You know what they say: thereโs always money in the lab-created imitation banana stand.
During my tenure helming the news desk here at Sprudge, Iโve seen more than my fair share of coffee stories that are arguably news. This, on the other hand, is a news story that is arguably about coffee. Atomo, the makers of โmolecularโ coffee that contains no real, actual coffee, just raised another $9 million in VC funding and have decided to open a โroasteryโ mere blocks away from Starbucks Seattle headquarters.
And letโs just get this out of the way at the top: the absolute nerve it takes to call their building a โroasteryโ. Atomo calling their product โcoffeeโ was questionable enough as is, but calling the lab where they bleep and bloop some atoms together to play coffee dress-up a โroasteryโ is just offensive. What roasting is happening there? Heating up a solution over a Bunsen burner isnโt roasting. Letโs hope their science is more rigorous than their naming conventions.
As reported by GeekWire, Atomo just announced a new round of funding, to the tune of $9 million, โco-led by Horizons Ventures and S2G Ventures.โ The funding will in part go toward the 12,000-square-foot Seattle flagship (I refuse to call it a roastery) where the brand will โhack the coffee beanโ and bring about โthe future of coffee,โ which has traditionally been the sort of disruptive jargon VC firms throw money at. The new, larger facility will allow Atomo to greatly scale the quantity of molecular coffee they are able to create from โupcycled plant materials such as pits, seeds, and stems,โ according to co-founder Jaret Stopforth (that’s his real name; we did not grow him in a lab).
Using seeds to create coffee? I wonder where they came up with such a revolutionary approach.
โSeattle is the perfect confluence of tech and craft coffee, it only makes sense that coffee is reinvented here.โ [Andy] Kleitsch, who serves as CEO, said in a statement. โOur tech creates a great tasting cup of coffee, that provides consumers with a sustainable choice, as well as greater value for our farmers.โ
Those receiving the great value, of course, are not coffee farmers, who arenโt part of the thinking when Atomo touts itself as the โsustainable choice.โ Coffee farmers can get fucked I guess.
Itโs a tech bro solution to a problem that doesnโt even really exist. In their โdesire to remove the bitter taste from coffeeโโwhich Iโve said before and will say again, can be done entirely through sourcing and roasting and brewing and just about every other advancement specialty coffee has made over the past few decadesโand as an โanswer to climate change and deforestation that is a threat to the global coffee industry,โ theyโve created a product that addresses almost none of these things.
If it is unclear how lab-grown coffee helps solve climate change or deforestation, it is because it doesnโt. It simply removes these issues from the equation. Climate change and deforestation are still very much real and very much a threat to coffee production; making an alternative product unaffected by these issues is not solving them but ignoring them, and in particular, ignoring the human cost of further destabilizing the chain of coffee production around the world.
But if you are undeterred by this sadistic pragmatism of wanting to cut out the middle manโthe 25 million global coffee producersโAtomo is expecting to bring their product to market in 2021, with โregional launches for specialty retailers.โ Alternatively, you could, at this very moment, enjoy a wonderful cup of actual coffee, produced by a farmer who was paid an equitable wage and lovingly roasted by a local small business who can probably use your business right now.
Zac Cadwaladerย is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas.ย Read more Zac Cadwaladerย on Sprudge.