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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Would You Rent (and Return) a Coffee Mug to Reduce Waste?

At most coffee shops, if you bring in a reusable mug you might get a 10% discount on your mocha, or just a pat on the back. But Vessel Works is upping the ante: today the company launched a beta program in two cafés in Boulder, Colorado, which lets people rent a reusable stainless steel mug for free from their local café (h/t Fastcompany). “Think bike sharing or a library book but for to-go mugs,” states their website.

Customers can use a free app to rent a Vessel mug, after which they’ll have five days to return it to one of Vessel’s drop-off kiosks or at any participating café. As they walk around sipping from their rented mugs, people will get reports on their app about how much waste they’re preventing, how much water they’re saving, and how they’re reducing their carbon footprint.

If they go over that time, they’ll be charged for it: $15 for an unreturned mug, $2 for a mug top. The website doesn’t indicate exactly how the company tracks the mugs, but I’m guessing each mug is either fitted with an RFID tag or a QR code that customers scan before they start drinking and scan again when they drop it off.

Cafés pay ten cents per Vessel mug, which, according to an interview with the founder, shakes out to less than constantly restocking paper cups, at least for a relatively small-volume spot. Vessel also picks up and cleans all the mugs at its own commercial facility before returning them — café partners don’t have to do any of the work.

Across the pond, CupClub is doing something very similar. Here’s how Jenn Marston described the company when she wrote about it this January:

Participating coffee retailers stock the cups, made of plant-based plastic, and give them to a CupClub member buying a coffee. The latter can then “return” the cup to any number of locations around the city. Once returned, the cups are collected, washed, and redistributed to the participating stores. And since each cup is RFID tagged and registered to a user’s account, CupClub can charge a user for unreturned cups.

Like we said — similar.

CupClub’s reusable mugs.

But there’s plenty of room for innovation in coffee cup waste reduction, because, well, it’s a huge problem. Most paper coffee cups have a thin plastic lining, which means that they can’t be recycled. That leads to a truly shocking amount of paper cups end up in landfills: over 100 million every day in the U.S. alone.

On the surface, services like Vessel and CupClub sound like a slam-dunk: they reduce the amount of single-use paper cups without making the consumer or the café pay extra money or do extra work. But the success of both companies hinges on one thing: convenience. And that depends on how many drop-off kiosks they have available, and how easy they are for people to swing by when they’re done slurping down their morning caffeine dose. Because if the drop-off locations aren’t convenient, then Vessel and CupClub’s mugs become the same as any other reusable mug you have to tote around with you all day — a pain in the butt.

The link for all kiosk locations led to an error page on the Vessel website, so I couldn’t get a sense of where or how many there are. CupClub may have a better system in place: In October the company announced that it would be trialing its rental cups with the U.K. retail group the John Lewis Partnership, which owns grocery chain Waitrose. Since Waitrose’s and John Lewises are pretty ubiquitous on London streets, it wouldn’t be hard to pop into one to return a cup when you’re done sipping without going out of your way. The other benefit is that CupClub (at least theoretically) won’t have to build out any deposit kiosks, which are costly and could cause logistical headaches.

Here at the Spoon, we’ve been closely covering (and cheering on) the initiatives to do away with single-use cups and straws. Starbucks recently eliminated single-use plastic straws in its store, replacing them with a sippy-cup-like lid. The coffee giant is also working to create a recyclable and/or compostable cup, and McDonald’s joined their mission this July.

But until Starbucks finally develops a recyclable coffee cup, companies like Vessel and CupClub are a good interim solution to take a bite out of paper cup waste.

How Starbucks’ “Greener Stores” Project Could Affect Other Coffee Retailers

Of all the details crammed into last week’s monster press release about Starbucks’ “Greener Stores” project, one in particular sticks out: that the coffee giant will open-source this new initiative in the hopes that other retailers will take similar steps to create “a new standard for green retail.”

