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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

coffee

Kaffe Bueno Wins $2.8 Million Grant To Build the World’s First Coffee Biorefinery

According to CarbonBrief, coffee has a larger carbon footprint per kilogram than fish, poultry, or pork. At the farming stage, it’s one of the top seven agricultural drivers of global deforestation, according to the World Resources Institute. Then there are emissions associated with processing and transportation. And once coffee grounds end up in landfills, they release methane (a greenhouse gas) as they degrade.

Danish biotech startup Kaffe Bueno wants to make the coffee supply chain more environmentally friendly by giving those used grounds a second life as food, nutraceutical, and personal care ingredients. The company announced this month that it has secured new support for that goal: The team received a $2.8 million grant from the European Innovation Council, which it will use to construct its first—and the world’s first—coffee biorefinery.

Kaffe Bueno partners with a transportation service that collects spent coffee grounds from commercial and industrial businesses. Via a fractionation process, those spent grounds get broken down into different compounds.

The company’s first two products have applications in both the food and personal care industries. There’s KAFFOIL, an oil that can be used as a flavoring agent and preservative; and KAFFIBRE, a gluten-free “coffee flour” that can be used in baked goods, confections, and snacks.

In addition to selling its products directly to manufacturers, Kaffe Bueno offers a private label service with customizable formulations. The company partnered up last year with Danish hotel chain Sinatur Hotel & Konference to collect spent grounds from different hotel locations, and then return them to the hotels in the form of upcycled personal care products.

The Spoon reported last year on Kaffee Bueno’s $1.3 million seed funding round, which the company used to begin scaling up production of its coffee-based products. Now, with the European Innovation Council grant funding and biorefinery construction plans, the company should be on track to unlock further production capacity and seek out new partnerships.

Cometeer’s Flash Frozen Coffee is the Best Thing in My Freezer

Despite my few years of working as a barista in the past, I definitely don’t consider myself a coffee expert of any sort. In fact, I am someone who loves the flavor of a generic-tasting dark roast. What is important to me, however, is the quality of the coffee I’m drinking. I am willing to spend a few extra bucks on coffee from a local roaster, organic coffee beans, or just a quality cup of coffee made with care.

So when I caught wind of a company called Cometeer that not only works with some of the best roasters in the country, but also delivers the brewed end product using flash-frozen pucks, I was more than a little intrigued.

The company’s frozen coffee pucks contain 26 grams of coffee, and are brewed with Cometeer’s proprietary extraction process. To preserve the flavor and aroma, the coffee extract is flash-frozen at negative 321 degrees. The pucks, which are individually packed in aluminum capsules, can be stored in a freezer for up to 18 months.

Cometeer is strict with its verbiage when it comes to describing its product, and for good reason. Its coffee pucks are neither instant coffee nor coffee concentrate, but just flash-frozen, coffee extract. Instant coffees can have that old, and even burnt, flavor. Coffee concentrates, in my opinion, can be too acidic and make me feel jittery. 

The company shipped me five boxes, with each 8-puck box offering a different roast:

  • Bird Rock Coffee Roasters, Timor (decaf)
  • Counter Culture Coffee, Indido (light)
  • Equator, Mocha Java (dark)
  • George Howell Coffee, Alchemy (dark)
  • GGET, Chelbesa (light)

In total, I received 40 coffee pucks, which were kept frozen in the shipping process with dry ice. The instructions had me run hot water over the capsules for 10 seconds, peel the lid back, and plop the frozen coffee puck into a glass mug. I then poured 8 oz of boiling water over the puck and, just like that, I had a fresh cup of hot coffee.

As a dark coffee lover, my favorite roasts were the Mocha Java (dark roast) and Alchemy (medium roast). I loved how convenient and consistent the coffee was. I’ve never figured out the perfect ratio for making french press or pour-over coffee, and I enjoyed not having to measure anything except for the water when making Cometeer’s coffee.

I’ve avoided using a Keurig due to its plastic pods, but appreciated that Comeeter’s 100 percent aluminum capsules are fully recyclable. Keurig pods must be separated apart to be recycled, but the aluminum pods have no plastic and can just be dropped in the recycling bin.

