Matthew Roberts – Co-Founder of Cometeer on Engineering the World’s Most Innovative Cup of Coffee

Welcome back to the Casey Adams show. Today I am joined by Matthew Roberts, the co founder of Cometeer. Matthew, thank you so much for coming to the show today.

Thanks for having me, Casey. Looking forward to it.

Of course, man. So you know, we spoke last week and I've been familiar with Cometeer for quite some time now. And for those that may not know and I'll let you speak on it as well. But you guys have been just innovative in the world of creating flash frozen coffee capsules. And again, I'll let you expand on that in a second. But I was able to try the product recently and I got to say man, we were talking about this before and I'm not just saying this to say this as a coffee fanatic, that I am completely mind blown by the flavor and the quality that comes in the cup. And I couldn't be any more excited to have you on the show today to talk about the business, to talk about coffee because I know in our first interaction just seeing the passion you carry into the product is just really cool to see. So thank you so much for coming on and excited for the conversation today.

Me too, me too. And yeah, I had my first cup of specialty grade coffee about 10 years ago and it's really one I just dove into the space with two feet and I've been down the rabbit hole now for 10 years. So it's a completely misunderstood industry and once you taste the forbidden fruits, it's hard to go back. So hearing that you enjoyed the coffee so much, it means a lot and that's certainly what keeps us going.

Absolutely, man. And just to dive right in, I mentioned the flash frozen coffee capsules. I'd love to start there, man. There are many and many different coffee companies out there that I think people listening that enjoy coffee might be aware of. But you guys have such a level of uniqueness that I think comes down to user education and customer education where once you understand it you're like, whoa, this is so unique and so cool and love for you to take us back to what led to this innovative approach to this unique coffee experience and what led to that overall?

Yeah, well it certainly is unique. We are the first ones doing it and when people just hear of a coffee capsule, they immediately think that they need a machine. So just to cover our process to begin, we start with coffees from award winning farms and roasters. We brew this coffee perfectly with proprietary equipment at 10x strength and then flash freeze the coffee immediately. So the resulting product is this frozen capsule with a little puck of Coffee that you can melt and mix to create anything on the menu. And we've proven that this unique, counterintuitive approach to making a hot cup of coffee or an iced cup actually delivers more flavor in aroma than any other packaging format on the planet. And we have scientifically validated that. But certainly the concept has come along over the years. We actually spent about four or five years in stealth mode, R and D mode. And it really started with a clever idea to solve a need when I was studying abroad in Spain. And it led to an even greater discovery. So the inception dates back to my junior year of college. I'm studying abroad in Pamplona, Spain, and I couldn't get my sweet and creamy Duncan's Iced Coffee over there. So for the first time, I had to make iced coffee at home. And it's such a pain to make, right? You brew a hot pot and then you pour it over ice and it dilutes, or you put the pot in the fridge and it goes kind of stale overnight. So this started with a clever idea where I was brewing coffee into a very strong pot and then freezing that pot in a little ice chips and then packaging those ice chips with larger ice cubes that were less potent and putting them into like a Capri sun like pouch. So you can imagine grabbing this pouch out of your freezer with the different size ice cubes you tear off the top, put in water, zip it back up, the small ice cubes would melt and bring the drink up to a solid consistency. And the large ones would keep it cold without diluting it. And this was before everyone had their bottled drinks on the market, before all of the cold brew. So I really just saw the opportunity for an authentic tasting iced coffee right out of the freezer in seconds, versus, like the melted coffee ice cream products that were out at the time. So the pivot to focus on specialty coffee came after I had kind of developed the concept and made prototypes when I returned to the US And I shared them with a guy who's known as the godfather of specialty coffee, George Howell. And he invented the Frappuccino and sold it to Starbucks. So I saw him as a Frappuccino guy, but really he should go down with Ernesto Illy. And Alfred Peets is kind of like one of the greats and founding fathers of coffee because he's invented things like the refractometer, which helps you brew better with real time feedback what you've dissolved in the coffee bean when you brew. He founded the cup of Excellence, I mean, Cometeer Would not be around without him. And I showed him one of these early samples and he like, unapologetically, practically just spit it out in front of my face. He is used to good coffee. And, you know, at first I was a little upset, like, oh man, my quality is terrible. But then he started teaching me why the samples I had made were so poor and all of the flaws of the coffee supply chain and why I'd never tasted something like. He then served me, which was a single origin cup of coffee from the Boya region of Ethiopia. It was the first coffee I sit black and actually enjoyed. And I asked him, what did you add to this? And he said, no, that is just good coffee. When people just take a and they throw in a bunch of cream and sugar, you never really taste the nuance. And coffee can have these naturally sweet notes on its own. It's not just brown bitter water. So immediately I thought, wow, this is better than my dunks. Can I combine the ease of melting an ice cube with the quality that George had shared with me? And I actually gave up on brewing the coffee to make samples very quickly. Brewing coffee is extremely challenging. Right. So I had his head barista brew the samples for the later prototypes. My job was to freeze faster because George doesn't drink a cup of coffee that's been left out for 20 minutes. And when you put hot coffee into a freezer, it takes four hours to freeze. So that didn't cut it. So I went into his roastery one day with a cooler full of dry ice. His head barista head of QA pulled the shot. I flash froze that shot, vacuum sealed it, and then I went back one month later, three months later. And I remember melting down the samples six months later. And we served them next to some of the whole bean constant that we held onto. And the flash frozen samples tasted like they were freshly roasted, ground and brewed. And the whole bean coffee tasted aged and cracked and there was a huge delta. And that's when the light bulb went off. Wow. We discovered the best way to preserve coffee nuance on the planet. So getting George's blessing on the samples, I mean, that's, that's really when I know that I had something. But then running the scientific study at Stanford with the gas chromatography mass spectrometry equipment and getting like scientists to stamp their approval on the product, that was, that was also kind of a great step forward.

