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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

coffee

The Ember Travel Mug2: High Design, High Price, YMMV Battery

One of the biggest sins to me as a journalist is taking credit for other people’s work. So I should be upfront and say that I actually asked my wife to review Ember’s new second-generation Travel Mug. Her TL;DR take on the $180 precise temperature control drinking vessel? It looks great and is easy to set up and use, but the battery was a real bummer, at least in her real-world scenario.

Let me take a step back. I asked my wife to do the heavy lifting on this one because she drinks a lot of hot coffee, travels more than I do and her non-techie background provides a more approachable, everyperson view of the device.

But first, the basics. Released this fall, the Ember Travel Mug2 is a connected thermos that talks to your phone and lets you set the exact temperature of your coffee. Obviously $180 is a lot of cheddar for a coffee mug, especially for something that a lot of people might scoff at (a Bluetooth cup!). But as my wife learned with the first-gen Ember Mug a couple years back, precisely heated coffee from first sip to last actually makes your morning java more enjoyable.

Ember made a number of design changes to its new Travel Mug. The temperature control wheel at the base of the mug is replaced by LED + and – touch controls. In a neat bit of design, these controls stay hidden until you tap the Ember logo on the device. Ember Travel Mug2 also promises more battery life, saying it could hold a drink at 135 degrees for three hours (more on that in a minute) and comes with a redesigned charging coaster.

The first thing you notice with the mug is that it looks and feels great. It holds 12 fluid ounces and is easy to grip. The matte finish feels good and the LED controls give it a nice high-tech flair. The lid features a push-button, 360 degree (circular, not temp) accessible “spout” so you can drink from any angle, which is helpful when you’ve got one hand on the steering wheel.

Setting up the mug and pairing with the phone was easy and straightforward for my wife. She had no issues charging the device or getting it connected. The controls were intuitive and easy to adjust as she found her temperature sweet spot.

I should interject a note here to say that we actually tried out two different Travel Mugs. During her first go ’round, my wife found that the battery on the device drained pretty quickly. Even though she was pouring hot coffee into the mug and kept the temperature at 140, the battery was completely drained after around 45 minutes.

Thinking that perhaps we got a bum unit, I reached out to Ember and replaced it with a new one. This one held up better. Keeping her coffee at 140 degrees, the battery lasted two hours. I’m no battery expert, but this could fall in line with the expectations Ember set. On its website, Ember says that the Travel Mug will last three hours at 135 degrees, less if the temperature is hotter. So it doesn’t seem ridiculous that a five degree difference could result in an hour loss of battery.

Other things can drain the battery faster, like having to bring coffee up to temperature (i.e. adding cold coffee to the mug). Coffee added from the carafe made in the morning was only at 120 degrees, so sometimes the Ember had to a lot of extra work to get it up to 135 or 140.

Still, my wife’s biggest complaint is that when she is, you know, traveling, she’s out for the entire day on the road, and it’s not uncommon for her to enjoy coffee across a span of five or so hours. Having to bring the charging coaster along seems silly for a portable device (and not something she’s going to pull out and plug in during a meeting). However, my wife commented that if the coaster could fit inside the cup holder of her car, that would actually be quite useful as she traveled around to her appointments.

If your travel schedule is different, allowing for regular recharges throughout the day then this might be an (extremely expensive) way to you to caffeinate up throughout the day. It’s hard to say whether I recommend it or don’t. It’s a pretty device and if you have $180 to spend on a coffee mug, then you might be fine with any battery shortcomings. Just know that depending on your type of travel, your mileage may vary with the Ember Travel Mug2.

Could it Be? Long Delayed Spinn Coffee Machine To Start Shipping This Month

Every month, the folks behind the Spinn grind & brew coffee maker post highly detailed updates on the progress they are making towards getting the long-delayed machine into the hands of backers.

Last month was was no different. On October 30, the company posted a meticulous update that went into detail on everything from the product’s real-time recipe generator to its mobile app development and user guide. However, unlike previous updates, this one had a little sentence near the end providing an actual timeline for initial deliveries:

Next month, Spinn will begin with its very first roll-out of machines to its earliest backers in California. Soon thereafter, we will begin with the fulfillment of other preorders.