When it comes to price, each puck costs $2, which ends up being cheaper than a coffee from a coffeeshop. However, using the pucks ends up being more expensive than making coffee from grounds. In my opinion, the taste and convenience make it worth the price, and see this product as something handy to keep in the freezer.

Although we have officially entered hot coffee season, the pucks would also be a great way to make a quick iced coffee or iced latte. Once the pucks are melted, they can simply be poured over ice and water, or ice and milk.

My boyfriend, the coffee snob between us, thoroughly enjoyed the light roasts and was soon making two cups of the Cometeer a day. A friend who I offered the Alchemy dark roast thought the flash-frozen coffee was freshly brewed in my kitchen. 

This week, Cometeer raised $35 million in a Series B round of funding, and plans to use the new capital will be used to increase manufacturing capabilities and expand its relationship with roasters. They’ve also dropped the waitlist from its website so now anyone can order a box of coffee pucks, so if you want to try Cometeer, the first box purchased costs $48 ($64 after your first order) for four boxes containing eight capsules and free shipping.

Bruvi Raises $7 Million as it Sets to Ship Its Pod-Coffee Brewer in 2022

Bruvi, a maker of a single-serve pod-based brewing system, has raised a $7 million pre-Series A round as it prepares to launch its brewer and direct-to-consumer pod marketplace in 2022.

According to an announcement sent to The Spoon, the company plans to use the funding to “pay for manufacturing, software development, brewer inventory, and digital advertising expenses, as it prepares for pre-orders in November 2021 and national launch in Q1 2022.”

While many of the new coffee systems coming to market nowadays seem to be grind and brew systems that do away with the pod altogether, Bruvi is bucking the trend by rethinking the pod-brewer. The Bruvi brewer, which is Wi-Fi connected and app-controlled, adjusts heating parameters and brew-strength depending on the pod, which the system scans when inserted. The app will set brew schedules, monitor usage, and allow you to reorder.

The company claims the Bruvi system is differentiated by being the only pod-brewing system that brews coffee in the pod itself. This is debatable, especially considering Nespresso’s Vertuo pod system, which uses centrifugal force to extrude a crema espresso from the pod.

The company says its pod is more eco-friendly because it is made of treated polypropylene, which it claims will biodegrade up to 63% in about 600 days, compared with just 2% biodegradation of a normal pod. While that’s better, a more biodegradable pod is still a pod, something that adds to the waste stream. But for those coffee lovers that insist on using a pod-brewer, Bruvi’s system could be a way to reduce the mountain of plastic their coffee habit leaves behind.

Bruvi’s founders include longtime coffee industry executives Sung Oh and Mel Elias. Oh is the technical cofounder, having spent five years inventing a single-pod system for his company Touch Coffee and Beverages. Elias brings the coffee industry connections from his prior stint as the former CEO of The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.

Customers can pre-order the Bruvi bundle, which features a brewer, 24 B-Pods and water filter, for $198 starting in November. The company says it will begin shipping the brewer in the first quarter of 2022.

A Cuppa Joe Grown in a Lab? That’s Right, Cell-Cultured Coffee Is Now a Reality

Cellular agriculture has given us hope about the future of sustainable meat production, but what about coffee? After all, many of us (this author included) would happily give up that great steak or burger to make sure we get that first cup of coffee in the morning.

Well good news, caffeine addicts: A research lab in Finland announced they have made coffee using cellular agriculture techniques. According to an article today in Phys.org, the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland “is developing coffee production through plant cells in its laboratory in Finland. In the process, cell cultures floating in bioreactors filled with nutrient medium are used to produce various animal- and plant-based products.”

The process by VTT includes establishing the cell lines in the lab and then transferring the cell cultures to a bioreactor where they produce biomass. Once harvested, the biomass is roasted into something resembling the coffee we purchase from the store.

“In terms of smell and taste, our trained sensory panel and analytical examination found the profile of the brew to bear similarity to ordinary coffee,” said VTT Research Team Leader Dr. Heiko Rischer. “However, coffee making is an art and involves iterative optimization under the supervision of specialists with dedicated equipment. Our work marks the basis for such work.”

While we’ve seen a few startups such as Atomo working on building “molecular” coffee, those approaches use upcycled plant-based ingredients with similar compounds to coffee beans. VTT’s research project is the first example we’ve seen of cellular agriculture techniques used to replicate coffee bean cells in a bioreactor.

