Looks like the hot beverage sector continues to, uhh, heat up. Yesterday, HeatGenie announced that it had raised $6 million to complete product development of its self-heating, ready-to-drink beverage packaging and bring it to market. The financing was let by ARTIS Labs with Almanac Investments participating, and brings the total amount raised by the company to $9.6 million.
HeatGenie has developed a can that can heat its contents rapidly through a chemical reaction. When users twist the lid, dry mixtures of aluminum and silica inside the can interact and produce heat. The single use can produces a hot beverage in two minutes, and can be used for coffee, tea, soups, bone broth and more. Different contents require different amounts of heat, and HeatGenie can alter the chemical elements to ratchet up the heat produced.
The patented heating technology only takes up about 10 percent of the HeatGenie can, and the company says that its the smallest self-heating beverage technology on the market.
HeatGenie’s go-to-market strategy is to partner with beverage companies who would use the self-heating technology for their own drinks. Food Navigator reports using a HeatGenie is projected to add roughly a dollar to $1.50 to the price of a drink. The first HeatGenie-packaged drinks are expected to hit the market this summer, though the company didn’t provide specifics.
If all this talk of heated single-serve beverages sounds familiar — congratulations! You are an avid reader of The Spoon, as just this morning we wrote about Inductive Intelligence, which makes an inductive heater and packaging solution to create safe-to-the-touch, portable heating system for drinks and food. And previously, we wrote about HotBot Beverages, which wants to put induction drink heaters and its own special bottles at supermarket checkout stands. Both of those companies are using B2B partnerships for their go-to market strategies as well.
The hot drink market is getting frothy as the drink aisles at grocery and convenience stores are about to get way more crowded. In addition to tons of cold beverages to choose from, self- and induction heated packaging will create an entirely new category: the grab-n-go heated beverage. Hot drinks are shaping up to be the next hot thing.