Talk about burying the lede.

In reality, the announcement of initial shipments to early backers shouldn’t be a huge surprise for anyone who’s been following Spinn’s updates in recent months, which explain the slow-motion process of pushing the coffee machine into manufacturing.

For example, in September Spinn detailed the first engineering builds coming off the line of its contract manufacturer and getting delivered for final testing at the company headquarters in Amsterdam.

And with October’s update, it does appear Spinn is putting a bow on final preparations around delivering a working product, including building out the instruction manual and exploring the different chemicals consumers can use to perform descaling on the machine.

Spinn Coffee instruction manual excerpt

While I am cautiously skeptical, there’s no doubt that the company shipping product is good news for anyone who, like me, has been waiting literally years to get their Spinn.

A glance at the comments in Spinn’s forum shows that other early customers are, for the most part, excited that the company is starting to ship.

The only remaining question for me is when will other early backers see their Spinn. I was in the first wave of customers and expected to see the Spinn pretty soon after first shipments but, for some reason, the company is shipping to what looks like a small subsegment of backers in California first. My guess is they are looking to test the product in the field first before ramping up to full production.

Let’s hope that goes quickly and I’ll see my Spinn before Christmas.

Those Who Haven’t Gotten Their Rite Press May Want to Try the OVRLNDR No-Mess French Press

Coffee aficionados looking for a no-mess French press, but who were burned by the Rite Press’ no-show, may be in luck. Planetary Design is currently taking orders for its self-contained BruTrek OVRLNDR French press, which features a removable base plate for easy cleaning.

Anyone who’s used a French press knows how they make delicious coffee, but how much of a hassle they are to clean. The grounds get stuck to the bottom and if left in the vessel have to be chiseled and rinsed out without those coffee grounds going down the drain.

That was the allure of the Rite Press, which crowdfunded a ton of money — only to not deliver an actual product to many of its backers. Rite Press was a whole thing, with a ton of drama around it, and for more you can read the full story here.

The OVRLNDR is a little different than the Rite Press. It’s a rugged, 28 oz, double wall vacuum insulated, outdoor travel mug with a built-in plunger, and the aforementioned removable base plate, which collects the coffee grounds and can be taken off for easy cleaning. Going one step further, the company says that its patented plunger and brew-plate assembly stops the grounds from brewing once fully pressed so the coffee doesn’t become bitter.

Another way Planetary is different from Rite Press is that Planetary has been in business for 15 years and already has a number of coffee-related products on the market. I spoke with Jess Nepstad, CEO of Planetary Design by phone this week who told me that his company has a person in China right now inspecting the final elements of production. Nepstad said the OVRLNDR will be available here in the U.S. in February with an MSRP of $50. Nepstad also said that a more upscale in-home version of its no-mess French press solution will be available in September of next year.

While this hot coffee solution may be cold comfort to those Rite Press backers who never got their device, Planetary is doing those crowdfunders a solid. People who backed the Rite Press are eligible for a 25 percent discount when the product comes out, by providing their email address with the company.

GrainChain Brews Up Blockchain Tracking Platform for Honduras’ Coffee Farmers

This week GrainChain, maker of a software platform that helps track and manage agricultural commodities, launched a platform designed to help optimize the coffee supply chain in Honduras while putting more money in the pockets of farmers.

GrainChain tracks the coffee-making process from every possible step and angle. Farmers go to their local coffee cooperative to sign up to the platform and download the app (according to GrainChain CEO Luis Macias, who spoke to me over the phone this week, almost all farmers have access to smartphones).

After that they’re in the GrainChain ecosystem. Farmers can use the app to track their purchases of seeds, equipment, and more at local vendors, and also use it as a sort of digital wallet to procure short-term financing from local banks.

From there, GrainChain tracks the entire growing process. It sends out auditors into the farmer’s fields to make sure they’re growing everything with the necessary practices (i.e. no pesticides if they’re growing organic beans). When the beans are ready, they’re sent to a GrainChain-partnered warehouse where sensors sort the beans by quality and then track them as they’re dried and prepared for shipment at a local cooperative (also partnered with GrainChain). Once the sale is made the app automatically subtracts any loans from the farmer and pays it back to the banks. The rest goes instantly into the farmer’s pocket.