Absolutely. And so I, as much as I am as a coffee fanatic, I was unaware of, like George Howell until you, you know, once I started doing my research and understand, um, how did you come across George and how did you inevitably end up meeting him?

So I had a professor at Bentley actually tipped me off about like an innovation summit in Boston. It's funny because one of the other entrepreneurs there was Bill Krilman. I don't know if you know Bill. He founded Spindrift Soda.

Oh, incredible.

And they just pivoted back into soda. And it's so funny, everyone's saying they're entering the soda space and it's like, no, they started as a soda company, moved seltzer, and now they're jumping back. So I met Bill there and George, and they're just like these beverage OGs because Bill sold stirrings to, I think, Diageo, right? And I just walked right up to George and said, you know, this is when I had the pouch idea. And I said, you know, I have the iced coffee version of Keurig. It's like the next big thing. You know, I could speak confidently to him and he kind of shrugged me off. But I mean, I called him every other day to get a meeting with him and bugged him. And I think once he tasted those samples that his barista pulled, like he knew there was something there. And actually what George was, was famous for in the space was freezing his green coffee. So coffee is green when it's shipped to the US and coffee preserves a lot better in a green format. And what people don't know is that every country has like one harvest a year. So if you love Ethiopian coffee, it's not green the entire year. So what George found is that he could freeze coffee from Ethiopia in a green format and it would preserve enough so that he could serve his single origin coffees year round. So he had never thought about brewing the product and freezing it. And really what you can do is then bring the coffee through the entire supply chain with the top control systems, right? And then a customer just needs to melt because he knows that, you know, he could cook that bean to perfection. And then a customer can go to a shop and pick it up two weeks later. But if they don't know what they're doing at home, like, you can mess up. Most coffee's messed up in the last five feet and people don't even know what they're trying to do when they brew coffee. You want to dissolve a very specific 20 to 22% of the coffee beans mass when you brew. And if you don't have the perfect water chemistry and the right equipment and the Right. Grind size, I mean it's so challenging. And then if you don't have that piece of equipment, that refractometer or brix meter, taxi measure whether you, you, you hit the target 20%, then you're just swinging with your eyes closed.

