Launch HN: Sudden Coffee (YC W17) – Instant coffee that doesn't suck
I started working on this almost two years ago after my cafe business failed. I was frustrated by how unscalable and inconsistent selling good coffee is.
In 2015 I placed 9th in the World Barista Champs in Seattle. On the flight back to Helsinki I was desperate for caffeine and ordered a coffee which was horrendous. I started wondering what would be a better way than Aeropress + hand grinder combo to have great coffee on the go.
Instant coffee is liquid coffee that’s been dehydrated. It’s normally made with the worst beans that are roasted really dark and extracted up to 6 times at temperatures up to 180C and 15 bar pressure. As a result, they can reach 60% extraction yield. Next, the liquid is boiled down and finally dehydrated by spray drying it with hot air. This process results in the gnarly bitter, woody, rubbery instant we all know.
We start with good beans: currently from a co-op called Biftu Gudina in Ethiopia, roasted by 49th Parallel in Vancouver, BC. In the beginning we brewed the coffee by hand as espresso — I would literally spend 12 hours per day pulling shots. At one point we had a full-time person doing this.
Eventually, we developed our own fully-closed centrifugal brewing system that doesn’t allow for any aroma to escape. We extract the coffee at low temperatures (85-90C) to 21-23% extraction yield. As a result, we only get the good stuff — sweetness, fruitiness, acidity — and none of the bad stuff.
Also, we’ve developed our own freeze-drying technique that’s kind of equivalent to a server farm. Instead of having one enormous machine we have a bunch of small freeze dryers. This allows for greater control and shorter iteration cycle.
This might be too long already so I'll stop here. Looking forward to discussing the coffee business and great coffee in the thread!
393 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 399 ms ] thread(I don't know, maybe the webpage does, but there's no mention of minimum times anywhere and recurringcheckout has let me unsubscribe without problems in the past)
https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/account/purchases/subsc...
You could get collections sent after you for doing this, bad for credit.
Because they use "recurringcheckout.com" as a payment processor, which lets you do this.
You're fighting the reputation of generations of scammers who promised "cancel any time" and either weasel-worded the small print or just outright ignored cancellation requests to charge as much as possible to recurring bills.
"Fun" fact: I bought a used car, only to discover that it apparently has free XM radio. I would not be surprised if someone unsuspecting person's card is being charged for it every month.
Obviously, we want to build a product that we and our subscribers love and choose to keep subscribing. Right now we have a lot of them.
The biggest thing with the subscription is clear CAC vs. LTV. With our current model this equation works and we can profitably acquire new customers. This allows us to grow, make the product better and bring the cost down.
> The biggest thing with the subscription is clear [Customer Acquisition Cost] vs. [Long Term Value].
i.e. "recurring billing results in more people failing to cancel, because they either forget or are deterred by our 'customer retention program.'"
> With our current model this equation works and we can profitably acquire new customers.
i.e. "we wouldn't be able to profit and grow without doing this."
It seems like you genuinely care about good coffee, but what's the desired end-state? If it's "great instant coffee at $1/cup with no auto-billing," that makes sense. If it involves negative option billing, it's shameful.
No, it's not what you said. Your explanation misses the segment of customers that want the product every month but wouldn't exert a manual effort over and over again when it could be automated. Hence an increased LTV per customer with no change to the CAC. This doesn't really have anything to do with Sudden but rather subscription business economics. Automatic billing is not inherently bad; it's largely positive and convenient.
Also remember this company is not random — there's a ton of diligence involved with getting into YC as well as with VCs which they are backed.
There are definitely sets of products for which people want to 'set it and forget it'. At a basic level - electricity. I'd love to never think about my electricity bill ever. I do not want to explicitly pay for my electricity bill. Automated payment on electricity is amazing!
There are also many products in my life that I truly love and would use a lot more, but I am too lazy to buy or order them. I love LaCroix sparkling water. I would have no problem if it showed up at my house for $20 a month. However, because I'm lazy I never actually buy any - instead I get Coke at the corner store - worse for me.
Our goal with Sudden Coffee is to make it really really easy to get something you like. We are definitely not trying to pull wool over anyones eyes - we try to be as transparent as possible with this. We will never give you the run around if you need to cancel - that's just not who we are.
Closer to our hearts - a subscription allows us to actually make it an 'experience' instead of just cups of coffee. We can educate you about coffee, send you new recipes, guide you through coffee tastings - over a longer period of time. When we talk to customers at cafes - those extra moments of delight make the experience memorable - not just a cup of coffee.
That said, Kalle is also right. A subscription ultimately means we can spend less money & time on marketing, more money where it counts - on coffee, and give it to you at a lower price. I mentioned this in an earlier thread - for us to deliver the same coffee without subscriptions, we'd have to charge $4-5 per cup. However, I can also tell you that we have many happy subscribers who love that it's a subscription - it's not something that feels forced, but rather something that makes life easier.
Would really love for you to give us a try! Promise you will not be met with resistance if you need to cancel!
It is possible, using the advanced technology available today, to make on your website a button which allows a subscribed user to independently cancel a subscription that was made online.