Photo: GrainChain

Previously, all of these touchpoints and verifications would be monitored individually and communicated piecemeal. That led to miscommunications and delayed shipments — which, in turn, delayed payments to farmers.

GrainChain, however, hopes to streamline the very fragmented coffee supply chain. The platform cuts down on middlemen and administrative legwork while tracking all transactions and verifications in one place. It can also unite bankers, insurers, coffee cooperatives, exporters and farmers all onto a single unified system and facilitate communication between the various players.

For the farmer, that translates to more access to funds from banks and quicker payments for their beans. For the purchaser, it’s a way to guarantee they’re actually getting organic or fair trade beans. Macas didn’t get into this, but it also seems like a smart marketing angle on the consumer end. Since they can track the journey of each batch of beans, coffee brands could leverage the transparency to add a personal touch to their beans — and charge the consumer more for them.

GrainChain is based in McAllen, Texas and last year raised a $2.5 million venture round. They began offering tracking services in 2013 and launched their first fully blockchain-enabled product in 2018. Their platforms are currently in use in the U.S. and Mexico, and the Honduran platform already has quite a few participants. According to Macias, about 160,000 coffee sacks headed out of the Honduras region over the next year will be powered by GrainChain’s software (that’s about 2 percent of the market). The platform is free for farmers to use but costs a fee for the insurer, the bank, the exporter and the cooperative

Blockchain has been heralded as a magic bullet to solve everything from E. Coli outbreaks to inaccurate seafood labeling to wine fraud. In the coffee world specifically, Starbucks has begun experimenting with the technology to trace coffee beans’ journey from “bean to cup” so consumers can see exactly where their cup of joe was grown.

But GrainChain is one of the first instances I’ve seen that uses blockchain to actually help the farmers themselves. And with the struggles of declining coffee prices and climate change, coffee farmers need all the help they can get.

Decafino Promises to Decaffeinate Any Cup of Coffee in 3 Minutes

Decaffeinated coffee gets a bad rap, since coffee snobs often think it’s a poor substitute for the real thing, with less flavor and nuance.

Decafino is a startup out of Seattle that’s trying to reinvent people’s attitudes towards decaf. The company has developed a small biodegradable pouch — about the size of a tea bag — which, when inserted into coffee, will decaffeinate it in three to four minutes. “We’re the first company in the world to decaffeinate coffee after brewing,” Decafino founder Andy Liu told me over the phone yesterday.

Liu, who has a background in engineering, was inspired to start Decafino because he loved the taste of coffee but not the jitteriness of caffeine. He found decaf bean selections limiting and often less flavorful. So instead of settling for pre-decaffeinated coffee, he decided to make a product that would allow him to turn any coffee into decaf. In 2016 he founded Decafino, which currently has a team of four.

Today the company launched a $25,000 Kickstarter campaign. Decafino is currently self-funded and Liu said they would use the crowdfunding to initialize production.

Decaf coffee is actually primed for some disruption. For consumers, buying decaf beans severely limits your selection. And since there’s less demand for decaf than regular coffee, roasteries often only make one or two decaf roasts at a time. Those who want to try a particular Ethiopian single origin but don’t respond well to caffeine might never get to taste it unless the company decides to make a decaf roast. Pop in a Decafino bag, however, and you can turn any coffee (or tea, or even soda) into a decaf, which widens your selection.

There’s also the fact that the process to decaffeinate green coffee beans often relies on chemical solvents that, Liu says, can remove some of the beans’ flavor. Decafino, on the other hand, relies on a physical process called “adsorption” that doesn’t involve any chemicals. Mineral beads in the porous tea bag attract caffeine molecules from the liquid and trap them, sucking in up to 200 mg of caffeine per bag (an average cup of coffee has around 180g).

Liu said that each bag can decaffeinate 16 ounces of coffee. The decaffeination process takes three to four minutes, but if you want to ensure every last caffeine molecule is gone you can let it soak even longer. For those who are concerned about losing heat by letting their coffee sit out for four minutes, you can also put the bag directly into your preferred coffee brewer and let it suck up the caffeine as you brew (or just use an Ember mug to keep your coffee hot!).