I just got my, the first like Breville espresso machine. And I've learned very quickly that a lot of the shots I'm pulling are just not good. And it's a challenge, especially if you're switching beans. You got to change the grind size, the grind amount, and it's a process of like. And again, this is like an entry level machine, but I've been having so much fun with it. And you can really appreciate fine quality coffee when you try to just do it yourself and kind of finish it at the end there.

Yeah, it's, I mean, I still have a tough time. I've been in the industry for a while and like when I get a fresh new bag of beans, like it takes a minute to dial in the coffee. And my number one recommendation for people who do want to brew and love the craft of it is really spend your money on the grinder. Right. Because that's like where like even if you do everything right, but you have a cheap grinder, you're not going to get the good taste out of coffee. So one of the things that we think about at Cometeer, but no one thinks about at home is the grind size distribution. So when you grind coffee at home and you have like a cheap grinder, the largest grind is going to be 500 times larger than the smallest grind. So when you brew and even if you like do everything correctly, you're going to over dissolve the coffee dust the fine grinds and you just pull out a bunch of nasty flavors. Like a coffee bean is mostly made of wood. So if you ever tasted wood or burnt wood in your cup, that's why. And then you under dissolve the big particles. So like at Cometeer, our grinder costs over a half million bucks. We grind the coffee at sub zero temperatures, it fractures more uniformly. So like if you want to get a good cup at home, getting a cheaper French press, but investing in a grinder, a better burr grinder, that's going to result better than buying just like a fancy grind and brew machine most times.

Absolutely, man. And I want to kind of take a step back. So you started cometeer, was it 2015, is that right?

Yeah, so I had that initial concept in college, but honestly I was focused on enterprise software. Like, okay, you know, I thought I was going to go down the software route, but I kept showing friends these prototypes and just kept poking at it. And once George actually, like, gave his blessing to my product, that's when I quit my job and went at it full time. And the challenge for the next phase was really well, how do we brew coffee at scale as well as a master barista? Coffee in a liquid format is going to acidulate and deteriorate. So no one had ever really put in the effort to brew coffee as well as a master barista and do all those little things that barista champs will do during brewing competition. So I talked about grind size distribution. They use a sieve and will, like, you know, shake out the large particles and the small particles. So, like, how can we match that quality at that scale? And I was able to team up with three incredible co founders. One guy sold the coffee extraction business to Kerry Foods, had a great exit. The other guy was a boomerang at Keurig. And then, you know, our cto, my primary co founder, Doug Hoon, he was just the best athlete. He was in, like, the aerospace industry. MIT guy. And we brought in a chemist from MIT named Chris Hendon. And my job is really just to find enough financing so these guys could develop the tech. And luckily, there was enough interest from people in coffee initially to get the company funded. So two of our large early investors were the former president of Nespresso and the founder of Keurig Green Mountain. And I think they were quick to invest, not only because of the quality, but they know the flaws of the existing first. They know how big the market can be, but they know the flaws of existing capsule platforms and how we can kind of plug those issues when it comes to preserving freshness.

Yeah, that's so incredible. And when it comes to those early conversations for investors, obviously, I'm just curious, when it comes to. I'm assuming every investor, they wanted to try it before they invested. Is that accurate to say?

Absolutely. And it was. The coffee investors were a lot bolder, right? They could taste the product. And, like, some of these investors were, like, laughing like it was. It was, you know, a miracle to them because it was a problem they were trying to solve their entire lives. Counterintuitive. You know, the world's number one hot beverage comes from a frozen little capsule. But the tech investors, they wanted to see, like, the science. They didn't trust their gut. They would taste the coffee and be like, this is better, but kind of look around the room. And once we got that scientific study executed at Stanford where we compared flash frozen brewed coffee to pre ground coffee to bottled coffee, et cetera, and just saw how we were able to capture and preserve that fresh, constant fingerprint. That's when the tech investors started rolling in and we raised about $10 million from just a group of incredible angels and developed the tech and no one knew about us. Like we had discovered that was the.

First, just for the context of the business, like that was the first round of funding was the initial 10 million. Wow, that's incredible.

