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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Kickstarter

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!

Breadwinner Launches Presale for Its Sensor-Powered Sourdough Starter Monitoring Tool

If you thought sourdough mania ended when the pandemic wound down, it’s worth scanning social media to realize nothing is further from the truth. The groups and rosters of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram overflow with topics as diverse as “Sourdough Starters – Sourdough Support Group,” “Sourdough Geeks,” and “Sourdough Bread Bakers India.”

Sourdough is about community; no one knows that better than Fred Benenson, the man behind Breadwinner, a sensor-driven tool that helps home bakers manage their sourdough starters. Breadwinner, a high-tech jar lid, launches its crowdfunding campaign today, hoping to hit $35,000 in pledges. This new entry to the crowd-funding arena is a data drive device that uses battery-powered sensors to measure a starter’s height and temperature; Breadwinner and its companion app seamlessly sync with the cloud to record the starter’s behavior over 36 hours. The crowdfunding campaign even includes an option for an add-on where Benenson and company will send you Benenson’s own Breadberry starter.

Once your starter hits its peak fermentation, Breadwinner lets you know it’s time to start making your dough and gives you a precise measurement of how long it took (e.g., “Your starter took 9 hours and 32 minutes to reach its peak.”)

Benenson’s interest in sourdough blossomed when he happened upon a cooking class where the guy teaching it “has a Ph.D. in yeast biology.” It became a learning experience for the tech veteran starting around 2010 when his journey began into the finer aspects of working with a starter. After immersing himself in his work at Kickstarter, Benenson took a break around 2018 and 2019 and dug into the social media sourdough world. Tickled when he learned that people named their starter cultures, Benenson was ready to make an impact in the space.

“It was really a little bit of a mystery when it behaved well and when it didn’t,” Benenson told The Spoon in a recent interview. “I knew if I kept on it, (the starter) would get into shape.” Deploying his refined data skills, he made a spreadsheet to help him track his starter’s behavior and learn its optimal time for baking.

Success with an early prototype of Breadwinner led to some positive feedback which encouraged Benenson to enlist the help of some hardware experts and build the product he brings to market on Kickstarter.

“I thought, okay, if I could make (the initial version) work, and people would spend $150 on it, there’s a market here,” Benenson said. “I thought I would sell a dozen, which would’ve been a successful beta. But we ended up selling three or four dozen of them, got some nice writeups, and got on people’s radar. And I was like, oh, okay. This is, there’s enough of a market for me to take it to the next phase.”

While other products manage or facilitate manipulation of sourdough starters, Benenson knew building a community around his Breadwinner would give it an edge. The role of community with Breadwinner is for users to share recipes, provide each other tips and tricks, and even if need be, offer tech support.

“There’s a couple of reasons I’ve decided to start with a community,” he explained. “First is it’s kind of just my intuition, and I spent a lot of time in that kind of open source and Wikipedia and Creative Commons world before I worked at Kickstarter. And when I worked at Kickstarter, I think one of the defining features of running Kickstarter projects was that you get a really great community at the end of it. And those people follow you, and if you treat them well and you’re honest and straightforward with them, they’re fans for life.”

You can check out the Breadwinner crowdfunding campaign here.

Introducing Breadwinner

SpiceHero’s Creator Wants to Modernize a Stone Age Tool To Help Make Tastier Spices

If you’re a chef or a spice aficionado, there’s a good chance you use a mortar and pestle to crush your spices. But for the rest of us who are happy to buy our spices in the form of pre-ground powders from the grocery store, we’re missing out.

That’s at least according to Thomas Weigele, who is currently running a campaign on Kickstarter to get his invention – an automated mortar and pestle called the SpiceHero – funded. So why would someone want to create a modern version of a tool that has been in use since the Stone Age?

According to Wiegele, the idea came back when he was on the APAC consumer insights team for B/S/H Appliances, where his team would conduct ethnographic studies on markets in Asia. During one study about cooking behaviors across all socioeconomic groups in India, Weigele says one insight came up over and over: “Preparing spices with a mixer-grinder is good, but taste was much better when my mom or grandma prepared it with a Mortar and Pestle.”