Whether it’s cell-ag coffee beans or derived using molecular magic, discovering new approaches to create coffee is urgent given the state of traditional crop farming. Mega-producers like Brazil face severe droughts due to climate change, which has resulted in big jumps in coffee bean prices.

But don’t expect coffee from a bioreactor to show up on store shelves anytime soon. First, researchers must figure out how to scale the process, and regulatory approval would be needed.

You can see the full article on Phys.org here.

Keurig Debuts BrewID Smart Brewing Platform, Launches First WiFi Connected Brewer

Today Keurig, the maker of the omnipresent coffee pod brewing systems, debuted a new smart brewing platform called BrewID.

So what is BrewID? According to the announcement, BrewID is “an all new technology platform designed to support a number of  features, such as the ability to identify a specific K-Cup pod brand from more than 900 pod varieties, including the specific roast, and automatically adjust the brewer’s temperature and strength settings to the specifications to the recommendations of the coffee roasting expert who created it.”

In other words, the new platform will allow Keurig coffee partners to create customized brew settings optimized for each specific roast.

“Every coffee needs a different technique to brew it to its optimized cup size or preference,” Roger Johnson, Keurig’s SVP, Appliance Global product Organization, told me over a zoom call. “And so this technology allows you to center so you understand what the roaster intended and then it’s up to whatever you’d like.”

Johnson said one of the goals of the new brewer with the BrewID platform was to achieve something closer to what you might get from a barista with, say, a pour-over coffee. To achieve that, the new brewer pairs the BrewID with Keurig’s Multistream brewing technology, which in the case of the new brewer, means five streams of water vs just one.

BrewID will make its debut in the company’s first Wi-Fi connected brewer, the K-Supreme Plus Smart Brewer.

I know what some of you are thinking: Coffee pods usually mean a quick, serviceable cup of coffee, but don’t equate to a barista crafted cuppa joe. While you are right, I do think that having a brew tailored for a specific coffee roast makes lots of sense. Dark coffee should be brewed differently than lighter coffee. Arabica beans should get treated differently than Robusta.

And that’s the goal of BrewID. By being connected, the device can access specific brew profiles from Keurig’s network of 75 or so third party roasting partners for specific brew instructions for the 900 or so different types of pods.

The new connected brewer also will have the usual list of benefits of being connected, including app-based programming and control and auto-replenishment. According to Johnson, while Keurig has offered auto-replenishment of pods with some of its earlier models, those models used a time-based system that would order pods at a pre-set interval. With the new Wi-Fi based brewer, pod auto-delivery will be based on usage of pods.

I have to admit, when I first heard the name BrewID, images of Keurig’s ill-fated brew “DRM” technology came to mind. Johnson assured me that Keurig learned their lesson from the Keurig 2.0 system rollout.

“You can brew any pod that you would like,” Johnson told me. “There’s no lockout feature. We celebrate a democratized system.”

Of course, one thing BrewID doesn’t change is the fact Keurig is still, well, a pod system. While Keurig has made big strides in making their pods recyclable – in fact, technically all K-cup pods are now recyclable – whether pods are actually recycled is dependent on consumers actually doing the work. This involves separating the lid, throwing the coffee into the compost and making sure the plastic cup is then put into the right bin. My guess is a lot of consumers still throw the spent pods into the garbage whole, putting plastic into the waste stream.

And while some new grind-and-brew systems like the Spinn do away with the pod altogether and may pose a threat in the future, those systems are still dwarfed by pods, which in 2020 account for a $25 billion market.

So for now, pods are still massive (and growing) business. And, with its new BrewID platform, Keurig is hoping to bring even more coffee drinkers to the pod.

The K-Supreme Plus Smart with BrewID will sell for $199 and will be available this fall.

Spinn Extracts $20M from Investors for its Connected Coffee Machine and Marketplace

Spinn, the makers of the connected coffee machine that uses centrifugal force when making a morning cup of joe, has raised $20 million in new funding. TechCrunch was first to report the news this morning, writing that the new round was led by Spark Capital with participation from Amazon’s Alexa Fund, Bar 9 Ventures and other existing investors. This brings the total amount raised by Spinn to $37 million.