Making retail greener isn’t a particularly new topic, but, on paper at least, the Starbucks Greener Stores plan certainly shows how much muscle Seattle is willing to put into the environmental side of its business. (That the company will save an incremental $50 million in the process over the next 10 years probably helps, too.)

For the project, Starbucks has partnered with the World Wildlife Fund. And over the next year, sustainability consulting firm SCS Global Services will audit all Starbucks-owned stores, existing and future, taking into account criteria like energy efficiency, noise control, air quality, and use of sustainable materials in building.

Some goals of the project include:

  • Using tech to gain 30 percent water savings and 25 percent avoided energy compared to old stores
  • Powering all stores with 100 percent renewable energy
  • Changes to lighting, air quality, and noise levels in stores
  • Building and/or refurbishing stores with sustainably sourced materials
  • Reducing waste
  • Create a “culture of sustainability”

“This framework represents the next step in how Starbucks is approaching environmental stewardship, looking holistically at stores and their role in helping to ensure the future health of our natural resources,” Erin Simon, Director of R&D at World Wildlife Fund, U.S., said in the press release “When companies step up and demonstrate leadership, other businesses often follow with commitments of their own, driving further positive impacts.”

All this follows Starbucks’ announcement from July that it will ban single-use plastic straws. The chain also operates 1,500 LEED-certified stores — more than any other retailer worldwide.

And yes, disposable coffee cups, whether plastic or plastic-coated paper, will probably lead to Armageddon at some point, but what this latest news from Starbucks highlights is that making the coffee industry sustainable has to do with a lot more than cups. From deforestation to coffee’s carbon footprint, the industry has a lot of issues to address if it wants to become truly sustainable at some point in the future. Which is why, while I tend to take company press releases with a gigantic grain of salt, it’s encouraging to see the world’s largest coffee retailer addressing the sustainability question from some of the less-discussed angles.

The question is, Can all this work on Starbucks’ part impact other major coffee retailers? With that in mind, here’s a quick look at what a few of the others are up to:

Peet’s Coffee and Tea. Since 2008, Peet’s has roasted all of its coffee in a LEED Gold-certified roasting facility in the U.S., located in Alameda, California. The roasters for the company’s recent expansion into China were even required to complete an apprenticeship at the Alameda facility. The company currently scores 41 out of 69 for the U.S. Green Building Council (USBGC), with particularly high marks around design innovation and indoor environmental quality (i.e., noise levels, air quality).

Costa Coffee. While it hasn’t yet made it Stateside, UK-based Costa has built “zero-energy” coffee shops that use sustainably sourced timber and rely on renewables like solar energy. Last year, it also opened an energy-efficient roastery, claiming it to be one of the world’s most sustainable industrial buildings. That includes a 249kw solar PV system for power and a rainwater harvesting system created to cut down on water use. Coke just acquired Costa for a reported $5 billion. With the deal set to close in 2019, we’ll have to wait and see what that means for Costa’s ongoing sustainability plans.

Dunkin’ Donuts. Meanwhile, America runs on foam cups, apparently, but that’s a problem Dunkin’ has vowed to do something about. In February of this year, the company announced its plan to phase out all polystyrene cups from its supply chain by 2020. Meanwhile, next-generation Dunkin’ stores are reportedly 25 percent more energy efficient than their predecessors, though actual numbers aren’t given. Dunkin’ also launched the DD Green Achievement in 2014, which helps franchises build more sustainable restaurants. The company says it plans have 500 DD Green Achievement stores in the U.S. by 2020.

Individually, none of these initiatives will make the coffee retail industry truly sustainable. And different companies have different priorities, not to mention varying budgets, which makes progress somewhat inconsistent across the industry. That’s where Starbucks’ new framework might actually provide some real guidance. Should it prove successful for the world’s largest coffee retailer, we may start to see a more standard set of practices around creating a more sustainable coffee culture.

Now if we could just figure out what to do about those darn cups.

