What is a K-Cup? The Invention, the history, and the future of Single Serve Coffee

So, there’s a lot to unpack here, but allow me to take a shot at scratching the surface of a few key subjects related to this category of coffee.

Article Summary:

1. What is a K-Cup?
2. The history of the Keurig and Green Mountain brand
3. Single Serve Specialty Coffee options
4. Why Choose Foxen Coffee k-cups?
5. Wholesale and Bulk K-Cups Options for Businesses

What is a K-Cup?

The K-Cup is a term trademarked by Keurig Green Mountain to describe their single-serve brewing capsule. It’s essentially a convenience (which for someone like me is EXTEREMELY IMPORTANT when it comes to coffee).

This hilarious MEME describes the situation perfectly:

A Single Serve format of coffee from a K-Cup provides a unique way for me to hit the start button in the morning. The process is as simple as pushing a single button on the Keurig machine and then drinking my coffee. For someone like myself who typically crawls to the kitchen every morning from exhaustion, this convenience is a godsend!

So, the convenience is great, but I’ve never been a regular Keurig user in the past because the quality of the coffee has always been subpar, at best. I look forward to my coffee in the morning, not just to wake up, but as a treat that’s been seeded into my everyday morning routine.

The history of the Keurig & Green Mountain Brand

Keurig is a great brand; they created a unique and useful tool for the industry that has grown it to new levels of accessibility. But their coffee brand, Green Mountain (owned by Keurig) attempted to monopolize the industry’s growth by preventing any other coffee brands from using their Keurig machines. This move set the stage for Keurig receiving enormous backlash from the community, a wave of bad reviews started coming in from coffee drinkers all over the world who had already purchased a Keurig machine, but just simply wanted to drink a different coffee brand they enjoyed more than Green Mountain.

So Keurig wittingly changed course, they listened to their customers and stopped the monopoly. This opened the door for specialty coffee roasters to start participating in the Single Serve industry without fear of being cut out by a monopolized tech in the future. But very few Specialty coffee roasters have yet to take advantage of this… Why?

Single Serve Specialty Coffee options

There are very few, if any, specialty coffee roasters in the USA today roasting and packaging their own K-cups. Here’s a few reasons why:

1. It’s extremely tedious. It takes a lot of time and effort to go through the process of packaging ground coffee into 10’s of thousands of individual cups. You either need specialized machinery to do it, or you’re spending countless hours packing ground coffee into cups. The cost of the labor to package individual cups by hand would be astronomical and unsustainable for growth.
2. It’s expensive. The machine we use has a price tag of over $20k USD, but it allows us package 800+ cups per hour. This was the only way we could make this a sustainable business model, and it comes with risk in the form of high-cost specialized assets.
3. Many specialty coffee roasters might be looking at the single serve industry as a low-quality brand, and therefore immediately dismiss it as something they don’t want to participate in. At first glance, I would agree with them. I’ve never had great coffee from a Keurig, UNTIL WE DID IT OURSELVES. When we got into this – we hand picked the best possible design, something that was recyclable and fully sustainable, and that would allow us to solve the quality issues with K-Cup formatted coffee.

Why Choose Foxen Coffee K-Cups?

There are a few fundamental reasons why our K-cups simply taste better.

1. We fill them with the highest rated coffees on the market. Better quality, more natural flavors, ZERO bitterness.
2. We don’t cut corners on volume – we fill our cups 100% full of coffee. Other k-cup coffee manufacturers use less coffee per cup, but a more fine grind to make up for the lack of ground coffee. This creates a bitter and less desirable taste – but it fattens their margins or allows them to sell the cups for cheap. We fill our cups to the very top, and we use a coarse grind which allows for a more robust and flavorful pour.
3. Our cups are 100% fully recyclable, and made from recycled materials. Traditional k-cups claim to be recyclable but require you need to separate the lid from the cup before discarding into the recycle bin (otherwise they just end up in a landfill anyways). Our cups are made from a polypropylene material (from lid, to filter, to cup) so you can discard the full cup and the recycling plants will use it. They love breaking down these plastics – You will not see them in a landfill! (SAVE THE WHALES <3)
4. Deep Cup Design. The pictures below tell the story. Not only are we adding more volume per cup, higher quality coffee, and using fully recyclable materials. We also take into consideration the extraction rate – Since the filter is also made from Polypropylene it has NO absorption effect and the full tastes of the coffee are run through into the cup. Unlike traditional paper filters that will absorb some of the coffee and alter the flavor extraction into your cup.

Wholesale and Bulk K-Cup options for Businesses

We supply bulk k-cup solutions for businesses such as:

1. Hospitality Industries (Hotels, Restaurants, etc)
2. Office Building breakrooms
3. Doctors Officers
4. Retail Grocery Markets
5. And more…

Part of our wholesale solution may include a replenishable, and maintenance supply of K-Cup brewers based on volume and contract details. Inquire with us for more information Here

We also provide bulk solutions for our retail customers in 12, 24, and 100 count case options.

Shop K-Cups on our Website Here