Yeah. And what we did with that, you know, we ended up, you know, getting a full suite of patents. I don't know where we're at right now, like 13, 14, all of these little nuance patents. We were able to develop the technology and also launch it and bring it to market on like a shoestring budget really. So that, that financing lasted us like through the launch, through, through proving out product market fit. And we ended up launching at the Specialty coffee expo in 2019. Now the expo moves around every year, but it was a blessing. It was in Boston. So we were like, wow, Team Court advantage right there. Yeah. And it was funny, I'd say for the first like three hours of the Expo, I'm not kidding you, like we had to like pull people in to try our coffee because everyone would see, you know, oh, this is a new coffee capsule and they'd run in the other direction. But once they saw, oh my goodness, is that George Howell's logo? Is that Bird Rock's logo, Counterculture's logo. Why would they endorse a coffee capsule? They would stop and try the product. And one journalist wrote it was like seagulls flocking to chips at the beach by the end. And we won best new product. And I think just getting like the approval from the industry after like years of hard work with our heads down in stealth mode, it was really awesome. And that was all the fire we needed to really just, you know, test the market. We launched in a pilot online, we had to put up a wait list because we couldn't make enough product. And you know, that was enough for investors to allow us to scale the tech. And I'm actually calling in from our new home, which is up in Gloucester, Mass. You know, 70,000 square foot manufacturing facility. I'm looking at a 30,000 square foot freezer right now. Lots of liquid nitrogen, lots of automation. So now we are making every capsule by hand. You know, geez, three and a half years ago to now, just seeing this line spit out all of this delicious coffee, it's been pretty incredible.

That is so cool to hear. And I'm curious, in terms of the stealth mode approach initially, were you guys gathering the patents and the ip, all the stuff that you were mentioning prior to launch, or what's your biggest takeaway from that process? In this world where things like software are a lot different, but sometimes getting to market as quickly as possible, validating an idea, all those kind of topics are good and helpful. But of course, there's moments, whether that's hardware or product, that's just so unique that you want to be in that stealth mode. Curious to know what you learned from that and the. The overall takeaway now that you're out of that phase of the business.

Yeah, I think it's just part of the moat. It's a deterrence strategy. So, like, there we have patents, we kept some things to ourself, we have the trade secrets, we like to find exclusive suppliers. I'd say right now our moat is really just the scale that we have here. And knowing that if someone wants to catch up, they're spending, you know, $100 million if they can even mimic our tech, and they have to build out infrastructure for it. So we're just ahead of the curve. But certainly investors saw that we were proactive in protecting our ip and it more just like checked a box than anything. I don't think people held on to the IP is kind of like the sole factor, if that makes sense. But I think investors will kind of like look at the entire moat around the business, and it was something that was certainly helpful.

Absolutely. No, that's so great to hear. When it comes to. Over the years, I think when I first came across Cometeer, it felt like I would just see it everywhere. The way you guys are running your ads and the way the marketing around everything. You guys do such a great job. And I'm curious to know, coming out of stealth mode and kind of walking through the story, you know, you come out of launch, you win this award, like, what was the first 12, 24 months, like, in terms of, you know, like, customer. Excuse me, customer reviews, like, the overall consensus, like, what. What was the sort of feedback? Was it what you guys were looking for? Did it blow your mind, like, kind of walk me through that phase of, like, you know, you put in all this work, you're in stealth mode, you come out of launch, then you hit the ground running, you win these awards, like, what happened after that? And kind of just walk us through that process from launch to now, in a sense.