Podcast: A Conversation With Clay Alexander, Creator of the Ember Coffee Mug

Ever wonder what time of day most people drink coffee? According to Ember CEO Clay Alexander, peak coffee-drinking time across the country is 10:51 AM.

This insight was shared by Alexander, the inventor of the Ember mug, during a live on-stage interview at the Housewares show in Chicago last March. In the same interview, which you can hear as part of this week’s Smart Kitchen Show podcast, Alexander shared ideas about other ways his patented precision heating technology could be used:

Precision Plates: Ember has a working prototype and plans to release their smart plates in high-end restaurants.

“It just looks like a dinner plate, but it’s magically keeping your hot food hot and your cold food cold,” said Alexander. The plate would have heating zones, that would allow cold potato salad to stay cold and heat food like steak.  According to Alexander, if you move your steak, the heat will track under the plate.

Medical Applications: According to Alexander, the spoilage rate for vaccines is over 40% in developing countries. Because of this, the company has been looking at using Ember’s temperature control technology to help get vaccines to doctors and reduce spoilage.  The company has already built a prototype that uses the company’s semiconductor powered refrigeration technology to keep up to forty vials refrigerated at a constant temperature. The “box” would be battery powered, controllable via a smartphone, and portable.

“You could strap that thing on the back of a moped and send into a village in Haiti and save lives,” said Alexander.

Baby Bottles: The company also sees its tech working in baby bottles. Alexander realized this would be a good application when taking care of his own daughter and he had to manually put baby bottles in hot water to warm them up.

“With an Ember bottle, you pull it out of the fridge, and there’s a little base you couple to the bottle. When you couple it, it heats the milk and formula to 98.5 degrees, which is body temperature.”

You can hear the full interview by hitting play below, downloading directly to your device or by subscribing in Apple Podcasts (or your preferred podcast player).

If you’d like to see Clay Alexander talk about how he came up with the idea for the Ember, he’ll be at the Smart Kitchen Summit in three weeks. Just use the discount code podcast for 25% off tickets. 

Food Tech News Roundup: Plant-Based Starbucks, Google’s Wearable Meal Plan, and Grocery Innovation

What a week for food tech fundraising! From DoorDash’s $250 million to a hefty raise for cellular aquaculture company BlueNalu to not one, not two, but three fundraising rounds for food waste startups, it’s been a doozy.

But in between all the raises and self-driving grocery delivery cars and shoppable recipe companies, there were plenty of other food tech stories this week. We rolled them all up right here for your summer weekend perusing pleasure:

Starbucks debuts plant-based blended coffee drinks
This week Starbucks rolled out a new icy beverage to cool down fitness lovers this summer. Their ‘Protein Blended Cold Brew‘ drink is made of cold brew (duh), plant-based proteins and alternative milks, whizzed up to make a frothy, vegan-friendly quaff. One drink is made with almond milk and butter, while the other has coconut milk and cocoa — both bevs have at least 10 grams of protein. With their new creation Starbucks is cashing in big time on three big trends: plant-based dairy, cold brew, and high protein nutrition.

 

Photo: Android Police

Google develops AI assistant to help with your meal plan
News broke this week that Google is creating an AI-powered wellness tool. Called “Google Coach” (though the name might change), Android Police reported that the smart assistant will act not only as a fitness service — tracking times, recommending workouts, etc. — but could also function as a nutrition and meal-planning tool. It will be able to recommend dishes at restaurants to match your diet, and can also generate meal plans and shopping lists, which it will email to you directly. Google will initially roll out Google Coach on Wear OS, but might eventually a develop smartphone application as well.

 

Kroger and Alibaba team up to create an online grocery store
Kroger, the largest grocery chain in the U.S., announced a partnership with China e-commerce giant Alibaba. Together they’ll create a pilot test of an online store, which will sell goods from Kroger’s organic private label Simple Truth in Alibaba’s online marketplace. Like Amazon in the U.S., Alibaba is working to usurp brick-and-mortar grocery stores in favor of online ordering and delivery. And by forming partnerships like this one (in addition to experimenting with robotic fulfillment centers and self-driving delivery vehicles), Kroger is working hard to stay relevant in the shifting grocery market.