Through this technology, one no longer has to compose a pleading e-mail to customer service. No need to take on faith the co-founder's confusing promise that they want to make it easy for you to cancel while they simultaneously withhold a "cancel" button, with no stated plans to add one.
I mean, look, if you really don't intend to make a serious amount of dough off of people being too forgetful or busy to unsubscribe from a subscription they no longer want... what's the harm?
We're just now building an in-house engineering team to make the process easier. If I had my way, you could cancel, pause, adjust timing, etc with a couple clicks. I am stating our plans to do these things :-)
I have a very different perspective. I religiously avoid auto-billing. For basic necessities like electricity and gas, I like to know how much I'm paying, and to be able to dispute the charges before I pay in case there's a mistake (this occasionally happens).
For luxuries, the periodic reminder that I'm paying $x for something prompts me to reassess whether they are worth it to me, with a default answer of "no." That may be bad for your business, but it's good for my cost of living. Since I'm not in a position to hire a servant to look after my day-to-day financial interests, good defaults matter.
Seriously though, definitely something we are not about - would love to grab beers with anyone (in SF) who wants to learn more about our company/values text us/me (650) 823-4287.
A great example of this is: meundies (oohhhhhhhh ba doop boop boop). Fresh undies come every month for like $15/mo. I've had it going for a couple of years (I think), and it's slowly replaced all of my other (terrible) boxer briefs.
Just my 0.00002 BTC.
(1) I, too, would love to try it out.
This does mean that if it is not much better than my Keurig (wasteful) single use, I may not re-up. Would be interested to see.
(2) Also, would be great if the trial packets were available someplace that already had my credit card (like Amazon).
(3) Do you have half-cafs?
We do want to make it a lot easier to try (see my comment above) - figuring out the best ways to do that.
1) A big reason we started this company together was our shared belief in making customers feel good through hospitality. It's more than just the coffee itself. We want to build a better experience - if you are a Sudden subscriber, the experience should evolve over time, you'll learn more about coffee, try new things, have fun with it. To us, this wasn't about making something to have once a year on a road trip, but a way that we could connect with customers and create a larger community. A subscription is the best way for us to build a lasting experience at our current size.
2) For a lot of folks out there, it is super easy & convenient and they wouldn't have it any other way. They like that Sudden Coffee just arrives and they don't have to think about it. It's something they can add into their life.
3) Subscriptions mean we can offer the same product at a much cheaper price. We can spend a lot less time & money making ads or sending emails to remind you to buy again. This is the reality of what most CPG companies do - think about how often you see a toothpaste ad for a toothpaste you already own, even if you love it. We pass the savings directly on to customers. We ran the numbers, to offer the same coffee without a subscription, we'd have to charge $4-5/cup.
To clarify 2 things: A) You definitely can still be in the target market for us. Our most popular subscription is 8/cups a month. This is meant to ADD-TO not REPLACE your existing coffee ritual. We find Sudden works best as your 'second-cup' of the day (at least as you try it out). We have plenty of customers who make a daily pour over and then use Sudden in the afternoon.
B) We recognize that giving people a way to TRY before subscribing is a big gap in our service and we are actively experimenting with the best ways to do that. It may come in the form of referrals from other customers or special sales. We just brought on someone last week to think through the experience and were brainstorming about it this morning.
Email me if you want to order a one-off and I can hook you up ;)
Perhaps having packs of 10/25/50 is a viable road. After all, what's so different about sending out kits monthly to a subscriber vs sending one out to someone who purchased a month supply as a test?
I'm definitely one of those that pretty much refuses to have anything to do with monthly payments, plus I'm not a huge coffee fan. So I'm never going to get a subscription. But I do like a good coffee every now and then, and I'm curious, so I might try a one-time order.
From where I sit, Starbucks Via Instant is the competition. It's a notch above the urns of Folgers Freeze-Dried in the grocery store, but like all things Starbucks, still too bitter to really enjoy on its own.
Okay, so I'm not a coffee snob. I'll brew at home in the morning with water at the right temperature, but I'll use pre-ground beans from a vacuum pack. Sure, freshly roasted tastes way better, but as long as I can avoid the bitterness from over-extraction, I'm generally happy with what ends up in my mug.
Because it doesn't need sugar.
That was a revelation to me: that properly brewed coffee does taste pretty damn good on its own, maybe with a bit of milk to smooth out the rough edges.
But the point is, I have no shortage of coffee options at home: aeropress, coffee press, pour-over, good old drip machine. And when I travel, I would struggle mightily to care less about my coffee.
That all said, I would spend $20 for a sample pack to try while backpacking -- especially if it's truly epic coffee. Bringing milk along on the trail is... difficult at best, and it would be a nice little luxury to start the day with a cup of something genuinely tasty.
But starting off with a subscription, for a product I've never sampled? Unlikely.
Maybe I'm not the target market, and I could be drastically underestimating the number of coffee snobs in the world, but I suspect that this company struggle with the current offering.