Yeah. Well, it was Incredible. Because we actually ended up raising our round was delayed because of the pandemic and we had to build out our manufacturing, actually grew up marketing online. And I think what we found is that trial and education is key. So a lot of D2C companies, when they have a very easy value prop to communicate and quality is definitely our value prop. But also like some of our customers might just want a nice latte at home without a machine, or they like the fact that our capsule is recyclable or like the marketplace of our roasters. So we just needed more than like 30 seconds than like the tick for like something beyond a TikTok and Instagram attention span. So it took us some time to learn how to market this new category that we were creating. And what we found is that actually just putting sips to lips is the number one way to get customers. So we have an incredible referral program. Right. Where we can sample our product to your friends for much cheaper. And we started investing heavily actually in our field program. So right now our field efforts are actually driving more customers in than any other channel. And we're putting just little sampling stations in shopping centers around the U.S. we actually just opened up two in California, a fashion city in Topanga, more on their way. But you put one of these stations in the right shopping center, in the right location, and we are just picking up customers nonstop all day by just handing out samples of our product. When it comes to digital marketing, we found that longer form works for us. You get a 30 second attention span, maybe on podcasts and YouTube versus TikTok, but we're finding that it all does work together. So we do have our marketing dollar spread, but really it's like trial and education is king. And it took us a bit of time to focus in that direction.

Absolutely. It's so cool to hear. And I think there's a level of, you're right. When I tried the product, it's just like, whoa, the first impression. I've tried a lot of coffee, but it's such a unique product and it's so rich and bold and just incredibly flavorful. And I'm curious, excuse me. On the personal side of things, we talked about this. I think when we first got connected, when you were growing up and into your years, was coffee always something important to you? Or where did this sort of love or passion for coffee even stem from? If we're taking it back for a moment?

Yeah. So, I mean, it's the interesting thing about coffee. I was a coffee lover when, you know, I First started drinking it regularly in Boston. I think it's like, you know, 12, 13 years old and someone just sticks and ice Dunkin Donuts in your hand. It's the adult chocolate milk. I remember trying a sip black and being like, people drink this. This is horrible. And then you doctor it with all the cream and sugar and it tastes good. And it's funny. I would have described myself though, as a coffee lover back then. And when you look at like an adjacent industry, like wine, right? Someone's super passionate about wine, you ask them like, hey, what do you like for wine? They're not going to say, oh, I like barefoot better than Franzia, right? They start talking about the grape varietal, right? Hey, I like chardonnay or merlot. I like this region. And we even put harvest years on bottles that should exist in coffee. But what you get in coffee is that, you know, yellowtail Franzia kind of comparison. And people just compare one big brand to another and people don't realize that, like there's sub varietals beyond arabica and robusta. That's like saying red and white wine in the origin where the grape was grown in the elevation. There are all of these different factors and it's hard to understand because there's really no, like FDA regulation, right? So even roast level, there are some blonde roasts out there from these mass roasters. That's like burnt coffee. You know, there's no, like, caffeine guide, there's no brew guide. So it's really hard to understand what you like. And if your first experience was like mine, where it's like, okay, this is just brown bitter water, I need to sweeten this up. I think people stop trying coffee black and it's harder to get that taste of like clean cut, smooth, naturally sweet coffee when you just fall into a routine of having to doctor your coffee every time that you drink it. And trust me, I love, you know, the affogatos making frappuccinos at home and all that stuff. But like, coffee black is like super healthy. I tend to, you know, I feel like I can drink more black coffee than like lattes. Can't do like the 5 cups of milk anymore. So, you know, I was always a coffee lover and just like passion really hit the next level once I tasted the good stuff. And then once you go to origin and you see all the hard work that happens at the farm level and you kind of feel like you're a part of this like beautiful ecosystem, that's next level. So for anyone listening if you ever had the opportunity to go see a farm in Costa Rica or Colombia or you're traveling like, it is beautiful. It's a humbling experience. Kind of just seeing all the work that goes into just preparing the green coffee. Because if you're in the specialty coffee industry, you know that the farmer produces 100% of flavor potential. And all we do downstream is just take away that quality. No one makes coffee taste better. We can just preserve what's produced there. And luckily, like, coffee, despite climate challenges, is just getting better and better and better because there's a lot of innovation on the farm front right now that keeps it fresh and exciting.