Decafino is aiming for a commercial release in Q2 2020. They’ve already developed partnerships with several local Seattle coffee shops, which will sell their bags and also use them behind the bar to make decaffeinated drinks. The bags will also be available via Decafino’s website.

Liu plans to price the decaffeinating bags at $1.50 to $2.00 each. Added onto your regular coffee drink, that can make a modest coffee purchase into a pretty pricey one — especially if you’re going for multiple cups per day. But considering that decaf coffee beans are already generally priced higher, and many stores add on an extra $1 charge for decaf espresso, it’s not out of line. Plus I’m guessing many consumers will be willing to shell out for the novelty effect, especially if they’re only having one cup of coffee as a decaf.

The real advantage in my mind, though, is on the side of the café staff. I worked as a barista for years and it was always such a hassle when someone ordered decaf. We never made a full pot of it since there wasn’t much demand, so making decaf coffee entailed hunting down the decaf beans, then specially grinding and brewing them. With something like Decafino I could just make a regular coffee drink, pop in the bag, then in three minutes voila! You’ve got decaf.

Seattle has become a bit of a hub for cutting-edge coffee tech (oh how far we’ve come from Starbucks). It’s also home to Atomo Coffee, a startup which makes molecular coffee without the beans. Pop in a Decafino and, come 2020, you could have a bean-free, caffeine-free cup of joe. What a world.

What’s up with the Rite Press? Backers Still Haven’t Received Product, Rite’s Website and Email are Down

What’s going on at the Rite Company, makers of the crowdfunded Rite Press coffee maker? As of this morning, backers on Kickstarter say they still haven’t received their “no-mess” French presses, the company’s website is down and an email The Spoon sent to the company’s CEO bounced back to us. We are in the midst of investigating the situation.

For those new to the saga, Rite Press started as a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign in March of 2018, crowdfunding $1.3 million. But then in February of this year, almost a year after the Rite Presses were supposed to ship, we reported on how backers still hadn’t received their units and Sargam Patel, CEO of the Rite Company, had asked backers for an additional $30 each to fulfill the orders. The situation was aggravated in May of this year when the Rite Press website launched, allowing people to buy the Rite Press directly from the company. Customers who did so would get their Rite Presses first and help fund the fulfillment of outstanding pledges.

That Rite Press website is now down, and evidently has been for about a week and a half. According to a GoDaddy message on the site: “This domain name expired on 8/22/2019 and is pending renewal or deletion.”

Based on backer comments like this one on Kickstarter, many customers still haven’t gotten theirs:

Has the Rite Company finally been ground down? We reached out to Patel via email over the weekend, but as noted, our message bounced back, which would make sense if the web and email domains are no longer active. We also reached out to him via LinkedIn.

We will update this story as we learn more.

riff cold brewed

Riff Cold Brewed Launches New RTD Sparkling Coffee Cherry (not Coffee Bean) Tea

Riff Cold Brewed, a ready to drink beverage maker in the coffee space, recently released its new Alter Ego beverage, an innovative line extension that uses coffee fruit—not coffee beans—to insert itself into the increasingly diverse RTD beverage aisle. 

The drink is made from cascara, the dried coffee “cherry” that’s left behind once the beans are harvested. Cold brewed and carbonated, Alter Ego is a slightly-sweet alternative to the super sugary drinks that are common in grocery stores and gas stations, with 6g of sugar, 35 calories, and 105mg of caffeine—roughly the same amount as a small cup of coffee.

You may have tasted cascara at a hip coffee shop. Prepared like a tisane or tea, it’s known for its fruity flavor, a subtle sweetness, and a mild acidic tang.

We spoke to Paul Evers, Co-Founder and CEO of Riff, about how this product fits into the greater strategy of Riff: “We see the opportunity as consumers are seeking more natural, clean-label alternatives,” he said. “It’s positioned as a sparkling coffee tea.”

In coffee producing countries, spent coffee cherries are sometimes used as compost or sold to exporters to be distributed as tea in the United States, but more often than not, they end up in massive piles at the end of the farm, left to rot.