Via makes a decent cup of coffee which is good as "back-up" for situations where you can't make coffee in a normal way. It's cost/serving is comparable to what you would pay for good beans. I am thinking something like 12oz of La Colombe Corsica ($12) @ 20g/dose => $0.70/serving.
$2+/serving for Sudden seems "out there" for a subscription service which, by definition, is intended for regular use.
Maybe it won't convert well enough to justify cost but I bet it would. You get someone to input all their shipping data etc and an email (which pre-validates them as someone likely to buy), then you can email market them the day the package gets to them via tracking code. They try it, then can immediately order via the email if they like it.
A week after they have received it send them another email with a X% discount on first Y months subscription if you haven't heard back from them.
A few weeks later I get a call in class. Ignore. Listen to the voicemail after. "It's Jeff. I'm paying 10$ to call you international. Send more of those Starbucks packets, we're going to have a fucking riot here if we don't get more."
I started sending boxes. Apparently they're 100x better than whatever coffee the military was providing. So, @Sudden Coffee, try sending to troops, apparently they have a refined taste when it comes to instant coffee.
A couple weeks ago I compared it head to head against starbucks Via while backpacking.
Sudden Coffee totally blew Starbucks Via away. It's about as much better than Via as Via is compared to the horrible Nestle stuff.
It's not going to replace my daily pourover, but for future camping trips I'll be drinking Sudden. For this use-case, the subscription model is a pain. I'd prefer to just buy two or three cases to have a supply and give some out to my outdoor friends/family.
How do your yields compare to cold brew?
You can sell a shit-ton of this (if it's great) at half the price. But almost $2.50 per cup is more than Nespresso, and the customers willing to spend that month-in and month-out are already going to have Nespresso, etc.
I had always assumed coffee was made via liophilization at scale, any insight on why it's not?
On the subject of extraction, how are you measuring yield? What are the main differences in the 40% coffee yield you're leaving on the table?
When the big boys brew the coffee in really high temp and pressure (165-190C, 15 bars) the structure of the bean changes and previously insoluble parts of the hemicellulose become soluble. This means you get a higher yield but what you get are nasty, woody, heavy bitter compounds.
Here's a diagram explaining more: https://goo.gl/dJTsxM
Here's the job posting in case you're interested: https://jobs.lever.co/suddencoffee
A big part of artisanal coffee is that it uses high quality water (usually magnesium enriched after filtering via reverse osmosis iirc) - is there anything you can do to control for this / shitty water at the customer side?
If you're brewing with Mg-water then, most of it will be left behind when freeze drying, of course, but water used to rehydrate the coffee will be a big one...
your -> you
Also, no shipping to Japan?
I'd like to try this out but without shipping to my region I suppose that's me out.
My initial worry was that it was too pricey but they released this blog post which I found enlightening: https://blog.suddencoffee.com/transparent-pricing-what-goes-...
I've only tried a few since I don't even live in SF, but IME "as good [as] the corner cafe here in San Francisco" could be anywhere from horrible to excellent, depending on the particular corner cafe.
Also, re: this -
From what I remember this is how Nestle was making its first version of instant coffee back in 1930s. It then switched to the freeze-drying method in mid 60s, which is still used to make Nescafe Gold.It's very cool to see that you made your own brewing/dehydration tech, but twisting facts and bad-mouthing your competitors is not the right way to go about promoting yourselves.
I wonder why the airlines aren't doing anything about this. I'm not a frequent first-class passenger, but if I were, high-quality coffee would be a big deal for me.
Many transatlantic and transpacific flights now have a proper grind-on-demand coffee machine (allowing for lattes, cappuccinos, etc) in business / first class. Doesn't necessarily solve the water problem, although they can fill them up from bottled (I don't know if they actually do).
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150112-why-in-flight-food-...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9408563
For the airplane I wonder if the water isn't getting hot enough due to lower atmospheric pressure. The flight attendant see it boiling so they assume boiling means hot but it may only be 80C not 100C.
I know when I make the Starbucks VIA I make sure the water is boiling well (I live at sea level) and it's really hot otherwise it doesn't work out.
I don't know how VIA makes their product, but if you do a side-by-side taste test with Sudden vs VIA, I 100% guarantee you will notice (and prefer) Sudden. We do in fact use a pretty unique bean selection + brewing process to achieve it.
Re: drying techniques - it really varies brand by brand and when you go to a store shelf in the US, most of the brands you see are spray dried, not freeze dried. In the US, you specifically have to look for brands that say 'freeze dried' and it's usually reserved for the more expensive instant coffees. Spray drying is much cheaper, but yields a lower quality product. Freeze dried coffee is a lot more common outside of the US. Even within freeze drying - we use a smaller batch freeze drying process. I've worked in large scale manufacturing before and with a smaller batch process we are able to achieve much higher quality levels.
Re: beans - most coffee beans bought and sold are bought as a commodity product - think rice, beans, etc. They can literally be years old before being brewed. We have seen lots of these beans and they visibly have mold and insect damage. The beans we use are hand-picked when ripe. Much closer to picking grapes from a vineyard.
