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.
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!
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.
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.
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. ^_^
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.
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?
--
+ 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.
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.
There might be some customer facing bigcos with a service component that might buy into this as a differentiator, especially in their premium cabins.
Edit: when you open a tube it will age much faster.
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.
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
//
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.
Is there a non-subscription / trial offer?
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.