“We remove harmful environmental impact from rotting cascara that creates methane and toxins that leak into the soils,” Paul explained. “This allows farmers to turn their spent cherries into a new revenue stream. It can be a good uplift for mostly family-owned farms.”

With the c-market price for coffee beans left at under $1 per pound for over a year, the global coffee industry is in crisis. Millions of coffee producers aren’t turning a profit this year. Being able to monetize cascara, a byproduct that’s typically been considered waste, can help make up that difference for farmers.

Riff Cold Brewed isn’t the first company to try bringing cascara into the mainstream. Raleigh’s Slingshot Coffee released the first RTD cascara product back in 2013, and was quickly followed by both industry leaders and startups like Stumptown and Caskai. 

But Paul’s confident the growing competition isn’t too big of a problem: “Many existing cascara products over-extract from the cherry, so the end result is too heavy and strong. Our product is light and refreshing.” The drink’s smoothness also makes it a great base layer for further innovation, so Paul also is exploring launching new flavors from juice concentrates, like stone fruit, berry, or ginger.

As someone who’s tried cascara from several origin countries—tasting flavors I didn’t expect, from honey to lime to bell peppers—I was curious how Riff would handle the diverse range of flavors of cascara. Paul sent me a few cans so I could find out. The first thing I noticed was the cascara’s natural fruitiness, which is similar to that of a cherry or red berry and slightly sweet. The natural mild acidity, enhanced by the carbonation, added a citrus note that made me think of a fruit-infused lemonade. It was smooth, refreshing, and delicate.

The Original Alter Ego is now available in stores across the Pacific Northwest at $2.99 SRP for a 12fl oz can. However, it’s also Riff Cold Brewed’s first product that can be shipped at ambient temperatures, thanks to improved pasteurization processes, making it ripe for direct-to-consumer sales via the company’s website.

SKS Q&A: Atomo’s Founder on Why He’s Creating Coffee Without the Beans

At the Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS}, we’re all about exploring the future of food. But what about the future of drink — specifically the future of our favorite morning beverage, coffee?

That’s exactly what Jarret Stopforth, founder and CTO of Atomo, is trying to brew up (sorry, we had to). Atomo is reverse engineering coffee to make a beverage that tastes just like your favorite cup of joe — but is made without a single coffee bean. And they just raised a tidy $2.6 million to jumpstart their mission.

Stopforth will be at speaking about his vision for the future of coffee at SKS this October. To give you a little advanced taste, we asked the him a few questions about the catalyst to create Atomo and his mission to forge a more sustainable way for people to get their morning caffeine fix. Check out the answers below, and don’t forget to grab your ticket to SKS!

At Atomo, you’re making coffee without any coffee beans. Tell us a little more about how that works.
We looked at green beans, roasted beans and extracted (brewed) coffee samples and through advanced analytical procedures studied the volatile and non-volatile compounds present. By evaluating the individual compounds in coffee we were able to map the most significant ones contributing to the characteristic aroma and flavor of coffee. Once we identified the most significant compounds we evaluated upcycled and natural plant-based material with high sustainability indices as a source for extracting and generating the blend that enables us to create a coffee “dashboard” – with this we can make coffee without the bean and tweak our dashboard to create different flavor and aroma profiles.

What’s your go-to-market strategy?
From our Kickstarter campaign in February, we pre-sold 64,000 cups of coffee to nearly 700 people around the world. We plan to fulfill those backer’s orders by the end of this year/beginning of next with a public product launch in 2020.

Where did you get the idea to make coffee without beans? What was your motivation?
I am an avid coffee drinker and always look for a consistently enjoyable experience that I can rely on. Having my doctorate in food science I am also always looking at food and beverage with an eye on how things are made and how to disrupt or improve them. After having a lot of lousy coffee I said to myself one day that there must be a better way to enjoy one of my favorite beverages and to create it from the ground up where we can control for consistency and quality. I was working on this when Andy approached me to see what I was working on in the background and wished I could be doing full time. And after sitting together to talk through the idea, Andy was motivated to join the quest based on the threats we were seeing with the sustainability and future of coffee – we wanted to create a consistently great cup of coffee that was also good for the environment.