I get that you're not trying to compare your product, which I'm sure has great quality, to the $8 jar of instant coffee but that's what the general consumer is going to do.
I will openly admit, I hated coffee until I tried a fresh cup from a friend who owns his own small business roasting coffee beans and it was incredible.
I truly hope you do succeed as that'll ideally allow you to run larger production runs to drive down costs to more affordable prices for everyone.
As others have said, if this was at REI or other stories and priced the same or higher I would totally grab some for when I go backpacking.
In any case, I'm truly impressed by your responses in this thread. Most founders don't take criticism in stride and that's, in my opinion, a main difference between those who succeed and don't.
I'll be a subscriber in the near future as I'm going to be traveling quite often the second half of this year and I'd love to avoid drinking Keurig hotel coffee.
And this is just the price for 32 cups of coffee a month, which is at most 1/5 of my normal consumption.
Sudden is the same thing. Continue making coffee at home, but 2-3 times a week if you want something that tastes different or that's easier - go for Sudden. At that rate, spending $5-7 a week is much closer to treating yourself at a cafe.
Freeze dried coffee is already what Folgers does and sell you. This is the more artisanal version of that since the big brands have big factories that can pump out plenty of instant coffee grounds.
So this is a ramped up volume play on existing techniques perfected by the doomsday preppers. Youtube search for freeze dried coffee and you'll plenty of people explaining how to do it.
The freeze drying machines sell for $600 to $1000 from a variety of vendors. I think I figured out which one Sudden is using, it's the low end consumer version from Salt Lake City. They just have 20 of these in a SF warehouse somewhere.
From there it's just a method of scaling expensive capital costs, labor intensive processes, and maximizing the calculation of yield, and marketing enough to convince people that $2.50 for freeze dried coffee in a tube is a good deal.
That only works when relative to the crazy world of craft coffee people charging $5 or $7 for a pour over with the Keurig pods at $1.50 anchoring the bottom and buying a big can of coffee to make your own at $1 a carafe.
It's somewhere in the middle to be honest. We did not invent freeze dried coffee - it's been around for over a century. However, it is quite difficult to make it work at-scale in a way that's profitable/sustainable, and that still tastes good.
I have a pretty extensive background in operations, manufacturing, & tech and I had to pull out every trick in the book to get this to work at our current scale & price. It was a lot of work.
It is also inherently more expensive to sell. All of the same things that make regular instant coffee taste bad also make it super cheap. We are trying to make it as affordable as possible, but at the end of the day the higher quality does require a more expensive process.
At Sudden's 8 cups for $19 it is CHEAPER for me to buy a quality pour over at the local cafe where they charge $2.25 a cup.
Also this appears to be targeting "coffee snobs"; most of that crowd isn't interested in instant coffee.
Edit: Definitely makes sense for you to go to your corner coffee shop. However, Sudden offers you an option to drink kick-ass coffee when you don't have access to any other option
Is there a non-subscription / trial offer?
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Honest feedback, I hope you take it in the spirit it is given: Is there really no way to just order a sampler from you, without 'you will be automatically subscribed unless you cancel?' I straight up refuse to do subscriptions. The entire 'but you can cancel at any time!' model makes me think of low-quality, as-seen-on-TV crap, and is a strong negative in terms of my brand perception. Let your product stand on its own merit. If it's good, customers will come back. Like I said, if you posted a link where I could buy a one-time-only, no other actions required on my part sampler, I would buy it immediately. As it is, the 'your sampler becomes a sub unless you cancel' is just Another Thing to Deal With, and I already have enough of those. So do most other people.
I'm happy with my grind-and-pourover setup at home, but would love to have a reliable alternative for travel. I've tried to travel with Aeropress + handmill + beans, but it's only worth it for small town, remote area itineraries, whereas decent coffee is usually available in major metros. But for the times it isn't, or when staying with non-coffee friends, or for on the plane, or for rushing out the door, it would be great to have a decent backup option.
Things that taste bad in coffee might be: - dries out your mouth - watery/ tasteless - really bitter - tastes like wood - smokey/ burnt
FYI, it's hard to pick up on these taste characteristics if you drink coffee with cream and sugar, so if you want to do a taste test, try it black and at a warm (not hot) temperature.
For more information on the sensation of taste and all it's myriad complexities, you may want to check out these resources:
http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicalschool/dep... Sue is a world expert on taste, along with Tom Finger, and her work is excellent in every way.
https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural-Science-Fifth-Kande... The bible of neural sciences, though thick and dense, the sections on gustation and olfaction may prove useful to your endeavors.
Edit: Here are some other resources on how to modify your taste sensation to better understand how your taste buds work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Taste_modifiers
There is also a supplement that you can take that will elliminate your sensation of sweet for a few hours, but I forget the name
Lastly, to understand umami, try getting a few bags of chips of similar salt content and hold your nose the entire time. One of just regular Lays potato chips, one of something like Doritos, and one of those baked Parmesan cheese ships from whole foods. While eating them with your nose held close, try to recognize the changes in the umami taste.