The Spinn is perhaps best known for its looooooong journey to market. Spoon Founder Mike Wolf pre-ordered a Spinn back in 2016, and after years of delays, Mike finally got his machine in July of last year. Based on the Spinn website, new machines can be pre-ordered for delivery this Fall, and cost between $479 and $779, depending the accessories included.

The hook with Spinn is that it uses centrifugal force to, well, spin the coffee grounds for extraction rather than pressing. The machine spins the grounds more slowly for regular coffee, and higher for espessso-based drinks. The result, according to the company, is a more nuanced and flavorful cup of coffee.

In addition to its hardware, Spinn also has an online marketplace selling more than 700 different types of whole beans. During an interview at our Food Tech Live event in 2020, Spinn CEO Roderick de Rode told us that when users order coffee from Spinn, they can scan the bag with their phone and precise extraction instructions are sent to the machine.

We actually haven’t seen a ton of coffee-related news so far this year. The similar superautomatic Terra Kaffe coffee machine raised $4 million in November of last year. And Trade raised $9 million for its online coffee marketplace last September.

De Rode told TechCrunch that his company will use the new funding to further develop its brewing technology and scale up production to fulfill outstanding orders for the machine.

Bellwether’s Coffee Roaster Blossomed During the Pandemic, Doubling Installations

Independent coffee shops were hit hard by the pandemic last year. In October, Euromonitor International predicted that the U.S. would have just 25,307 coffee/tea specialty outlets by the end of 2020, a 7.3 percent drop year-over-year and the first such decline since 2011. While giants like Starbucks had the resources to weather the pandemic, smaller independent chains bore the brunt of COVID-19 fallout.

Given this dark backdrop, you might think that Bellwether had a bleak year as well. The startup makes a compact, connected, electric and ventless professional coffee roasting machine meant for independent cafes — like the ones that shut down last year. But actually, Bellwether didn’t just survive the pandemic, it thrived.

“We ended up having a really good year,” Bellwether CEO, Nathan Gilliland told me by phone this week. “We grew revenue a bit over 100 percent last year and installations doubled.”

Gilliland attributed this growth to a number of factors. First, at the start of last year, the company introduced a rental model. Previously, coffee shops could only buy or long-term lease Bellwether’s machines. The new rental model is more expensive than the leasing option, but it also comes with just a one-year commitment (as opposed to five), which proved more enticing to customers. Gilliland said that the majority of new installations in 2020 were rentals.

Another reason for Bellwether’s growth was who its customers were selling to. During COVID, in-house dining/drinking operations were shut down across large swaths of the country. With their consumer traffic down, cafes started selling their roasted coffee to local grocers.

Perhaps sensing and opportunity, in the fourth quarter of last year, Bellwether itself decided to start targeting grocers as potential customers. Since the Bellwether is the size of a vending machine and runs automated roast programs from the cloud, the device is relatively plug-and-play. You don’t need to have a staff of coffee experts to operate it. Roastery (née Carbine Coffee) was another electric ventless roaster that launched around the same time as Bellwether, also targeting grocers. (Roastery’s fate is unknown at this point as its website is just a picture of the device with no text, links or other information.)

In addition to the machine itself, Bellwether also makes money through its green coffee bean marketplace. Gilliland said that 85 percent of Bellwether’s customers order green beans through Bellwether, and 65 percent of those order more than half of their green beans through Bellwether. The Bellwether machine roasts six pounds of coffee at a time, and the average Bellwether customer roasts 100 lbs of coffee per week.

With the pandemic receding, Gilliland and Co. are looking ahead to the rest of this year. In addition to more people actually sitting inside coffee shops, another reason the future looks bright for Bellwether could be stricter environmental regulations. Cities like Seattle and San Jose have banned natural gas from being installed in new commercial constructions, creating an opportunity for the all-electric Bellwether to step in as a way for small shops to have their own roaster.

Gilliland is also looking abroad. The company will begin expanding outside of North America this year, with machines going to Southeast Asia and Japan. Additionally, Bellwether is looking to create an iTunes-like experience for its roasting recipes. Coffee shops will be able to upload and sell their particular roast programs via Bellwether, which others could pay for to download and use. Specifics have yet to be determined, but there would be a rev share for roast creators.

Without a doubt, 2020 was a bad year for independent coffee shops. But perhaps Bellwether’s growth could be, well, a bellwether for better times ahead for the industry.