What’s the advantage of making bean-less coffee? Economically, environmentally, etc.
The benefit of beanless coffee is that it is more sustainable by not requiring deforestation as well as using upcycled plant-based materials. Likewise, by using the upcycled ingredients we can create molecular coffee for a fraction of the price it takes to farm beans. We are delivering premium quality coffee that’s accessible to all.

How do you take your coffee?
Cortado.

Keep an eye out for more speaker Q&A’s as we ramp up to our fifth year of SKS on October 7-8 in Seattle! We hope to see you there.

Atomo Raises $2.6 Million for its Molecular Coffee Without the Bean

Atomo announced today that it has raised $2.6 million in seed funding to further develop its molecular coffee that is made without beans. Horizons Ventures, which was an early investor in both Impossible Foods and Perfect Day, provided the entire round.

We covered Atomo when it launched its Kickstarter campaign back in February of this year, explaining the company’s pitch:

Atomo’s so-called “molecular coffee” is made by reverse engineering the flavor and aroma compounds [the] in coffee bean to make a substance that, when brewed, tastes and caffeinates like java. It’s made with natural ingredients and can be brewed one-to-one for coffee in French presses, refillable K-cups, pour-overs, etc.

The end result, Atomo says, is a less bitter, more sustainable cup o’ joe.

Considering the amount of coffee consumed around the world, the environmental pressures around meeting that rising demand and the fact that Atomo blew past its initial Kickstarter goal of $10,000 to crowdfund more than $25,000, it’s no shocker that the company could raise a seed round. Plus, well, molecular coffee is just cool.

Horizons Ventures seems to be the perfect partner for Atomo, as the VC firm has backed some other high-profile future food tech startups such as Impossible, which has been blowing up thanks in part to Burger King’s Impossible Whopper and an impending move into retail. While Perfect Day is just getting off the ground in the market, we tasted its early flora-based “ice cream” and found it to be pretty awesome.

It’s a safe bet that this won’t be the last time we write about Atomo raising money, as the company has ambitious goals for its business. In addition to scaling up development, it plans to be a direct-to-consumer product, launching its own brand via Amazon before selling through retail channels at a price that’s on-par with specialty coffee. That will require plenty of capital, and presumably caffeine-powered days of hard work.

PicoBrew Goes Coffee-First With New ‘Brew Computer’, The Pico MultiBrew

PicoBrew, the Seattle based startup that’s made a name for itself with countertop beer brewing appliances, has set its sites on a different type of beverage with its newest product, the Pico MultiBrew: coffee.

In short, PicoBrew has taken the technology it has developed over the past decade for high-precision beer brewing and applied it to making the perfect cup of joe. The MultiBrew will use what the company calls “brew programs” to govern the time, temperature and fluid flow of each coffee brew.

If that sounds like a very high tech approach to coffee brewing, that’s because it is. This shouldn’t be all that surprising since PicoBrew’s founding trio includes a couple of former Microsoft execs and a food scientist.

“We’re ex-software guys and computer guys, as well as coffee and beer guys,” CEO Bill Mitchell told me last week when we visited the PicoBrew offices near the University of Washington to take a peek at the MultiBrew prototype. “So it made sense for us to start with the hardest drink [with] beer and go from there.”

While the MultiBrew is the first ‘coffee-first’ machine from PicoBrew, it isn’t the first that makes coffee. In fact, Mitchell’s brother Jim (a PicoBrew cofounder and a food scientist by training) started making coffee with their very first appliance, the Zymatic, and both the PicoBrew Z (pro unit) and Pico C (consumer) can make cold brew.

And then there’s the Pico U, the multi-beverage brewing appliance the company unveiled in the spring of 2018 and ultimately pulled the plug on even after hitting their Kickstarter funding target.  According to Mitchell, what they heard from their community was that while they liked the Pico U’s ability to make multiple types of drinks like coffee, beer and kombucha, ultimately the U wasn’t coffee-forward enough.

“Coffee, coffee, coffee is what we were told,” said Mitchell.

And so unlike the PicoBrew U — which looked like a scaled down version of the Pico C — the MultiBrew looks and acts like a coffee maker, allowing the user to brew different sizes ranging from single serve to a full carafe of coffee. The MultiBrew also lets users brew using their own coffee grounds or from pods that are made of the same compostable pulp paper material as with the Pico’s beer-ingredient packaging, the PicoPaks.