 

Walmart reports strongest Q2 in 10 years
Speaking of grocery wars, Walmart appears to be doing pretty well. This week Supermarket News reported that the grocery giant posted its strongest same-store sales growth in 10 years in the second quarter of 2019. President and CEO Doug McMillon credited the strong quarter to e-commerce and other efforts to make shopping quicker and more convenient, such as curbside grocery pickup. Judging by the innovations Walmart has in the works — from its Eden freshness technology to robot shopping carts — the grocery store is experimenting pretty widely to find out how to continue to make shopping even more convenient in the future.

Did we miss anything? Send us a tweet @TheSpoonTech! 

Can Bitcoin, Bakeries, and Banning Straws Fix Starbucks’ Lagging Growth?

Starbucks may have projected slower growth recently, but it looks to be business as usual for the coffee retailer, and that business traversed several industries and a couple continents this week.

Most notably, Starbucks is reportedly one of the key backers of a new company, Bakkt, which the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) created to better integrate cryptocurrencies into global commerce. In other words, there’s a high possibility Starbucks might accept Bitcoin as payment one of these days.

But as my hero John Oliver says, “this is a brand new, very complicated space and literally nobody knows how it’s going to develop so you need to be careful.” And while there’s much ado about crypto lately, the reality is that Bitcoin and others remain highly volatile in terms of price, which is one of the biggest reasons more retailers haven’t adopted them as forms of payment.

That could change, partly because Microsoft is providing the cloud infrastructure for Bakkt and companies like consulting heavyweight BCG are involved. There’s also this telling statement from Starbucks: “As the flagship retailer, Starbucks will play a pivotal role in developing practical, trusted and regulated applications for consumers to convert their digital assets into US dollars for use at Starbucks.”

Starbucks has been an undisputed leader in mobile payments over the years, so its involvement in the space isn’t that surprising, and it could make cryptocurrency more attractive to investors and therefore less volatile. The question is, will it be enough to turn hype into a mainstream form of payment?

Interestingly, in some overseas markets, Starbucks has been criticized of acting too slow when it comes to technological advancements. That’s a big reason for the company’s move this week to strike a partnership with Alibaba and integrate delivery services into its business in China. Starbucks will use the Alibaba-owned food-delivery service Ele.me to enable delivery at 2,000 stores by the end of the 2018. The deal includes a virtual store that integrates with Alibaba’s apps like Alipay and Hema.

Starbucks currently has 3,400 stores in China, with plans to double that number by 2022. But it’s also facing a lot of competition in this market, particularly from Luckin Coffee, who charges less and also just raised $200 million. That said, Starbucks still controls about 80 percent of the coffee market in China, and the company claims this deal with Alibaba “opens up 500 million or more active users of those apps that will have access to Starbucks.”

Stateside, the coffee giant has a slightly different tactic: standalone bakeries. This week, Starbucks opened the first of a planned 1,000 Princi bakeries, a “high-end Italian bakery chain.” The shop serves a mix of pizzas, pastries, beer, wine, and, of course, coffee.

Starbucks backed Italian bakery chain Princi in 2016; the Seattle store is the test location for this “upscale retail strategy.” Because apparently paying almost $5 for a latte is no longer considered upscale. Starbucks opened a Princi at its Reserve Rotary and Tasting Room last fall, as well as one at the Flagship Reserve store at the Starbucks HQ. This new location is the first standalone store. NYC and Chicago locations are in the works.

Starbucks is also one of the major chains joining the movement to ban single-use plastic straws, having recently announced it will eliminate them from all stores by 2020. But with all of the above expansion, not to mention Starbucks’ general reach, which is huge, will trading straws for sip-able lids make a difference?

