsules. Coffee Balls, which are wrapped in a layer of algae that keeps the coffee fresh and protected from flavor loss, can be dropped into a compost bin after they are used.

Germany represents the third market for CoffeeB, which debuted in Migros’ home market of Switzerland and France. I have no doubt the coffee industry is monitoring the success of the CoffeeB platform closely, given its potential to shake up a plastic-pod-dominated single-use coffee market. Over time, I’m sure we may see some companies offering plastic-pod-based coffees for the Nespresso and Keurig systems look to license or offer CoffeeB Coffee Balls if the momentum continues to grow.

You can watch my interview with CoffeeB’s managing director Frank Wilde below:

The Spoon Talks With CoffeeB About Coffee Balls

Bellwether Launches Cloud-Powered Small Batch Coffee Roasting-on-Demand

Bellwether, a maker of electric ventless coffee roasters for small-batch roasters and coffee shops, has launched a cloud-connected roasting service that enables coffee shops and retailers to roast coffee via a sharing economy model.

The new service – called Bellwether on Demand – allows anyone interested in roasting a batch of coffee to do so via its newly launched Bellwether Hubs. The Bellwether Hubs, the first of which is located at Bellwether’s headquarters in Berkeley, California, are software-controlled multi-roaster systems that enable anyone to roast a small-batch of coffee at scale.

From the release: “Each roaster in the Hub is controlled by a single interface that allows for flexibility to roast multiple SKUs at once, or fulfill large orders across multiple roasters simultaneously. The system’s software-powered precision can reproduce identical roasts on any roaster, giving retailers the ability to roast large volume orders with the freshness, quality and consistency of a small batch operation.”

This new offering from Bellwether is a natural evolution of the company’s small ventless roaster business that, as I wrote in 2019, moves “coffee roasting from the roastery into the coffee shop with their tech-powered coffee roasters.”

This new business takes the idea even further, adding a sharing-economy wrinkle to a platform already focused on democratizing coffee roasting beyond the big guys. In other words, the company is offering an easier on-ramp to wannabe roasters by offering coffee-roasting-as-a-service to smaller roasters who don’t have the resources to buy their own roaster or those who want to add their own custom-roasted coffee as a business but don’t see the need to invest in their own micro-roaster.

For now, the roasting service is only available through the company’s HQ-hosted Bellwether Hub, but Bellwether says it will soon be rolling out new hubs at customer locations across the country. For Bellwether customers with their own roaster, this offers them a new avenue to monetize their investment in a Bellwether through launching their own roast-on-demand services.

One such Bellwether customer is Daniel Levy, owner of Latitude Coffee.

“The additional revenue that comes from the Bellwether Network is very important to our business because it covers a lot of overhead expenses,” Levy said. “It covers the days that are a little bit slower. It covers the roaster, and it even covers the green beans we buy for ourselves. It’s a consistent revenue stream, and it also helps us be part of the larger Bellwether Community, so there is kind of a belonging to it.”

To use the Bellwether On-Demand service, roasters visit the website, and select their preferred coffee and roast level from the Bellwether Marketplace. From there, orders go directly to the nearest Bellwether Roaster Hub. Roasters can create and save custom profiles.