That's so awesome to hear. And I think I totally relate to that of, like, growing up, I would try coffee, and initially I was like, my mom still has. And I try to get her to change, but she's so loves her routine of, excuse me, the Keurig pods. I'm like, mom, there's so much great stuff out there. I'm gonna get her to try some commenteer. Because I think growing up, I hated black coffee. My grandparents would always drink it. And then I kind of went through the latte cappuccino phase of it. And then I remember it was one day of. I don't exactly remember what it was, but just a good black coffee and the cleanliness of it. I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm done ever adding anything to this. And this is my approach. And now it's been one of those things where it's the occasional latte or whatever it may be, but I'm a big cold brew, nitro, cold brew guy. And just like, overall, black coffee, of course. But something that I want to bring up kind of off tangent, but I'm curious to know how you guys think about this. Is I saw on Shark Tank recently, there's this company, I'm curious if you've heard of it. It's called Kids Coffee. Have you seen it?

No, but, you know, it sounds like we might have, like, a new market to target. I don't know. Our coffee has a big kick to it. I don't know about giving kids, like 180 milligrams of caffeine, but, yeah, tell me more. I haven't heard about it.

Yeah, so it was so ironic because I was back home in Virginia this past weekend, and my niece, she's nine years old and she loves coffee, the flavor. My parents are. My mom, who's her grandma, my brother, the dad. We'll give her some decaf coffee and she just loves coffee. And on one end it's like she sees my mom and my brother drinking it, so it's habitual. But if you ask her, do you like black coffee with a splash of milk? She's like, oh my God, I love my coffee. And then randomly over the weekend I see this ad on Instagram and it's this Shark Tank pitch for this eight year old kid. Phenomenal pitch. I'll have to send it to you after and I'll link it down below. It's like the father and son duo are pitching. My kid loves coffee, but I'm not going to give him 100 milligrams of caffeine. And lo and behold, kids coffee. And end up raising I think $50,000 for their deal. And it made me wonder because I'm not around kids a lot, I live across the country from my niece. But it's like, huh, like kids that are around coffee that it's like you're, you're sort of like grooming the next generation of like what is the age when people start drinking coffee, the caffeine, decaf. And I'm curious to know how you think about that, whether that's like as a market for like decaf. I'm not even exactly sure if you guys do decaf. So that's a question I have. And just your whole viewpoint on that on a different lens.

Yeah, well, I actually think that, you know, the, the younger generation is more geared towards, I'd say specialty coffee, but when you go super young, it kind of starts off as a milkshake. So I'm curious to see how customers progress. I started when I was like 12 or 13 years old. I've heard things about like coffee being bad for kids. I mean caffeine just impacts everyone differently. But I could tell you right now we don't have many subscribers that are like 10 years or younger right now. And our coffee packs a punch. But I could tell you in New England it was or at least in my hometown. Right. Middle school was when you started to wake up earlier. Right. I think elementary school was like 8:30. Middle school was like 7:30. So you're waking up a lot earlier and that's when you started seeing people head in. I had some friends or maybe fifth grade, but fifth grade, sixth grade was I think like when the youngin started in my hometown. I'm sure like, I mean one of the like small little coastal town in Massachusetts is different than like the big city Manhattan or even kind of how you know, kids grow up in LA. So I'm curious if you see like 8, 9 year olds walking around with like an ice latte, stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean I'll see like, I think it's like the, you'll see young people, which I obviously am not a fan of is like drinking just the frappuccinos, like pack the sugary drinks and again it's more of like a dessert more than it is a coffee of course. But I think that's what you see more than you know, kids ordering like oh, can I have a black coffee? Of course. But it's interesting and I think just over the weekend and even like thinking about this upcoming conversation with you on this kids coffee brand and I kind of being around my niece for four or five days and every day she has her little decaf coffee in the morning with my, with my mom when she's in, when she's there and it's just like wow. Like I haven't thought about it from that lens and I think it's like I'm sure you know there's a market or something out there. But to move on from that point, I would love to talk about just when it comes to, you know, the business today and how it's changed over the years. Like what have you noticed the most the last handful of years regarding coffee as a category? I've known the guys over at Super Coffee, Jordan, Jake and Jimmy DeCicco and they've become really good friends of mine over the years and just that's probably the closest I've been to understanding a coffee business and talking with them about things and their go to market and again, much different in terms of the bottled coffee approach. But I'm curious to know. And then also on a separate note, recently I came across a Cumulus coffee which I think we talked about as well. And I think just I'm very fascinated with like the industry and of course the product. But as you know, as the co founder of Cometeer, I'm curious to know how you think the industry has shifted. What you're seeing, what's exciting to you obviously maybe even outside of your own product that you know, you're just kind of keeping tabs on since you know, you've been in this space for so long and you've seen so much maybe come and go overall.