That’s what several folks are wondering. The Guardian even weighed the new lids against the old lid-and-straw combo and found the former to be slightly heavier, therefore using more plastic. Starbucks’ notes these new lids are “made from polypropylene, a commonly-accepted recyclable plastic that can be captured in recycling infrastructure,” but that only matters if people actually recycle the lids. The numbers aren’t encouraging — only around 9 percent of the world’s plastic is recycled. Color me cynical, but since Starbucks partially helped create the disposable coffee world we live in, I’d say the company’s going to need a bigger fix if they want to make a true impact in terms of waste reduction. Hopefully they’ll continue to prioritize addressing waste issues, even as they push to pick up those lagging numbers.

We’ll have a chance to ask more at the next Smart Kitchen Summit, when we talk to Ben Pote, Starbucks’ Director of Culinary, Global Product Innovation. Swing by if you’re in the area, and leave your thoughts, musings, and rants on all this news in the comments below.

McDonald’s Joins Starbucks in Recyclable Cup Challenge

Fast food giant McDonald’s announced today that it is joining the efforts of Starbucks and Closed Loop Partners to spur development of a recyclable and/or compostable cup. The golden arches will contribute $5 million to Closed Loop’s NextGen Cup Consortium, which follows the $10 million Starbucks committed to the project back in March.

According to Closed Loop Partners, which invests in sustainable consumer goods and recycling technology and launched the Center for the Circular Economy, 600 billion paper and plastic cups are distributed worldwide each year. To help combat that waste, Closed Loop developed the NextCup Consortium and Challenge, an accelerator program to identify and commercialize “recovery solutions for environmentally friendly single-use hot and cold paper cups.”

The NextCup Challenge launches in September of this year and is “open to suppliers, innovators and solution providers with promising ideas to recover single use cups.” Awardees will get a grant of up to $1 million and will enter a six month accelerator program to scale up their solutions. Those interested can find out more here.

Five million dollars is a rounding error for a company like McDonald’s which had revenue of $5.14 billion in the first quarter of this year. But it’s a positive step for the company, which has 37,000 locations worldwide supersizing drinks on a daily basis, to join the public chorus about the negative impacts of single use cups and straws on the environment.

Reducing drink waste has become a hot topic during this hot summer, and with good reason. Plastic is junking up our oceans and becoming a huge environmental problem. Last week Starbucks announced that it would be phasing out single use plastic straws in all of its 28,000 locations by 2020. Celebrities are rallying against straws and cities at home and abroad are enacting plastic straw bans.

All this focus on waste reduction? I’m lovin’ it, and can’t wait to see more of it.

Starbucks to Eliminate Single-Use Plastic Straws

I was just at Disneyland this past weekend, where the temperature hovered around 100 degrees. That is a very fast way to get a very real sense of exactly how wasteful single-use plastic straws are, as you see tens of thousands of people slurp down sodas and iced coffees then toss them in the trash.

To help combat this waste, Starbucks announced today that it is eliminating single-use plastic straws from its more than 28,000 locations by 2020. According to the press announcement, this will remove more than one billion plastic straws per year from Starbucks stores.

Replacing the straws will be a new strawless lid for all iced coffee, tea and espresso beverages. Basically, Starbucks is building an adult sippy cup. These strawless lids are already available in 8,000 stores across the U.S. and Canada. Straws aren’t completely dead, however, as the company will make compostable plastic and paper ones available for people who request them.

This move by Starbucks could push the growing wave of anti-straw sentiment more into the mainstream as our oceans and environment pile up with plastic junk. The European Union has proposed a ban on single-use plastic items including straws, while Scotland and the United Kingdom have each launched plans to ban plastic straws. Here in the U.S., Seattle (home to Starbucks) became the first major American city to ban single-use plastic straws starting the first of this month.

According to the Washington Post, Starbucks is the largest retailer to commit to eliminating straws. And while there, I saw that Disneyland Starbucks locations were already using the new strawless lids. Hopefully other food retailers at the park will make the same commitment to make the “happiest place on Earth” a little less wasteful.

