Not bad for a first year. After launching their compostable ball-shaped coffee pod brewing system last fall, CoffeeB has already reached a milestone of two hundred thousand customers who are using the system according to company CEO Frank Wilde. In a recent Linkedin post commerating the company’s one year anniversary, Wilde revealed the milestone and says the company has strong momentum ahead.
“The first year went well … with over 200,000 households having chosen to switch to CoffeeB and we are optimistic that many more will follow suit in the coming years,” wrote Wilde. “Our R&D team is continuously working on making our coffee blends and machines even better, giving consumers the most sustainable solution to conveniently drink high quality coffee.”
Developed over five years, the CoffeeB system is a single-serve coffee machine that does away with the plastic pod or capsule. Instead, the new system utilizes round balls of coffee called Coffee Balls instead of old-school plastic or aluminum capsules. Coffee Balls, which hold the coffee in a compostable layer of algae that keeps the coffee fresh and protected from flavor loss, can be dropped into a compost bin after they are used.
Currently the CoffeeB system is only available in Switzerland (the home of parent company Migros), France and Germany. Wilde has told The Spoon that he expects the CoffeeB to enter the North American market at some point, but hasn’t given a firm timeline.
While pod system giants Keurig and Nespresso have made progress in recent years in developing recycling programs and working on compostable pods, the vast majority of coffee pods used today are still made of plastic or aluminum and end up in the garbage. And sure, 200 thousand households is only a fraction of the single-serve coffee market (Keurig shipped nearly 3 million systems in 2021 alone), but the numbers are significant enough to probably make the big guys take notice.