Things that taste bad in coffee might be: - dries out your mouth - watery/ tasteless - really bitter - tastes like wood - smokey/ burnt
FYI, it's hard to pick up on these taste characteristics if you drink coffee with cream and sugar, so if you want to do a taste test, try it black and at a warm (not hot) temperature.
And if someone is buying instant coffee anyways, I doubt they care about the taste, or have preferred methods of milk/cream and sugar that would make any drown out any nuanced/bad flavor of ANY coffee.
We have a lot of customers who go through a similar experience. They use Sudden maybe 1-3 days a week when really busy and then pour over on others days when they have time. The pour over is still pretty enjoyable if you have the time.
But I would like to test a couple of cups of your coffee with friends. I never drank a good instant coffee so I really wonder how a good instant coffee tastes.
But a cup of great instant coffee could be awesome. Especially when you are camping or on music festivals. These were the only times I was using instant coffee. If their price point stays the same you won't save much on their model.
From a price standpoint I don't know if there is something much cheaper than buying coffee beans and making your own coffee.
Definitely won't save money compared to buying your own beans. It's the same as cooking - it's cheaper to grill a nice steak than buy one.
As a music festival goer - Sudden at festivals is about taste and speed. It tastes amazing. I usually pour it in a cold water bottle and shake it up (while in the middle of a performance) - really awesome. Definitely tastes better than festival coffee. Furthermore the coffee line at festivals is usually 30 minutes and they charge $5! This is obviously a personal pain point for me :-)
That's the only time when I'm buying instant coffee, but all the ones I've tried were bad or horrible.
To the Nespresso or Keurig model: it is the single serving in plastic tubes which rubs me wrong and which reminds me of these models.
I'd prefer something like a Nescafe glass with better coffee (and it can be really small, like 20 servings or something like that). More flexibel and less waste. But I understand that I may not be your target group and that the model right now is working much better for you.
And the Nespresso model is working great for them and is preferred by many people I know - it's just not for me.
But if I need to travel or whatever I will pick up the best instant I can find.
If this is as good as they claim, I'd buy it.
- Electric percolator with pre-ground Starbucks light-roast coffee (used to be Intelligentsia Honey Badger, before they souled-out to shitty Peet's).
- IKEA steel french press
- Nespresso (Original - not the supersize American version)
- Hario coffee hand mill for coffee beans (much rarely than before for time-availablity issues)
But, my go-to coffee on many days is the Folgers/Nescafé instant coffee.
If your instant coffee is really better (and I mean really) than what's on the market, and you can maintain consistent quality over time, I am in your target demographic.
Sign me up with a sampler!
The subscription model isn't great in this respect.
I travel up to a dozen times a year and backpack at least a couple weeks per year (in aggregate).
So that's 3x2x12 (3 cups per day of travel for each work trip) + 3x14 (backpacking trips). And probably another dozen or three here or there for random stuff (full-day bike rides, long drives, run out of beans @ work, etc.)
If I like Sudden, and especially if it's better than Starbucks drip served at airports, I'd use it for all of these things.
But I'm not going to+ sign up for a subscription because the vast majority of the year I'm happy with my espresso machine at home and decent drip at work. It's not like hygiene products where I just need a steady drip. My demand for instant coffee is very bursty. I expect that's true of others as well.
Maybe the logistics just don't work out without a subscription model, which is fine. And I certainly won't pretend to know what I'm talking about. But you're definitely losing one potential customer by forcing me to do a monthly subscription :)
Also, something is confusing in your ordering page. How many servings of coffee do I get for $19? I feel like that'd be useful information to have somewhere on the order page. Is it 8 cups of instant grounds? Or enough instant groups for 8 "cups" of coffee?
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+ well actually, I am to try it out. But I won't mess with starting/canceling the subscription in the future. If you gave me a way to schedule things though, that would convert me for sure, assuming I enjoy the coffee.
A big part of our mission is serving coffee for everyone's need - we have some people who use it camping, we have others who use it on the way to work. There is room for both.
What would be really neat is if we learned exactly how much you need and sent you the right amount at the right time.
At most, send me a reminder email asking if I want to repeat last year's order.
Coffee is the most important thing my partner and I check to make sure we have before we enter the backcountry. And it's always instant, not out of preference or cost concerns, but weight.
Our target customer is the average person who goes to Philz, Blue Bottle, Stumptown as well as Starbucks. These people aren't really buying instant coffee - they spend $2-10 on coffee per day. Some of them buy 2 x $5 latte drinks at a cafe. 100% of these people drink their coffee for the taste (although they have different taste preferences). The average person who goes to Blue Bottle daily actually doesn't know much about the beans, where it's sourced, etc. This is a big misconception that we uncovered last May. These people are Blue Bottle loyalists who love the brand, but they really just want a good cup of coffee that makes them feel good. They don't care what country it came from and they don't really know what light roast vs dark roast is.
This is actually a HUGE market of people. The middle is much larger than the fringes.
Btw, I've said this in other places on the thread - we completely love people who are super into coffee and I still think we make a good product for those really into it, but I just want to highlight the large number of people in the middle who we often forget to talk about.