Coffee Bean Launches Mobile Program With Uber Integration

Not to be outdone by Dunkin Donut’s next generation store that emphasizes mobile ordering, L.A.’s favorite coffee chain, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, just announced mobile ordering for select company-owned locations.

Like other mobile programs, Coffee Bean’s pay ahead ordering allows mobile customers to skip the line for their drink. Those who use the feature will earn extra Rewards points and have access to special discounts. As of today, the feature is available in 191 company-owned store locations around Southern California and Arizona. Coffee Bean plans to make the feature available to franchises and “new geographic areas” in the coming year.

One added bonus: the app is integrated with Uber. That means you can use the Coffee Bean Rewards app to both pay for your drink and order a ride to your preferred store location.

Taco Bell did a similar program with Lyft last year, allowing customers to make a detour to the nearest Taco Bell drive thru en route to their destination. The move was a complete disaster; many drivers were upset at being forced to sit in long drive-thru lines during peak traffic hours, for no additional compensation. Lyft eventually had to clarify that Taco Mode, as the program was dubbed, was optional for drivers.

Uber already has a rocky history in terms of its relationship to drivers. If drivers start tweeting about spilled lattes ruining their cars and long drive-thru lines, we may have another Taco Mode on our hands. Then again, coffee and fast-food burritos tend to serve different markets. At the risk of generalizing, bad smells and messy spills seem much more likely with a late-night crowd that wants fast food en route to the club, rather than someone on their way to a meeting who needs a caffeine jolt. So Uber may fare a little better with this deal.

Nation’s Restaurant News noted that mobile payments for restaurants have jumped 50 percent over the last year. So while it seems a bit late in the game for Coffee Bean to be joining the mobile ordering movement, it’s still an opportune time to do so. Plus, Coffee Bean customers tend to be fiercely loyal, which bodes well for the company, at least for this initial rollout.

 

Restaurant Marketing Platform Punchh Raises $20 M in Series B Funding

Marketing software and data analytics platform Punchh — who counts the likes of Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen, and Del Taco amongst its customers — just closed a $20 million Series B round of funding, bringing the company’s total funding to $31 million. This most recent round is led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from previous investor Cervin Ventures.

The new funds will allow the company to further build out its AI and machine learning components that help a growing number of restaurants power their marketing channels and analyze their data.

The company also announced, alongside the funding news, the release of Punchh Acquire, an all-in-on platform that integrates with a restaurant’s existing channels for customer engagement. That includes anything from email campaigns to text messages to self-serve kiosks and POS systems. While Punchh doesn’t build the actual app for the restaurant, the Acquire product does streamline marketing to all those different channels, while also pulling and analyzing the data afterward.

So, for example, a consumer won’t see anything about Punchh when they open their Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf app. They’ll navigate the coffee chain’s own app experience, probably unaware it’s Punchh’s system offering them a two-for-one deal on lattes or 20 percent off their next purchase.

Punchh promises to make it a lot easier for restaurants to collect data on their customers and tailor their channels and campaigns to meet preferences (everything is opt-in for the consumer).

“We’re trying to bring to brick and mortar the same level of data-driven marketing and customer relationship management software that is really prevalent in the e-commerce realm,” says founder and CEO Shyam Rao.

Those in charge of customer relationships at restaurants use Punchh to track customer behavior — in real time — and adjust digital offers as that behavior changes. A low spender, for example, might receive an up-sell campaign. Meanwhile, a mom stuck at home in Pittsburgh on a rainy winter day might get an offer for soup and tea. It works the other way, too: vegetarians will not get an offer for a Meat Lover’s pizza.

“All we’re trying to do is go back to the time 50 years ago where shops had this personal relationship with every single customer,” says Rao. “We’re trying to go back to that at scale, and the first step is to get to know the customer.”