He and a colleague soon realized it wasn’t just nostalgia. When they ran tests, it became clear this ancient tool for smashing and grinding spices brought out flavors in ways other methods did not. Electric spice grinder/mixers slice the spices into a uniform dust, while a mortar and pestle would result in a pleasing “mix of coarse and fine particles for dry spices and pastes have more texture and can extract the oil from the seeds, herbs and vegetables.”

Those insights resulted in B/S/H approving a project led by Wiegele to make a prototype for a semi-automated mortar and pestle machine. Unfortunately, the device, which ground the spices by rotating the stone inside the bowl, did not provide the same results as a traditional mortar and pestle. Weigele and others proposed a fully automated (with pounding motion and all) version, but B/S/H management did not give the green light.

When Wiegele left B/S/H and decided to head to school to get his masters degree in 2019, he couldn’t shake the idea of an automated mortar and pestle, so he soon hired a freelance engineer and started working on a prototype. Two iterations later, he was ready to launch his device on Kickstarter.

The SpiceHero looks a bit like a small stand mixer, only instead of beaters or mixing blades, the machine featured a pestle that pounds the contents of the bowl (mortar) at the rate of once a second. Wiegele hopes the machine, which starts at €140 as one of the reward tiers, will be ready to ship to backers in about a year.

First, though, the campaign needs to get funded. Wiegele has capped the amount for industrial design in the campaign at €20 thousand ($23.4 thousand), and after that, the rest will be used for tooling and inventory. With about three weeks to go, the campaign for the Spice Hero stands at about 50% funded around about €10 thousand.

If you’d like to back a project that could up your spice game with this modernized take on an ancient tool, you can check out the SpiceHero Kickstarter page here.

Kickstarter: Bottle+ is a Waste-Free Thermos That Gives You Fizzy Water on the Go

We drink an insane amount of bubble water in our household. And while it’s all from recyclable aluminum cans, it still feels… excessive. Which is why the new Bottle+ project on Kickstarter caught my eye. The SPARK Bottle+ is a travel thermos with a built-in, re-usable CO2 chamber to fizz up your water while you’re on the go. In addition keeping your drinks as maximum fizz even as the thermos jostles around in your backpack, the Bottle+ is also waste free.

There are three main components to the SPARK Bottle+, the main drinking vessel, a portable CO2 chamber that attaches to the vessel, and a refilling station. Just like a SodaStream, you place a CO2 cylinder inside the refilling station. When you’re ready to go, affix the chamber to the thermos and press it down onto the refilling station to load your Bottle+ with CO2. When you’re out, press the button on the CO2 chamber to carbonate your water. A full chamber can make produce 15 bottles of sparkling water before needing a recharge.

The whole system is circular and reusable so there is really no waste. The bottle itself is obviously reusable, and like the SodaStream the CO2 canisters can be swapped out and turned in for refilling. Plus, there are no pods to be packaged and shipped.

Launched on August 24th, the Bottle+ campaign has already blown past it Kickstarter goal of $29, 510 and has raised more than $77,000 as of this writing (with 31 days still to go). Early backers can pick up a complete Bottle+ system for €139 (~$164 USD). According to the campaign page, the Bottle+ system will cost €179 (~$211 USD). Units will ship in June 2022.

According to Grandview Research, the global market for sparkling water is valued at $29.71 billion, and projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12.6 percent from this year to 2028. So Bottle+ is certainly launching at the right time.

The entire hydration space is actually chock-a-block with companies vying to improve the water you drink and how you drink it. In March of this year, Pani launched a crowdfunding campaign for its water filter/mineralizer/flavor pod system. Earlier this month, Cirkul raised $36 million for its reusable water bottle and flavor cartridge combo. And just last week, drink giant PepsiCo announced that it was bringing its SodaStream Pro fizzy water dispenser to college campuses.