Blue Hill Brings Computer Vision to Its Coffee Robot to Recreate the Barista Experience

There is no shortage of robot baristas coming to market. Cafe X, Costa Coffee (née Briggo), Truebird, Crown Coffee, OrionStar, Cafe Rozum, FIBBEE and MontyCafe to name just some of the ones we’ve covered. But Seattle-based Blue Hill aims to differentiate itself from other players in the space by using computer vision to make a smarter machine that recreates the human barista experience.

We should start of by saying that when it comes to computer vision, Blue Hill has the bona fides. Blue Hill Founder is Meng Wang, who was previously CTO and Co-Founder of Orbeus, which developed the Rekognition computer vision/image analysis system. (Orbeus was acquired by Amazon in 2016 and became AWS Rekognition, which has become controversial in its own right.)

Wang is applying his computer vision pedigree to coffee. Like other robo-baristas, Blue Hill’s system (dubbed “Jarvis”) features an articulating arm that grabs cups and operates a La Marzocco espresso machine. But unlike other robots, Blue Hill’s arm is aided by robust computer vision which not only assists with item recognition, but also helps the articulating arm act more like a human barista.

As Wang explained it to me over video chat this week, Blue Hill’s computer vision means that things like milk or cups or spoons don’t need to placed in a specific area in order to be found by the robotic arm. The arm can open a fridge and identify “soy milk” wherever it is placed inside just by looking. Or if the grinder is moved, the arm doesn’t need to be re-programmed because it recognizes the grinder and can still operate it, no matter where it is. As long as the robot knows what to “look” for, the system can be set up to accommodate different shapes and spaces.

But Wang says the other advantage with its computer vision is its ability to train the articulating arm. By examining video of human baristas making coffee, Blue Hill’s robotic arm can replicate those same movements. The high pull, the frothing, the milk blending, even the latte art can be recreated by the robot by watching humans do the same thing. It uses the same coffee equipment used by specialty cafes, it just has a robot handling them.

The reason for all this high-tech robotic re-creation is that at the end of the day, Blue Hill wants to be in the high-end coffee business. It’s not just about the robot, it’s about creating a perfect cup of coffee. Blue Hill even sources and roasts its own beans. To be fair, Blue Hill isn’t the first company to tell me that they want to create a premium coffee experience delivered by robot. Briggo had its own line of coffee beans too, and Cafe X had a human on hand at each kiosk to curate a customer’s coffee choice.

But Blue Hill is more interested in building up its own brand of automated coffee experiences, rather than licensing out the technology to another coffee company. That choice could be a tough hill to climb for the company as people don’t know what a Blue Hill is and robots are still very new. As a result, lots of people will need to learn that a) robots can make coffee, and b) getting Blue Hill’s brand of robotic coffee is a better choice than finding a nearby Starbucks (a drink they’re already familiar with).

Blue Hill sticking with a premium, human-like experience also means that they are sacrificing a certain amount of speed. Right now, Blue Hill is focused on opening its kiosks inside other retailers like the Super Joy Coffee Lab or Swee20 desert shop, both in Portland, OR. But if Blue Hill wants to move into more high-traffic (and more revenue generating) locations like airports and office buildings, having a robot that behaves like a human sacrifices the speed you get with automation. Will people want to wait for a robot to make their latte like a human would? Perhaps, if the coffee is good enough. But people in those situations are typically more about speed than precision drink crafting.

Adding to the pressure, the robot coffee space hasn’t exactly worked out so far for some of the early startups. Briggo was quietly sold off to Costa Coffee with nary a whisper, and Cafe X shut down all of its locations last year (though it re-opening some and shipping machines off to Asia).

Will Blue Hill’s computer vision and premium cup of coffee be enough to bring in repeat customers? We’ll have to wait and see for ourselves.

Food Tech News: New Asian e-Grocer, Oatly’s pre-IPO Starbucks Rollout

Umamicart, a new Asian e-commerce grocer, launches in NY metro area

This past week, the new Asian e-grocer Umamicart launched in the NY metro area, and its next-day grocery delivery service is now available in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The platform offers Asian pantry staples, meats, seafood, tofu, fruits, vegetables, snacks, and drinks, with around 500 different grocery items currently listed. Umamicart also sells kits for making different meals like sushi, dumplings, hot-pots, and Mapo tofu. The platform requires a $30 minimum purchase, and orders less than $49.99 will be charged a $6.99 delivery fee.