I think I'm in your market, too. Basically, enough people around me like good coffee that I'm spoiled. I'm not a big coffee drinker and not terribly picky, but I do have a taste for the good stuff.
If it were cheaper, I'd be all over it. Like, $1.50/cup, say. I mean, it still adds up over time, but by an order of magnitude less. Plus, it doesn't add up in terms of sugar like soda does. https://xkcd.com/1793/
...so, maybe I'm not in the target market just yet. Hopefully you'll get a decent economy of scale going. ^_^
Here's some trends noted from the 2016 NCDT, which they do admit have only appeared within the past few years: "Behaviors that are slowly growing include lighter coffee consumption (slightly fewer drinkers and slightly lighter cups per drinker per day), drinking espresso-based coffee and drinking coffee out-of-home. Behaviors that are slowly declining include drinking traditional coffee and drinking coffee at home. Note that most of these shifts are occurring over the last few years."
Some other figures based on satisfaction of brewing methods found later in the report include:
86% very satisfied/satisfied with their drip coffee maker in 2016
94% with espresso
90% with single-cup
89% with instant
88% with coffee vending
It seems to me like there is a growing trend of more conspicuous consumption, as well as already high satisfaction across the board with people's status quo brewing methods.
It also seems to me like you're trying to make an instant coffee that carries with it the sort of branding that Philz, Blue Bottle, Stumptown, Starbucks, etc. have with physical locations which have the ability to foster certain groups of people, as well as convey aesthetic or ethical sensibilities through branding within the stores. It seems to me that this kind of branding is somewhat reliant on physical locations. I just don't buy into the assumption you make that you can target the same consumer that these places can.
Like, come on, the title of the NYT review on your coffee is: "Instant Coffee You’ll Actually Want to Drink", if that is any indication as to the mismatched conceptions people already have about instant coffee. It seems like you're climbing an uphill battle, considering the fact a cup of any other regular coffee costs about 7 cents, you're trying to sell instant coffee, but 36 times more expensive, based on branding and convincing people
Cafes, restaurants, and bars all make you FEEL something. If they do it well, you feel included, you feel part of a community, you feel like you belong. The average e-commerce experience doesn't do that at all - and yet we have so much information and data at our disposal to make the experience so much better.
However, we are a startup - that means (a) we aren't there yet, (b) we may not succeed - it's a risk - that's why we do what we do. We need support from the community to help us get there. But your comment captures exactly what we are trying to go out and do.
Regarding the market size - just some rule of thumb numbers - specialty coffee in the US is a $21B market. Instant coffee world-wide is a $30B market. Keurig got bought for $14B. I'm not a "we're taking over the world!" startup guy, but these are big numbers. A lot of people drink coffee in the US and the world. I've looked at a lot of different food segments and this one is big.
There might be some customer facing bigcos with a service component that might buy into this as a differentiator, especially in their premium cabins.
You can like good coffee and be interested in good instant coffee.
Won't replace my whole-bean subscriptions, but will be a great way to get a good cup of coffee away from my home, and a great gift for my dad who likes instant coffee.
One suggestion: let us buy without a subscription, even if it costs 10-20 percent more. I don't want to subscribe to this service for the above reasons. :)
A pop-up store type experience in major coffee cities in N.America (including Canada pls.) would be a good way to get the word out about Sudden.
Edit: when you open a tube it will age much faster.
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/Documents/fdbCFOfaqs.pdf
having said that, the primary reason i pound cold brew instead of making 2 or 3 aeropresses every morning is because i don't like boiling water, and grinding, and waiting, and cleaning up. some people find it all very mindful and relaxing and zen and whatever, but for me it's just a pain in the ass, so for me personally $2.50 for something i could just pay $1 (on average) in a big concentrated cold brew growler is perhaps a weird price point.
And yet, those often make the best businesses. Businesses that do not require extensive domain knowledge are easy to copy, businesses that have no 'moat' (barrier to entry) tend to be overrun by competition initiating a very early race to the bottom in price where the only thing that matters is to hit the largest possible scale as soon as you can.
Having a moat like this gives you breathing room, so cherish it.
Hard is good in startups.
Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Coffee will knock this off in μseconds if there's any traction.
good. excellent. the more ripoffs the better. in what universe is the giants copying the small startup a bad thing? validation, validation, validation.
validation, validation, validation. validation.
val. i. da. tion.
one more time. validation.
i wish i could think like you, i really do. i would probably be much happier with everything in the world and in my life.
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There's a lot of value add that Sudden is bringing to the table. Most obvious being sourcing, second being operations, third being logistics of getting the boxes to you, then lastly fourth--and most important--is marketing.
Coffee for the most part is bullshit, much like the wine industry. A small part of the audience want to hobnob about taste. For some reason everyone complains about Starbucks coffee or McDonalds coffee and somehow suddenly everyone knows what coffee gruel tastes like. The rest of the audience will just take what you craft and pour in milk and sugar to their liking, aka Philz.
Along with having so many people in the industry, cutting through the signal to convince you to remember the brand, to get you to try it, and to get you to believe it's superior is almost all the work.