As with any Kickstarter project, backing it is definitely buyer beware. There is a big difference between developing a prototype and scaling up to mass production — just ask the backers of Rite-Press and iGulu. However, if Bottle+ can pull it off, that will be a definite plus for the planet and for soda water addicts like me.

Click & Grow’s Tabletop Smart Garden Is Insanely Popular on Kickstarter Right Now

It says something about the popularity of at-home indoor farms when a Kickstarter campaign for one meets its funding goal in 20 minutes. 

Such was the case recently with Click & Grow, an Estonian-born startup that cites NASA as the chief inspiration behind its smart garden systems. Click & Grow was one of the original wave of companies bringing the concept of at-home indoor farming to the masses. Thanks to the pandemic, food supply chain disruptions, and general concerns about health and wellness, the idea of growing produce on your own countertop has only become bigger over the last year or so.

Hence the company’s Kickstarter campaign for its Click & Grow 25 device reaching its $35,000 goal so darn quickly when it launched a few days ago.

The Click & Grow 25 is a tabletop farm that, in the company’s own words, “works like a Nespresso coffee machine, only instead of coffee pods, you use biodegradable Smart Soil plant pods to grow fresh greens all year round.” The Smart Soil is one of Click & Grow’s claims to fame. It’s a plant-based growth substrate that was developed in-house. When placed in pods that are then inserted into the garden, the Smart Soil releases a mixture of nutrients, oxygen, and water, with levels of each calculated for the specific seed type in each pod.

An accompanying mobile app provides timelines and grow tips for each plant, along with reminders and the ability to control the lighting settings on the actual device. It also offers recipe suggestions.

The device also features removable trays, so that one can be removed at harvest time and replaced with another full of fresh seeds, keeping the grow cycle constant. As of now, it can grow 25 plants simultaneously per module. Since the device is modular, grow units can be added based on the number of people in a household. Click & Grow recommends one unit for a single-person household, one to two for a couple, and two to three and above for families.

The campaign has already nabbed over $360,000 and has 22 days left. Those that pledge $499 or more get one Click & Grow 25 device that includes a three-month supply of grow pods. That’s a substantially lower price point than the $799 estimated retail price the device will carry when it is officially launched.

Click & Grow says devices will ship in February of 2022.  

  

Numilk’s Home Plant-Based Milk Machine Blows Past Kickstarter Goal

I love my oat milk in the morning, but I don’t love the big plastic jugs it comes in. It just feels wasteful, especially since so little plastic actually gets recycled. With that in mind, could the Numilk Home be the key to more conscientious plant-based milk consumption? Given how quickly the company has blown past its Kickstarter goal, a lot of other people seem to think so.

The Numilk Home is a countertop version of the Numilk kiosk, which is a large plant-based milk dispenser installed at grocery stores across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. For the kiosk installations, users place an empty Numilk glass bottle under a dispenser and choose from a selection of plant-based milks.

For the Numilk Home, the main concept remains the same, only on a smaller scale. The countertop devices uses a combination of ingredient pouches and special bottles. The ingredient pouches contain a variety of different plain and flavored milks (almond, soy, oat, chocolate, etc.). The Numilk bottles have a special emulsifier at the bottom.

To make milk, users place the ingredient pouch in the top and push a button. The ingredients are dispensed with water into the special bottle. Special technology built into the base of the machine emulsifies the milk. We reached out for more details about how this emulsifying technology works (e.g., Are bottles single use?) and will update when we hear back.

Numilk founders actually pitched their device and company on a March episode of Shark Tank, accepting an investment offer of up to $2 million from Mark Cuban. Now Numilk is reaching out through Kickstarter to crowdfund the rest, and is off to a strong start. As of today, Numilk has pulled in nearly $210,000 in pledge funding, more than doubling its initial goal of $100,000. The campaign still has 27 days to go.

