Last week, Swiss retail giant Migros dropped a giant surprise on the coffee world with the debut of the CoffeeB coffee brewing system.
The new machine, which took the company five years to develop, is a single-serve coffee machine that completely does away with the plastic pod. The new system utilizes round balls of coffee called, um, 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.
I always appreciate a complete rethink of a system to correct a shortcoming, and pod system plastic and aluminum waste are definitely problematic. But even if the CoffeeB system makes great coffee and reduces waste, does it stand a fighting chance to displace a significant number of Keurigs or Nespressos?
It will be an uphill battle. A quarter of Americans use single-serve coffee machines daily (and 4 in 10 households have a Keurig or Nespresso type capsule system), and while newer approaches like grind-and-brew coffee machines that do away with the pod have been around for a few years, none have really seemed to take off in any significant way.
If CoffeeB is to become the first new single-serve system in decades to garner any substantial market share, they’ll need to take a page out of Nespresso and Keurig’s playbook. This means creating a “Coffee Ball” ecosystem around their technology, which would include a scalable and licensable system to produce the coffee servings (aka balls), a strong coffee roaster partner program in which roasters produce branded Balls, and getting retailers on board to sell the system.
The good news for CoffeeB is Migros’ in-house brand in Café Royal is already one of the more popular single-serve coffee brands in Switzerland, and the brand’s parent company Delica is one of Switzerland’s largest coffee roasters. Add in the fact Migros is one of Europe’s largest retailers, and you might just have a powerful enough vertically integrated company to give CoffeeB a fighting chance.
Ultimately the biggest challenge for CoffeeB will be convincing consumers to change their behavior. While consumers often have good intentions when asked about their desire to be greener, in reality getting them to change behavior and switch to a new system – often at a higher cost – is very difficult. But if Migros can get its price-per-serving down and convince consumers Coffee Balls are better than all those wasteful pods, the CoffeeB might just breathe some well needed fresh air into the single-serve segment.
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