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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Rite Press

Canadian Sisters Launch Capra Press, a French Press That Doesn’t Oversteep and Eliminates Messy Cleanup

Mia and Zoey Knobler had a love-hate relationship with the French press. The two sisters from British Columbia loved the richer flavored coffee that resulted from the steep and plunge appliance, but hated the messy clean-up and the over-brewed coffee resulting from continued exposure to the grounds.

So they set to making a French press that had all the upside of that full-bodied first pour but not the downside of over-brewed coffee and sludgy cleanup. The result was the Capra Press, which debuted this week on Indiegogo and has raised over $32 thousand as of this writing.

The sisters teamed up with product designer Jeff Polster to create a French press with two interesting differentiators. The first is a mesh filter that seals after pressing, preventing bitter coffee from over-extraction. The filter utilizes silicon umbrella valves that seal the grounds into the bottom after plunging.

The second feature is a removable bottom that enables easier cleanup. Called the “grounds-keeper,” the twist-off bottom allows the user to dispose of the grounds into the trash or compost.

Capra Press Founders (L to R): Jeff Polster, Zoey Knobler, Mia Knobler

The team worked out of the Revelstoke Idea Factory, a community maker space and design lab in Revelstoke, British Columbia set up by the City of Revelstoke and the Revelstoke Fabrication Lab Society. After two years of prototyping and testing their ideas, the trio launched the Capra Press on Indiegogo this week.

Longtime readers of The Spoon might recall another French press project called the Rite Press that raised $1.3 million on Kickstarter but never delivered the product. When I asked Mia Knobler about the inevitable comparisons some might make to the ill-fated Rite Press, she pointed out that the Rite Press was offered at an artificially low price ($40) that didn’t consider the true cost of manufacturing. The Capra Press Indiegogo pricing starts at $85 for ‘Super Early Birds’ and has a retail price of $125.

“We are very far along in the process with the Capra Press and have been conservative with all our estimates to ensure that we can fulfill all the orders from our customers without compromising on quality or innovation,” said Knobler.

While all hardware crowdfunding campaigns carry some level of risk, the Capra Press is off to a good start, with over $32 thousand raised in just two days from nearly 300 backers. With 34 days left, the campaign has a long runway to raise more funding.

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.

The “No Mess French Press” Just Broke the Record for Coffee Products on Kickstarter

Using a French Press is one way to brew undoubtedly tasty coffee—if you actually know how to do it correctly.

By correctly, I mean knowing the exact temperature the water has to be, how long the coffee needs to brew, and how to clean the darn thing without dragging coffee grounds from one end of the countertop to the other.

The folks behind Rite Press want to make all of those activities easier for consumers. Billed as the “no mess French Press,” the product is a new iteration of the popular coffee brewer that regulates time and temperature. It also uses patented technology to make cleanup considerably easier.

Founder and CEO Sargam Patel used his background in physics and engineering to come up with the concept back in 2015, and Rite Press has been in development ever since. The basic process remains the same as a normal French Press: measure grounds, pour water, let the coffee brew, press down on plunger.

Where Rite Press sets itself apart is with the extra features that give the user a more sophisticated choice and the ability to brew with more precision.

To that end, the Rite Press comes with a removable thermometer you use to measure water temperature—a crucial factor for brewing good coffee—before you combine it with the grounds.  Not sure how long to let the coffee brew after adding the water? Just watch the hourglass feature, which attaches to the press via magnet. Once the sand inside is drained, the coffee is ready.

One of the biggest complaints about the traditional French Press is the mess involved with cleaning it. Many have tried to solve this problem. However, all those solutions involve extra steps or utensils, which translates to extra money and/or time.

With Rite Press, pushing the plunger down forces the coffee grounds into a removable chamber at the bottom of the pot, which then twists off for easy disposal of the grounds. (I’m assuming this is where Patel’s physics background comes into play.) Since I haven’t personally tried the product yet, I can’t say how much this improves the cleanup process of a French Press. But at the very least, there are fewer pieces to scrub grounds from.

There’s clearly a market for this reinvention: Rite Press’ Kickstarter campaign launched in January 2018 with a $20,000 goal and currently has over $1 million in pledges, which places them atop the all-time rankings for coffee projects on Kickstarter. There are still two days left to back the project. For doing so, you’ll get an assortment of Rite Press products, which start shipping in March.