In some ways, the Numilk feels kinda like the Juicero, the infamously expensive juicing machine that flamed out a few years back. You’re not just buying a machine, you’re buying into the Numilk ecosystem, and will be reliant on their pouches. And, as with any hardware crowdfunding campaign, there is the chance that Numilk won’t be able to move from prototype to scaled production, a very real problem on the platform.

But if you want to back the project, a Numilk Home machine will set you back $199. Numilk ingredient pouches will cost between $3 and $5 and will be available through the Numilk website. The company says it will ship the devices in August of 2022.

After Crowdfunding $2.2M and a Year Delay, Chopbox Asks for More Money

Sometimes, the hardest advice to take is your own. Every time I write about a crowdfunded hardware campaign on Kickstarter or Indiegogo I include a “buyer beware” disclaimer. These types of projects have a tendency to run into production issues that either severely delay their fulfillment (see: Spinn coffee maker) or result in the product not being fulfilled at all (see: Rite Press).

Despite knowing all that, last September I plunked down $99 (plus $20 for shipping) for the Chopbox, which promised to be a cutting board + timer + sanitizer + scale + knife sharpener all in one. Sure it was a bit gimmicky, but my cutting boards were getting long in the tooth so I figured why not.

I wasn’t the only one who thought the Chopbox was a good idea. The crowdfunding campaign raised more than $2.2 million from nearly 16,000 backers across Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

The original ship date promised by the Yes Company (creators of the Chopbox) was December 2019. Given that I backed it in September of 2019, the three-month turnaround seemed too good to be true. And yet, I proceeded, though knowing in the back of my mind that it would most likely be delayed.

And delayed it was.

In February of 2020, the Yes Company said it had experienced delays in China because of the then-emerging COVID-19 pandemic. But in the subsequent months there have been more production delays. Long story short, almost a year after the initial ship date promise, I have yet to receive my Chopbox, and, it looks like neither have most other people.

According to a company update on Kickstarter this week, the Yes Company said it shipped “two batches” (whatever that means) to the U.S. and Europe. In the same breath however, the company said that shipping has gotten more expensive over this past year and it asked backers to cough up more money. In my case, I think they are asking for an extra $30, but it’s hard to tell based on the information they provided.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Yes Company has sold or is selling Chopboxes on the general market at Touch of Modern and on the Yes Company website (though when you try to actually buy it on the Yes website, it returns a message saying “We are not able to accept online payments,” which is… weird for an online transaction). It’s unclear whether these transactions are being fulfilled before crowdfunders get theirs. We reached out to the Yes Company to find out more information.

The comments section of the Chopbox Kickstarter campaign has understandably lit up with disgruntled backers demanding refunds and cries of “scam.”

I can’t go that far, but I’m definitely not giving the Yes Company any more money or back anything they do again. I should have heeded my own advice. Hopefully I won’t get similarly burned by the Bru tea maker I also backed last year and have yet to receive.

You May Not Need the Brut Super Juicer, but Watching it Crush Fruit is Fun

You know those hydraulic press videos on YouTube that are super popular? The ones where an industrial press basically smashes various items like soda cans, basketballs and red hot steel? Now imagine one of those presses in your kitchen crushing fruits and veggies, and you have the Brut Super Juicer.

Now in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign, the Brut Super Juicer lets you create cold-pressed (literally) juices on your kitchen counter. According to the campaign page, the Brut exerts “1,798 lbs. of force (equal to 8,000 newton force),” easily squeezing oranges, apples, pomegranates and even avocados.

The campaign doesn’t have many details about the device (a red flag for potential backers), but does talk about its “Proprietary Container” (their quotes), which is a key part of how the machine works. The campaign wording is a little confusing, but basically the “Proprietary Container” has a strainer and a screener that prevents a fruit’s skin and other non-juicey bits (like an avocado pit) from getting into your finished juice. The campaign also says the “Proprietary Container” is compostable.

Video Via Kickstarter

I’m not sure if you need one, or that I would back it, but I am sure that I enjoy watching a bunch of blueberries get pulverized into juice or an peach being crushed into paste. The campaign has ten videos up of the Brut and I couldn’t stop myself and watched them all.