To do so on such a granular level, Punchh separates customers into three “buckets” and tailors campaigns towards each: Anonymous customers are the ones who simply walk into a restaurant; the Known ones have given an email address or phone number; and the Loyalists dine regularly, have downloaded the restaurant’s app, order through it, and redeem offers on a regular basis. The goal, of course, is to get Anonymous customers to become Known, and Known to become Loyalists.

For many brick-and-mortar brands, restaurants or otherwise, creating this kind of digital counterpart to the main business is such a challenge many don’t even try. Starbucks may have a robust digital strategy, but Starbucks also serves 90 million customers per week. The local pizzeria around the corner presumably does not have the kind of footprint that makes it possible to throw thousands of dollars and people at a mobile strategy. Even larger brands, like, say Pizza Hut, may not have the resources — monetary or otherwise — to invest in a homegrown mobile platform that builds powerful relationships with customers. “Relationships drive revenue,” says Rao. “We help [restaurants] establish these relationships.”

Punchh currently has over 115 customers and 34,000 locations worldwide. With this latest round of funding, as well as the release of Punchh Acquire, the company also plans to branch out into health and beauty brands, as well as convenience stores.

 

Cup Club

Cup Club Brews Up an IoT-Powered Solution to Coffee Cup Waste

One of the most famous songs from the old musical 70, Girls, 70 is a song called “Coffee in a Cardboard Cup,” where one character decries the use of to-go cups: “The trouble with the world today/It’s plain to see/Is coffee in a cardboard cup.” The musical was written in back the ’50s, long before Starbucks, but its creators were unknowingly on to something.

Fast-forward to 2018, we’re throwing out over 40 billion single-use cups across the U.S. and Europe each year. Many have tried to address the waste issue; no one’s succeeded on a large scale. Offering to knock 10 cents off the cost of my $5.00 coffee isn’t much of an incentive to lug a bulky, reusable cup around (if I haven’t already lost said cup in a taxi cab).

Safia Qureshi considered all this when she created Cup Club, a subscription service using the Internet of Things and RFID to reinvent the reusable cup.

It works like this: Participating coffee retailers stock the cups, made of plant-based plastic, and give them to a Cup Club member buying a coffee. The latter can then “return” the cup to any number of locations around the city. Once returned, the cups are collected, washed, and redistributed to the participating stores. And since each cup is RFID tagged and registered to a user’s account, Cup Club can charge a user for unreturned cups.

Cup Club will reportedly be available to the public this month in London, and will be followed by a worldwide rollout in the future.

Qureshi took inspiration for the company from the chai wallahs in India, who sell chai in glass cups that are returned, washed, and reused. “I’m very passionate about putting an end to products that are only used one time,” she recently said. “It’s a selfish and arrogant stance.”

For Cup Club to work on a large scale, Qureshi will need not just the support of the coffee shops who participate, but also a strong enough interest from the general population. I speculate here, but I could see Cup Club or its technology eventually getting acquired by a heavyweight coffeeshop chain, one with the kind of reach and brand power Cup Club needs to influence consumer behavior.

The fact that she’s not the only one to consider this type of approach is encouraging. In Germany, the city of Frieberg has introduced The Freiberg Cup: users put a 1 euro deposit down on a cup and can return it to one of the 100 participating businesses across the city. The system is reportedly cheaper for both consumers and businesses, and early results are “encouraging.” It’s not unfathomable for similar systems to start popping up all over the country as more people ditch the cardboard cup.

Because that’s what the success of the reusable cup really comes down to: changing our behavior. It’s automatic at this point to walk into a coffeeshop, order, and walk out clutching a paper cup. That companies like Cup Club offer an environmentally conscious option without the inconvenience of having to keep track of a reusable cup means the concept could have a real shot at success. If it doesn’t, “Coffee in a Cardboard Cup” is just going to get more and more relevant as time goes on.