While I’ve given up on Keurig because coffee from pods generally tastes bad (not to mention all the plastic waste), PicoBrew has a spin on coffee pods that could make me reconsider. Not only are they are designing their own (compostable) pods that will not only apply precision parameters specifically designated by the coffee’s roaster, but are also designing the pods to mimic pourover brew methods rather than the brute force heated water injection method used by a typical pod-brew system.

Mitchell showed me a prototype of a MultiBrew brewpod with an laser-cut pattern through which the water will be poured on the coffee (photo below).

Similar to the way the company worked closely with craft brewers to create ingredients for PicoPaks, they are now in discussions with a variety of craft coffee makers about the possibility of cobranded coffee pods for the MultiBrew.  Unlike Keurig, which tightly controls the supply of coffee that goes into their coffee pods, PicoBrew is telling smaller roasters they can both provide roasted beans for their high tech system as well as optimized brewing parameters for the specific roast.

With all this emphasis on coffee, it should be noted that the MultBrew is true to its name and does brew drinks other than coffee ranging from kombucha to golden milk to, yes, beer. The MultiBrew will allow users to brew beer using the same kegs as the Pico C by putting the keg directly under the dispense mechanism (rather than using plastic tubing of the Pico C).

While the multi-drink capability of the MultiBrew does makes it stand apart from other high-tech coffee machines on the market, will it be enough? There’s certainly lots of competition in the high-tech coffee space, as companies like SharkNinja have sold millions of the Ninja Coffee Bar while newer entrants like the Terra Kaffe are in market with products that not only can grind coffee, but can make espresso and milk-based coffee drinks using highly-tailored brewing parameters.

We will see soon enough. The MultiBrew, which will be priced “in the same range” as the machines like the Ninja Coffee Bar (below $200), will be available for preorder in the fall and will ship in 2020.

A Look at the Terra Kaffe TK-01, a Grind & Brew Espresso Machine That’s Basically a Barista-in-a-Box

In 2016, I plopped down $300 bucks in hopes I’d soon be in possession of a coffee machine that both grinds whole coffee beans and brews a nice cup of espresso.

Almost three years later, I’ve yet to see my Spinn.

So not surprisingly last week when I tried a new do-everything coffee machine called the TK-01 – a machine that started shipping in May – it made me wish I’d waited and ordered it instead.

I sat down with Sahand Dilmaghani, the CEO of New York City based Terra Kaffe, to discuss his company’s first product as he made me a couple different espresso drinks.

So what does the TK-01 do? In short, pretty much everything. In fact, with its ability to not only make almost any espresso-based drink under the sun as well as inject frothy milk from an accompanying carafe, it’s not too far off to call the TK-01 a little barista-in-a-box.

What I liked the most about the TK-01 was the fairly straightforward touch screen interface that not only allowed you to easily pick your favorite drink and start a brew, but also let you to go one level deeper to optimize your specific drink. As you can see in the video below, when brewing an espresso you can choose coffee amount, set a specific temperature, opt between a single or double shot and even set the amount of crema you want (crema being the “Guinness” froth you get at the top of your drink).

Starting a Brew With The Terra Kaffe TK-01

Automating milk drinks and frothing is straightforward with the machine’s accompanying carafe that injects milk or milk substitutes into the drink. Dilmaghani told me the company also sells extra carafes (the machine comes with one standard) so users can switch between, say, 2% cow milk and soy milk.

The machine’s whole bean repository takes up to a 12 ounce bag of coffee, which are then ground using a conical burr grinder.  The TK-01 also comes with a grinder bypass in case the user wants to brew pre-ground coffee.

Interestingly, unlike so many of the new coffee machines coming to market, the TK-01 doesn’t have connectivity. According to Dilmaghani, that was a conscious design decision. “We decided to focus on one thing with our first product. Let’s get to market with this, and then let’s think about all those secondary features we want to build in.”

The TK-01 isn’t cheap for a home coffee machine at $745, but my guess is the primary customer is going to be coffee aficionados who wouldn’t mind paying more for what is essentially a barista robot. That said, I also think the product would make sense in small offices, though Dilmaghani said the product was designed for the home user (even while he told me about 20% of their orders so far have been small offices).