If, after watching the parade of fruit pummeling, you want to cast your lot and back this project, the Brut will set you back $180 and promises to ship in July of 2021.

Given how many crowdfunded hardware horror stories we’ve covered over the years though, be careful that you don’t get any high expectations crushed if the machine doesn’t actually materialize.

Kickstarter: Cakewalk Brings Edible 3D Printing to Your Home

Damn those adorable bakers on The Great British Baking Show! They make piping and decorating cakes look so easy. But anytime I fill up a piping bag to add decorative lines or write out “Happy Birthday” on a cake or tart, it winds up looking like a crime scene.

But perhaps I can make up for my lack of manual precision with some automation. Cakewalk is a kit that launched on Kickstarter today, which promises to let you 3D print elegant, edible, designs and writings on your home baked goods.

How much it costs and what you get depends on the level you back. At the low end, €49 (~$57 USD) gets you just the core extruder. At €89 (~$104 USD) you get the complete kit, which includes the extruder as well as the motor that you assemble and attach to your own 3D printer. On the high end, €459 (~$537 USD) gets you a 3D printer with the Cakewalk already assembled.

According to the campaign page, the Cakewalk has been tested and works with chocolate, meringue, vegetable puree, ketchup, guacamole and honey. Simply stir up the ingredients, add them to the Cakewalk tube (that you attached to your 3D printer) and print out your designs.

The printer works with existing 3D printing software, and the parts can be easily added to and removed from an existing 3D printers, so there is no need to buy an additional 3D printer just for food.

We’ve actually written about Marine Coré-Baillais, the creator of Cakewalk, before. She was CEO of French 3D-printing company Sculpteo before going to culinary school to become a pastry chef. As Spoon Founder, Mike Wolf, wrote at the time:

I asked Baillais why she decided to tackle 3D food printing after working at a big 3D printing services startup focused on enterprise applications. She told me it was in part due the frustration that had built up over the past decade at the relative lack of interest from the food industry in using 3D printing.

As of today, Cakewalk has already raised $5,000 of its $11,752 campaign goal. The company says it will ship Cakewalks to backers in December of this year. In the meantime, you can finish up this season of The Great British Baking Show for even more inspiration.

WANT: Icey Turns Any Beverage into a Frozen Slushy Drink

Given that we have moved from summer into fall, you may not think that you are as interested in a frosty cold beverage. But that is probably because you have not checked out Icey’s crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.

In a nutshell, Icey is basically a cup that you fill with the liquid of your choice (juice, soda, boozey drinks). An attachment has a number of blades that constantly stir the drink (powered presumably by batteries, or wizardry). Put the steadily stirred drink into the freezer and voila! After about an hour and a half your drink is transformed into a slushy concoction.

According to the promotional video, because your drink is stirred as its freezing, the result is the drinkable crystalized goodness. It’s not turned into a block of ice that you need to chip, and it’s not diluted because its blended with a bunch of ice cubes.

Image via Kickstarter

Now, we should be clear. We have not tried the device ourselves, so how well it actually works, but it seems pretty straightforward. The big hurdle at first, however, is the price. Super Early Birds can back Icey for $39, which isn’t cheap, and if you only have one, that means only one person can enjoy one drink every 90 minutes.

What you won’t have to worry about is Icey reaching its crowdfunding goal. The campaign set out to raise $15,000, but has already raised more than $324,000 with 40 days to go.

However! As we are wont to do here at The Spoon, buyer beware with any crowdfunding campaign, especially hardware campaigns. There is a huge different between creating a prototype and moving into mass production.

But if you can stomach the risk, and the project comes through, you can chill with your own homemade slushies when Iceys ship next May.

Kickstarter: CUPPLE Churns Ice Cream on Your Countertop

One of the wedding gifts I got lo’ those many years ago was an ice cream maker. Between the heating of the cream, getting the ingredients just right, storing the churn bowl in the freezer overnight, we used the machine all of two times before deciding ice cream was just much easier and tastier, to buy it from the store.

