This week on Coffee Design we’re checking out Cometeer Coffee, with whom you may already be familiar—perhaps for their recent 35 million dollar Series B funding round. The brand of ready to drink freezer coffee pucks has a simple mission: to “decommoditize coffee by making delicious specialty coffee accessible to everyone… and to make a positive impact on the coffee industry.”
The company makes flash-frozen capsules of pre-brewed coffee using well-known roasters. The result is a coffee that keeps for months in a freezer and is as easy to brew as melting an ice cube. CEO Matt Roberts has been working on Cometeer [pronounced “comma-tear”] for over seven years, ever since George Howell served Roberts a cup of specialty grade coffee. R&D started six years ago, and now in 2021 customers can order over 100 different coffees locked away in a deep freeze. As far as design, the boxes are well-designed and have a high-tech edge. At a recent taste test, Sprudge co-founder Jordan Michelman described the packaging as “something you’d open up to find an iPhone in.”
A lot of attention has been paid to Cometeer’s wider mission, ethos, and mainstream accessibility, but here at Coffee Design we’re particularly interested in considering the project from a branding, product design, and aesthetic perspective. We talked with Cometeer CEO Matt Roberts to learn more.
When did you launch the packaging?
February 2020.
Who designed it?
Creech Studio in tandem with Cometeer.
Tell us about the design and the unique foils/wraps for specialty offerings.
Our Stellar Series is an ongoing project to showcase award-winning coffees in limited launches, perfectly brewed and frozen in time. The Finca Sophia Collection gave consumers a chance to try award-winning coffees that sold at auction for upwards of $1,000/lb for just $5/cup. Our focus while designing custom packaging for Stellar Series coffees was to draw attention to the unique sourcing and flavors of each coffee, with a particular emphasis on the farmers.
What coffees are you currently offering?
We currently have more than 100 coffees in stock in our 30,000-square-foot freezer from our nine roasting partners. Because our coffee remains at peak flavor for about three years frozen, we can offer seasonal coffees at any time of the year. On the week of October 11th, we sent the following coffees to customers:
Daterra Sundrop – George Howell
Fast Forward – Counter Culture
French Roast – Birch
Coltrane – Red Bay
Yirgacheffe – Birch
Sipacapa – Counter Culture
Chelbesa – GGET
Wate Gogugu – Bird Rock
East Meets West – Klatch
Alchemy – George Howell
Birch Blend – Birch
Amsterdam Medium – Joe
Forty-Six – Counter Culture
Crazy Goat Blend – Klatch
Equator Blend – Equator
Chiapas – Birch
Idido – Counter Culture
Chelbesa – GGET
Brazilian Cake Lady – Red Bay
El Injerto Blend – Equator
Fast Forward – Counter Culture
Amsterdam Medium – Joe
East Fourteenth – Red Bay
Tolima – Bird Rock
What’s next for Cometeer?
Our mission is to decommoditize coffee by making delicious specialty coffee accessible to everyone. We want to introduce more people to specialty coffee, increase the demand for high quality production and sourcing, and thereby make the coffee-verse more equitable and sustainable for producers.
We are able to re-approach one of our original channels of office and have built out our office offering with a focus on employee-gifting which send redeemable links to anyone within the organization.
Thank you.
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