Photo from Wix Restaurant’s website

Wix Restaurants Acquires SpeedETab to help enhance online restaurant presence

Wix Restaurants (a subsidiary of Wix) is a website builder for restaurants, and this week the company announced its acquisition of SpeedETab, a tool that allows restaurants to integrate online ordering into existing platforms. The addition of SpeedETab will allow restaurants signed up with Wix Restaurants to streamline orders from multiple channels, manage offline and online orders, and integrate various restaurant POS systems.

Photo from Oatly’s website

Oatly rolls out in Starbucks nationwide before IPO

Oatly, producers of oat-based vegan dairy products, announced this week that it had reached a deal with Starbucks to serve its oat milk in all Starbucks throughout the U.S. Starbucks will feature Oatly’s non-dairy oat milk in several new drinks, including the Iced Brown Sugar Oatmilk Shaken Espresso and Honey Oatmilk Latte. Oatly milk will be available on Starbucks ‘ menu year-round, as it is now part of the core menu. Oatly uses a proprietary process to create its oat milk that incorporates certain enzymes to break down finely milled oats, which results in a naturally sweet and creamy non-dairy milk. The company filed for its initial public offering last week, the details of which will be shared with the public in the next few weeks.

Photo from SIMPLIFY The Brewer’s Kickstarter campaign

SIMPLIFY the Brewer launches on Kickstarter

A first glance, the new coffee brewing equipment called SIMPLIFY the Brewer from Bathtub Coffee looks like a transparent pour-over. However, this brewer was meticulously designed by a former professional barista, Ryo John Ito. Other pour-over brewers depend on the coffee “bloom” (splashing a small amount of hot water over grounds to allow the degassing of carbon dioxide) for a good cup of coffee, and the pour-over brewing method often takes three to four minutes to complete. SIMPLIFY the Brewer’s design includes a larger opening for coffee to flow through and minimal contact between the brewer and paper filter. As a result, a strong cup of coffee is brewed in one to two minutes, which is convenient for busy coffee shops. The Kickstarter campaign for the coffee brewer is live, and pledging ¥2,720 (about $26 USD), guarantees a SIMPLIFY the Brewer shipped to you in May 2021.

Demetria Raises $3M to Automate Coffee Bean Analysis

Demetria, a startup that promises to automate the analysis and grading of coffee beans, came out of stealth yesterday and announced that it has raised $3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Celeritas and a group of private investors including Mercantil Colpatria, the investment arm of Grupo Colpatria.

As coffee beans move through the supply chain, their quality has traditionally been judged by “cupping.” In this process, a human with proper certifications selects samples of beans and judges them based on factors like aroma, acidity and flavor. As you can imagine, this process is slow, wasteful, and because it’s done by experts, not globally available.

It also means that coffee bean quality and pricing is a subjective process, which can incorporate any number of human biases that can affect the prices paid to farmers and across the supply chain.

Demetria aims to automate this process by using near-infrared scanning and cloud-based artificial intelligence analysis to develop “digital fingerprints” of coffee beans. As green coffee beans move through the supply chain, they are analyzed with a near-infrared scanner to look for biochemical markers to match a bean’s profile with an industry standard set of quality metrics.

This means that bean quality can be quickly assessed with a handheld scanner and mobile phone. What’s more, beans do not have to be taken out of the supply chain to tested via cupping. Instead, they stay, reducing waste.

We’ve seen this type of AI-based scanning in the food supply chain elsewhere. Most recently, Driscoll’s announced that it was using Consumer Physics’ SCiO technology to scan berries for sweetness. Consumer Physics’ handheld scanner is one of the tools being used by Demetria.

Other companies in the space include AgShift and Intello Labs, both of which use computer vision and AI to assess food quality and bring objective grading to buyers and sellers.

In its press announcement yesterday, Demetria said it has successfully completed a pilot with Carcafe, the Colombian coffee division of agricultural commodity traders Volcafe/ED&F Man. Demetria said it is also working with Federación Nacional de Cafeteros (FNC), the Colombian National Federation for Coffee Growers, to develop apps that help farmers and their transaction points in the supply chain control and track bean quality, and price.