So I’m curious about the CUPPLE, currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, which promises to let me make fresh-churned ice cream directly on my countertop anytime I want.

Think of the CUPPLE as a Keurig for ice cream. You put a shelf-stable cup of base ingredients in the countertop machine and push a button. The CUPPLE automatically chills and churns the base to produce ice cream and sorbet in roughly three minutes.

The advantages of this system, according to the CUPPLE creators, is that you get better ice cream because it isn’t stored frozen for weeks (the self-contained ingredient cups don’t need to be frozen), and you get a denser, more velvety ice cream because air isn’t whipped into the ice cream.

The CUPPLE has dual chambers to churn two servings at once. The machine itself is roughly a foot and a half long by 14 inches wide and nearly a foot high. Initial flavors being offered are Belgian chocolate, Madagascar vanilla, traditional cookies, Chilean raspberry, Colombian passion fruit and Bengal mango.

Backers can pick up a CUPPLE machine for €250 (~$300 USD, plus $44 shipping to the U.S.), which comes with 24 cups of ice cream and is supposed to ship in June of 2021. Additional cups can be purchase in multi-packs that cost between €2.5 ($2.95) to €2.10 ($2.48) per cup. The CUPPLE has already blown past its Kickstarter goal of $47,000 to raise more than $86,000, with 12 days still left to go in its campaign.

As much as I like ice cream, I don’t think CUPPLE will count me as a backer. First, that’s a lot of money for a single-use device (okay, dual use if you count sorbet as a separate thing). But more importantly, I’m not a huge fan of proprietary, Keurig-style machines. What happens if CUPPLE shuts down? What can I do with it then if there are no cups to re-order?

Additionally, as with any Kickstarter hardware project, there are concerns about whether the product will ship on time. There’s a big leap between building a prototype and building at scale (just ask Cinder and Rite Press). Plus in the Risks section of the campaign, the company says that its still perfecting the sterilization of its ice mix packaging and may only ship sorbets at first.

I’d love for a company to create an easier (and affordable) way to for at-home consumers to make ice cream, but I don’t think CUPPLE is the solution for me.

Will Pure Over’s All-Glass, No-Paper Filter Coffee Device Win Over Crowdfunders?

There is no shortage of solutions out there promising to improve your morning cup of coffee. But that hasn’t stopped Pure Over from throwing its hat into the ring with a new pour over solution that launched on Kickstarter today.

Pure Over’s is pitching an all-glass pour over system that doesn’t require anything beyond ground coffee and water. In other words, no filters. The Pure Over uses a “cake filtration” system, so traditional filters are not necessary.

I spoke with Etai Rahmil, CEO and Founder of the Portland, OR-based Pure Over this week by phone. During our call, he explained the benefits of his all-glass setup. First, it cuts down on waste because you don’t need single-use paper filters. But also, “Paper filters are superfine, they filter out the oils,” Rahmil said. “The glass filter brings out more bold chewy mouthfeels. Like a french press.” Additionally, Rahmil said that since glass does not impart any flavors, like a metal filter might, you get a more unadulterated drink. “The only thing in your cup is coffee,” he said.

As noted above, we’ve written about a ton of coffee\-related Kickstarter products over the years. Many of these have suffered huge delays. (Hello, Spinn and Kelvin!) Others never reached their backers. (Hello Rite Press!) I asked Rahmil why his product would be different and why he’ll be able to make the difficult leap from prototype to full-scale production.

“We’ve been working on this for two years,” Rahmil said of the product, “I think that me being a glass artist, I’ve been able to prototype and design this in a way that makes manufacturing easier. There are no electronics. No plastics.”

Rahmil said that they’ve already done a small manufacturing run of 100 units to send out to friends and family and coffee influencers.

As with backing any crowdfunded hardware, caveat emptor, buyer beware. You can get your own Pure Over for pledge of at least $35, with units expected to ship in December of this year.