On the global scale it's the equivalent of coffee farmers in Yunnan, China spending millions of dollars to convince you that Chinese coffee is just as good if not better than coffee from elsewhere like how wine people try to convince you something grown out of Napa or Champagne isn't good.
And to be fair the last time someone did this was some folks in South America using the marketing idea of a guy in a poncho and hat with his mule, and that worked really well.
So it's to say the challenge is process and marketing. Both are hard. But hard is good. Most people shy away from hard work to min-max their way through life.
Coffee people tend for the most part admire and adore hard work. It's the reason why they insist on doing things the long way, hard way, right way.
And that in turn is what makes this exciting.
But to flip it back, identifying the context of this was my aim.
1. Instant coffee is already a CPG thing you can buy off the shelf.
2. Then the preppers came up with the freeze drying.
3. And now someone is mechanizing it.
And it's going to be hard.
And whether that's going to be a better thing or not, well, maybe it wouldn't matter.
Techies could be drinking Ensure or Slimfast but instead they choose diarrhea-inducing Soylent because marketing is all that matters.
PS. Hard also means they're locked out of a lot of things. This won't be mainstream, there's no economies of scale for margins to give to retailers to have it be on shelves. And if and when they do upgrade to industrial scale they lose the hipster cache. Tough calls to be made, but either way hard is always more fun.
Yeah, those are all the real challenges we face. Marketing for us is a big one - as many people have pointed out about our website :-)
I think it's our job as a business to figure out a way to make it mainstream. It's going to take creativity, hard work, and a great tasting product - but that's the challenge we are signing up for to be honest. We are not here to make a niche product. Everything we are working towards is making this something the majority of people can enjoy. If you talked to my parents in the 70's, the idea of a Starbucks style cafe where you pay $5 for an iced latte was ludicrous, but now it's mainstream (I'm not saying its a ripoff either, its just something we didn't know we'd want).
What we see is a huge gap in the market. If you live in a select few big cities, you have this huge exposure to specialty coffee and it tastes great. If you live anywhere else - it is a whole lot harder to experience coffee that tastes this good. We believe that the average person truly does want to experience great tasting coffee - they just don't have access.
*Caveat that I always add - that doesn't mean there isn't room for other coffee either. McDonalds is a mainstream burger restaurant but there is still a place for 10 other fast food companies, a whole spectrum of high end burgers, etc. We aren't trying to replace every way to drink coffee - just provide a new alternative that tastes awesome.
Really enjoyed your comments - thanks for writing!
> On the flight back to Helsinki I was desperate for caffeine and ordered a coffee
Denial is a common sign of addiction :)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907/ https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/05/is-sugar-wor...
I am currently forced to drink Nestlé Gold Decaf and it is just barely tolerable. I don't know how your product compares but personally I would spring for anything better in a heartbeat, price be damned.
Through an anthropologist's lens, caffeine helps adapt unreliable human mental concentration to an industrial/capitalist society. (Just like ritalin and adderall!) See ern's comment regarding "forced to take coffee to keep up with my fellow developers". I've observed that coffee is the most common beverage (after water) which employers freely distribute in the workplace.
This said, many folks prefer a caffeinated existence and don't experience the side effects. If it works out for you, then enjoy it!
That said, I do get a day or three of withdrawl headaches if I go cold turkey these days. I recently went through a 4-5 week abstinence - not my first - but was extremely surprised when, this time, I temporarily became a morning person for the first 3 weeks of it. That's new. Then my schedule reverted to it's normal night owl behavior - presumably after deacclimatizing from my previous caffeine intake levels.
I'm not abstaining currently, but I am trying to keep it in moderation. My main source of caffeine comes with too much sugar (in the form of energy drinks), which I'm a bit more worried about. Fewer drinks, smaller drinks (e.g. consuming half portions), healthier & decoupled substitutes (real fruit for the sugar, tea for the caffeine.)
I never acquired a taste for coffee, for better or worse.
Do you have any evidence for this or is it a hmm-I-better-not-vaccinate-my-children-because-I-think-it-will-give-them-autism type statement?
I did, however, find this neat little article on the "myth" of adrenal fatigue, from Crossfit.[0]
There's a part that says caffeine overuse can trigger general fatigue (or adrenal fatigue as refereed to the alternative medicine crowd).
http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/CFJ_2015_07_Adrenal_Exa...
((Of-topic, are there any other good research aggregators besides Google Scholar?))
For those who naysay the withdrawal, I've seen multiple people complain of debilitating cluster headaches after about 3 days of no coffee.
The other thing that I've seen is people who complain about anxiety, but start every day with 2 coffees. If you were injecting adrenaline and then complaining about anxiety you would be laughed out of the room, but for some reason with coffee it is acceptable.
In the early days of my work life I started drinking a cup of coffee here and there. It helps if you're tired in the afternoon, and I like the taste. Then I started having a cup after lunch since everyone else went for it. Not long after, I'd have a cup first thing in the morning, and not too long after that I would be a complete zombie without drinking coffee from the morning and into the afternoon.