Technologies like Demetria’s can hopefully bring more fairness to the food supply chain by speeding up the process and standardizing the analysis so everyone gets paid a fair price.

Terra Kaffe Raises $4 Million for Pod-Free Grind and Brew Coffee Maker

Terra Kaffe, a New York based startup that makes grind and brew coffee machines, has raised $4 million from The SeedLab, an early stage venture capital firm focused on consumer products.

The company had previously raised $575,000 in a seed funding late last year, and the new round of funding brings the company’s total to just under $5 million.

Last year, company CEO Sahand Dilmaghani showed me their coffee maker, the TK-01, and I liked what I saw. I also liked the fact that it was shipping, something that wasn’t the case (at the time) with my long-overdue Spinn.

Both machines are part of a growing category of grind and brew (also called superautomatic) coffee makers that make espresso-level coffee with the convenience of a Nespresso or Keurig, but without the plastic waste of pod-based systems. Nespresso and Keurig have come under fire in recent years for how much plastic they push into the waste stream, and while both are trying to make their pods more environment-friendly, it makes sense (and better coffee) if you can just grind from fresh within the system when you’re ready to brew.

In researching the TK-01 and the grind and brew market, one thing I noticed is how Terra Kaffe’s machine resembles a few other early grind and brew appliances on the market. And when I say resemble, I mean looks like an exact replica from an outward physical standpoint.

I asked Dilmaghani about this and he told me when he was getting the company off the ground, he didn’t have enough funding to custom design an entirely new coffee machine. This meant getting creative.

“The whole development is a story of trade offs,” said Dilmaghani in a phone interview. Instead of paying a company to create an entirely new product, they worked with a Chinese ODM (original design manufacturer) to build the hardware system architecture using some off the shelf parts such as brew unit and chassis (why there are others that look like the Terra Kaffe). Dilmaghani and his team focused on software, the UI and the overall consumer experience.

“I was like, ‘let’s prove out the market that there is an opportunity here'” said Dilmaghani. “Let’s work with as much off the shelf as possible, give people some awareness that this can sell DTC (direct-to-consumer), that it isn’t the Nespresso model that I have to lose money on the machine and only make money with recurring revenues. That you can make money on the product, and it can be a viable business.”

It’s a much different approach from Spinn, who designed a coffee maker from the ground up. The end result was a long drawn out design and manufacturing ramp-up process that took years to bring their product to market. In contrast, the TK-01 was available and shipping last year, and, according to Dilmaghani, has sold in the thousands.

And I imagine it’s this early sales success, not a complicated piece of hardware, that mattered to the company’s newest investors.

Briggo’s Coffee Haus Becomes Costa Coffee BaristaBot

It looks like British coffee chain and Coca-Cola subsidiary Costa Coffee has acquired Austin, TX-based coffee automation company, Briggo.

We are still hunting down an official announcement, but the Briggo website is now re-branded as Costa Coffee (hat tip to the Food By Robots Twitter account). Briggo’s CoffeeHaus automated kiosk has been replaced with the Costa Coffee BaristaBot. Briggo also made an announcement on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/DrinkBriggo/status/1320725811633283074?s=20

We have reached out to Briggo to find out more.

To date, Briggo had raised $19 million in funding. Its coffee robot was among a new wave of standalone automated kiosks that were looking to re-invent the vending machine by combining robotics with higher-end food. Part of Briggo’s pitch, when it first started out, was that in addition to building its coffee robot, it was also a coffee company that selected and roasted its own beans.

Briggo had Coffee Hauses up and running in a number of locations around Austin, including two at the Austin-Bergstrom Airport and one at the San Francisco International Airport. Briggo had formed a partnership with SSP America last year to open up new kiosks in 25 airports over the course of this year and next. In January of this year, Briggo’s CEO told me that his company was going to open up five new loations in Q1 of this year.

That, of course, was before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and airline travel was decimated. So how many of those locations went up or are still live is unknown. Rival robot coffee kiosk company, Cafe X, shuttered its remaining airport locations and laid off staff. That said, Cafe X has re-focused and has plans to deploy 150 robots across Asia over the next two years.

With its deep pockets, Costa Coffee has the resources to expand and operate more kiosks than Briggo could have on its own. This story is developing and we will update as we learn more.