Bottom line: for those who want a grind & brew coffee machine that automates the brewing of espresso drinks in pretty much any configuration you want, the TK-01 could be the option for you. And, unlike the Spinn, the TK-01 is actually available today.

You can see a video walk-through of the device over on our Spoon Instagram story.

urban coffee club berlin

Now You Can Get Unlimited Coffee From Cafes For $11/wk (in Berlin)

Coffee bean subscriptions are all the rage right now, but Bonaverde, originally a coffee roast-grind-brew hardware startup, is taking the hype to a whole new level: a flat rate subscription for cups of coffee brewed in over 100 real-world locations in Berlin.

The team’s newest project, the Urban Coffee Club, offers Berlin coffee lovers unlimited cups of coffee in more than 100 locations in the city for a flat rate of €10 per week.

To learn more about the origins of the Urban Coffee Club (UCC), as well as how it makes sense economically, we reached out to Alex Greif, COO at Bonaverde.

“Like Spotify, we offer unlimited coffee at a flat rate,” Alex said. “But like Airbnb, we don’t own any of the locations that serve the coffee, we just connect them to the service and let consumers choose which one they’d like to go to.”

Here’s how it works: Bonaverde partners with “coffee corners”, which can be cafes, restaurants, yoga studios, bookstores, or anywhere that has existing coffee equipment. Bonaverde sends those corners roasted coffee beans for free—much of it from Bonaverde’s own supply chain, but also from local roasters who offer free beans to the service to get their product in front of consumers.

Each week, Bonaverde selects 5-10 different coffee beans from their own stash and partner roasters, then delivers them to coffee corners across Berlin according to predictive models that anticipate demand. Each location is given one type of coffee bean, and it’s never the same week-to-week. Consumers then have the power to look at the app and choose a coffee corner according to proximity, ratings and reviews, or the bean offering. Coffee corners simply brew the beans and hand it over to the UCC customer.

“In Germany,” Alex continued, “it’s common for businesses to provide some kind of side service that attracts people. Often it’s DHL package drop-off points, but that takes a lot of storage and you have a DHL employee in and out every day. With coffee, it’s totally free, it takes virtually zero extra storage, and coffee corners can have a steady flow of relevant customers stopping by.”

The club’s coffee corners, for the most part, do not run their business on coffee sales, but food. The hopes are that UCC customers will come get their coffee, then stay for a sandwich or treat. And, if their experience is positive, maybe they’ll come back in the future.

It makes sense for the coffee corners who are happy to have additional foot traffic. It makes sense for local roasters who want to get their coffee in front of customers. But does it make sense for Bonaverde? At just €1 per cup of coffee on the Lite plan, do the economics work out?

“The idea is that creating an economy of scale—buying coffee for over 100 locations—brings down the cost and makes it work,” Alex said. 

He also explained that most customers don’t actually drink a cup per day in cafes. Many of them have a cup at home or at work. Paying €10 per week for unlimited coffee, for many people, is less about the certainty of getting coffee at a great price, but the ease and availability of the cafe experience.

The Urban Coffee Club has only been live for just over one week, but there are already over 200 paying members. Alex will soon have promoters on the streets telling people about the club, and he’s eagerly signing on new coffee corners in different neighborhoods of the city.

Alex has his sights set beyond Berlin for 2020: “We want to prove it here, then build it into a platform solution where we can basically add in the roasters, add in the corners, add in the users, and then take it to any city in the world and replicate it.”

The Urban Coffee Club has a way to go before it’s ready to dominate Europe’s coffee market. For one, the signup experience in the app has been so problem-ridden that at a pop-up UCC booth, they had to full-on embrace how bad it was with a display that humorously said “Home of the *worst* signup experience”. Bonaverde’s also looking for investor partners to give them the capital they need to continue growing. And with only a week in the books and zero precedent for this kind of business model with coffee, it’s still unclear how the model will fare long-term.

But after having created the Urban Coffee Club completely from scratch—from raw idea to 100 coffee corners—in just six weeks, who knows? Maybe it won’t be long before we’re all paying a flat rate for coffee after all.