eTailers Look To Jolt Instant Coffee Via Subscriptions

Entrepreneurs are founding coffee startups to connect consumers with instant brews through the help of subscriptions and one-time purchases. Nate Kaiser started Swift Cup Coffee “to help make great coffees a little bit more accessible,” he told PYMNTS in an interview.

Kaiser came from a roasting background, having worked at specialty roasters and cafés for the last 10 years. While he loves the ritual of brewing coffee, making a great cup of joe is challenging, as it involves many variables. He noted that it is “pretty difficult” to reproduce a high-quality cup of café coffee while at home, traveling or working.

Kaiser started to look at how he could create an easy, accessible experience for coffee drinkers. Instant coffee, he noted, “is about as easy as it gets.” Consumers add water to the coffee and it’s immediately ready. The only problem is that instant coffee has a reputation for being, well, awful. Kaiser became curious as to why that was, and what part of the production and manufacturing process was causing a poor-quality cup. After a significant amount of research and development, he created a method to produce a high-quality cup in an instant form from specialty-grade brews. The coffees are “expressive and flavorful and also ethically sourced,” he noted. Swift Cup Coffee brews it down to a flavorful concentrate, and consumers add water to bring the coffee back to life.

To order the coffee, consumers visit the company’s website, where they can buy nine different coffees as a one-time purchase. They can also purchase a two-cup sampler, but the core product is a six-cup box. (There is also a 48-cup bulk pack available.) Consumers can also purchase a subscription, which is a collection of Swift Cup’s current offerings. Kaiser describes it as a variety pack, adding the company aims to have a “rotating menu” of different coffees from around the world to turn into instant coffee. Customers can then have 10, 20 or 30 cups delivered each month. 

The Online Platform

Pennsylvania-based Swift Cup runs its payments through Square and accepts credit as well as debit cards. It works with a local startup called Clockwork Wholesale, which developed a platform that lets the company manage its one-time and recurring orders. (Clockwork says on its website that it has tools for “coffee roasters, chocolatiers and bakers,” among other merchants.) Beyond the payments, Kaiser noted he wanted to celebrate the diversity within coffee.

Swift Cup aims to offer some of the best coffee available globally, with a heavy focus on East Africa as well as Latin America. It also seeks to celebrate what is unique among a full spectrum of flavors, much like wine. Overall, Kaiser noted coffee is truly an agricultural product that his company happens to make in instant form. At the same time, he noted specialty coffee is an exploding market, with hundreds of roasters are sourcing and roasting coffees.

In addition to its website, Swift Cup has some major partners, such as two grocery chains and a recreational supply company, in addition to a handful of smaller cafés. When it comes to the company’s target market, Kaiser noted its consumer base has evolved. At first, it spoke to the specialty coffee crowd, selling to people who had worked in the industry. While the company does have a strong base of coffee enthusiasts, it also caters to businesspeople who buy coffee to drink at the office, as well as many travelers.

The Coffee Market

Beyond Swift Cup Coffee, other eCommerce innovators have enabled recurring deliveries of java. Trade Coffee, for instance, sells beans (or ground beans) by the bag or through a subscription offering. The company’s Chief Executive Mike Lackman told PYMNTS in a January interview that the company “really [sees] subscription as something that is a way to make sure customers just don’t run out of coffee.” The company has an offering that is designed to serve customers who are new to specialty coffee, as well as one for those with more experienced palettes.

From Trade Coffee to Swift Cup Coffee, eCommerce innovators are changing the way consumers get their cups of morning joe – or the second cup after lunch – with the help of subscription options.