It took hard work kicking that habit, but I did, only because: (1) I don't like having such a strong dependency, it just seems unhealthy, and (2) I become irritable and jumpy in the evening if I have had coffee during the day. Maybe I'm just more sensitive, I don't know.
It sucks because I love the taste of coffee. These days I have a big jar of Nestle Instant Decaf at my desk and I dip into that every other day, just because I miss the taste of coffee, for which the instant just barely qualifies, but those are the lengths I go to. Now, if someone would come up with a decent instant decaf I would happily throw my money at that.
What's yield/power consumption etc. (for such a lower end consumer version). Anything else I should be aware of?
1) grind the coffee 2) brew it however you like 3) cool the coffee from 90C --> cold 4) freeze the coffee 5) freeze dry for 24-48 hours
Fundamentally this will work but you're likely to run into a few problems. Your yield is going to be pretty low - one batch will likely get you ≈10-15 cups. Secondly, that coffee is really hygroscopic, meaning that it's so dry that it will absorb any moisture from the air. Unless you keep it in vacuum pouches it'll turn into a rock within days.
So, it's in a paper wrapper bag with vintage font that displays a feel-good message? (Note: I'm susceptible to these kinds of marketing gags, but feel dirty when I buy something that turns out to be mediocre stuff.)
(sorry, have to mention competing product). Nescafe Tasters Choice in the single packs I find very acceptable and often prefer to brewed coffee.
So I'm pretty sure good instant coffee can be done. Be very interested to see what can really be done with an even higher quality product as this outfit appears to be doing.
Not crazy about subscription though. Understand it makes business sense from companies perspective but it doesn't from mine. Maybe this will work out nicely to where other distribution models make sense. Best of luck! I'm rooting for you :)
1) really high-quality coffee 2) not cut corners in the process 3) Sell it at the lowest possible price to you guys
You said you'd spent 12 hours a day pulling shots- were you using espresso for the coffee? Is this freeze dried espresso, with more water added to it (like an Americano)?
I'd truly love to know more about your brew technique and process.
Our current setup is quite different and in terms of flavor profile and brew dynamics does represent AeroPress. I'd love to go in more detail but can't disclose more.
You're obviously targeting people who already like coffee, such as myself: I already buy beans, grind them myself, and manage the process using an Aeropress, and I'm hardly some coffee hipster because I use goddamned Eight O'Clock Columbian Peaks.
Yet, you are trying to sell me instant coffee, which I automatically am wary of because instant coffee is the shittiest coffee you can drink... yet you have no way of convincing me otherwise. Subscriptions are only useful if you can convert the customer, "the first hit is always free."
Also, your entire website is a hastily developed trainwreck: "Copyright $copy; 2017."... Copyright who? The email harvesting call to action in tan needs to follow the rule of thirds to stand out, your contact page needs serious loving (seriously, Google on how to make these), and your front page hero image is goddamned tiny and isn't even full width of the page, and the Sudden/Instant comparison block below it is formatted horridly.
Please hire a web designer, you need someone with experience on how to do this right.
I'd suggest offering samples for a small price. Convincing customers about the taste with only a website can be an uphill battle unless they've been recommended the product, or actually tasted it. Perhaps free taste samples in stores can be a sales channel to the web site.
You could charge that amount for a sample, even if you consider it overpriced.
You might be surprised at how many people want to try it, but don't want to commit to a subscription right away.
(http://i.imgur.com/HZ1Hnwg.png)
We hired an engineer and a head of marketing in the last 2 weeks. We are very aware internally that our site has a lot of errors and a lot of what you're seeing are tests we are running. We have a larger design project going in the background.
We do want to figure out a way for more people to try the product - so expect more there.
The target market is actually interesting...there are a TON of people who are really interested in speciality coffee, but simply don't have access, know-how, or want to put in the time. As an example, someone who visited SF, tried Blue Bottle, but lives in Indiana without a Blue Bottle nearby. There are also folks who love great coffee, but really don't have the time (doctors, nurses, etc). A big surprise for us after working on Sudden for a year was that plenty of people who go to the top coffee shops in a city, every single day, don't know too much about the coffee itself (single-origin or pour over are foreign terms) - they just like the taste. A big mission we have is creating ACCESS. We want to help everyone have easy access and UNDERSTAND what great coffee is about.
So responding to your initial question - we would absolutely love to have you as a customer, and I do think you'd love Sudden, but there are a lot of folks with a much more limited understanding of coffee who still love great tasting coffee (this was very surprising to us) - and we've realized there's a huge opportunity to open a new range of coffee to those people.
But hey, lets not help YC companies and let them squander that investment. If there is a market for their product, I hope they succeed; but they aren't going to succeed with the current state of that website.
Please, don't offer these only with subscription. Let me do one-off purchases and you have me as a customer.
https://www.suddencoffee.com/?trial=true
We are experimenting with ways to let people try it first - so more solutions are coming!
My girlfriend and I would never consider something like this due to the high volume of plastic involved. Can you make the containers compostable?