Dunkin Donuts

Dunkin’ Donuts Mobile Customers Now Get Their Own Drive-Thru Lane

Last week, Dunkin’ Donuts cut the ribbon on its “next-generation concept store” in Quincy, MA. The site will act as a pilot store of sorts, where Dunkin’ can test out new store concepts and branding efforts before deciding to roll the changes out to more locations. The Quincy store opened about a mile away from the original 1948 Dunkin’ Donuts location. 

Besides dropping the “donuts” from the name out front, the biggest addition to the store is the dedicated drive-thru lane for mobile customers—that is, those who order ahead and pay through the Dunkin’ app.

It’s a potentially huge perk. Theoretically, at least, you could save a lot of time on the way to work by paying with your phone, bypassing half the other customers, and getting to stay in the car the whole time.

It’s also, as some have already suggested, part of a bigger strategy to become a true Starbucks competitor.

The strategy is not entirely new. In 2016, the company began featuring drinks like lattes and macchiatos in order to make espresso a bigger part of the business, attract younger customers, and compete with Starbucks. But Dunkin’ isn’t the only chain to have that idea: coffee beverage sales at McDonald’s and Burger King are reportedly taking a toll on afternoon sales at Dunkin’.

Meanwhile, the chain’s mobile program has lagged since its launch in 2016, making up only around 4 percent of the company’s total transactions. As a point of comparison, mobile now accounts for around 30 percent of Starbucks’ overall transactions.

If this increased investment in mobile is any indication, Dunkin’ is serious about catching up to Starbucks and, in the process, beating back competition from McDonald’s and Burger King.

In addition to its increased focus on mobile, the chain’s next-gen store also features a revamped design, bar-like taps pouring nitro- and cold-brew coffee, and several “healthier” snack options (i.e., bananas). The donuts, thankfully, aren’t going anywhere, even if they no longer get billing on the sign outside.

In-store, Dunkin’ on Demand will feature self-ordering kiosks, digital boards that track orders, and a dedicated mobile pickup area.The kiosks are slated for release in 2018. While the company hasn’t explicitly said so, the very idea of a store-as-concept-lab could possibly be another way to emulate Starbucks, who’s been using concept stores to test out new ideas in its home market of Seattle for some time. 

Will all this be enough to put Dunkin’ in true competition with Starbucks, or will it continue to straddle that weird line between coffeeshop and fast-food chain? There will be a lot of logistical pieces to manage, and the chain can’t afford any technological glitches or shortcomings with these changes. But if Dunkin’ can get those two pieces right, continue pouring quality brews, and maybe get a robot or two, it certainly stands a fighting chance.

Starbucks Announces In-Car Voice Ordering On Ford SYNC Via Amazon’s Alexa

Starbucks held its annual shareholders meeting yesterday, revealing its financial success 25 years after the Seattle-based coffee giant’s IPO. Starbucks spent time talking about its hiring plans in the future, new gluten free and vegan products and new tech and digital innovations, including voice ordering via Amazon’s Alexa in the car and voice mobile ordering.

The company announced back in January that it was creating a skill for Alexa and mobile voice or text ordering for the iPhone and Android apps. Today the voice and text ordering go live for the 100k+ customers who have the mobile app on their phones.

More interesting though is the partnership with Amazon and Ford to allow in-car ordering via Alexa. Amazon and Ford announced that Alexa would be integrated into Ford SYNC 3 technology at CES this year, allowing drivers to access the voice AI platform in any Ford vehicle with the upgraded smart tech.

Now, Amazon, Ford and Starbucks are working together to enable the Starbucks skill inside the SYNC 3 platform. A simple “Alexa, ask Starbucks to start my order” allows you to order coffee and have it ready when you arrive without ever picking up your smartphone. Using the mobile pay & order app, customers have to designate regular or favorite orders from which to select from and up to 10 local stores from where they’d like to pick-up. The SYNC 3 technology is inside most 2016 and newer model Ford vehicles.

As someone who struggled with trying to order her usual soy latte while leaving preschool dropoff (and just bought a Volkswagon), I am pretty envious.

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