Yeah, geez. I mean there's a lot of trends. I'd say the two trends that I keep my eye on is like the single origin coffee trend. Go on a Google trends type in single origin Coffee over the last, like, five years, it's. It's quadrupled, right? So that's what we like to see. We love health trends, right? Like, the number one reason why coffee isn't healthy is when people just throw a bunch of cream and sugar into it. So we hope this encourages people to drink more coffee black. And, like, yeah, if coffee tastes good black, like, you know, more people will stick around and I think appreciate how we're differentiated. I think on top of that, like, iced coffee has normalized. Like, now it's not like it's more popular than hot coffee. And there's. And there's so many options out there. Mushroom coffee. I don't know what's going on with that. I would say the cool thing on the farm level that really hasn't made it mainstream yet, but it's becoming very popular in the specialty coffee segment is new fermentation processes. Every coffee goes through a fermentation process, whether it's washed or it's natural. But there's like. Like, there's this farmer down in Colombia named Diego Bermudez, and he is like a mad scientist. And during that step in the process, whether it's a unique method or he's doing, like, a co. Ferment, like, we just sold this, like, watermelon candy coffee from black and white coffee roasters. And the way that farmers can tweak coffee flavors and make it more sweet and nuanced and bright and floral is pretty incredible. And. And specifically, Diego.

Yeah, that is. That was the one I was been drinking this whole time on this, during this interview was the watermelon one. And phenomenal, by the way. And I'm curious to, you know, again, here you go in on that, because it's a. It's. It packs a punch, it's bold, it's different, and I loved it.

And there's no, like, artificial flavoring or sweetener or anything like that.

That is just the pure coffee.

Yeah, it's pretty incredible. And, you know, it's funny, when I think about our segment and how I'm hoping it evolves, I point to craft beer. I mean, I was like, I think I grew up, like, during the craft beer movement, switched quickly from the bush light to the heavy beers. And that's when I just started to enjoy, like, okay, paying an extra dollar for a little bit more nuance. And in specialty coffee, like I had learned during my first year, a spectrum that was this wide. And I can tell you, even over, like, the last five to 10 years, it just Keeps growing and growing. And what I love to see is like, you know, a specialty third wave cafe pop up across the street from every Starbucks in the US and if that trend continues, I see specialty coffee growing, you know, into 27, 28% of dollar sales, which is where, you know, craft beer sits right now. So I think there might be some fads that fizzle. I think there's some people trying to claim functional benefits that may or may not exist. But I do know that at the farm level, at least within the specialty space, some of these funky co ferments that are being pushed out can be real, real game changers.

Absolutely. What's been like, the relation, as you mentioned, like, so much of this stems back to just like, what happens on the farms. And I'd be curious to know, you know, you're referencing these different names and farmers, like, the relationship with farmers since the beginning, like, how do you. And again, like, I'm just so not obviously in this space. So I'm curious to know, like, what's been your process with that and like, how has that maybe changed over the years since that's obviously such a strong piece of this puzzle, in a sense, and, you know, however you want to share that or if there's things you can't share. Totally understand. But just curious to know how that works in the space and how that evolves.

Yeah. So, I mean, the, like, we wouldn't be around without the farmers and how we started, like, we wanted to focus on our core tech. We're the best coffee brewers on the planet. Let's work with the best roasters who have the handshake relationships with farmers. So all of the roasters that we've signed up, I mean, I think the last, like eight of them have had a barista champ on their staff. All of the coffee is direct source. So, like, they know the name of the farmer, they visited the farm. We do not pay fair trade prices. We pay like 2 1/2x fair trade prices. And just through our roasting partners, we've been able to meet some of these, you know, farmers and visited their farms. We've had them up to our plant in Gloucester to see the big, you know, Willy Wonka brew and freeze process. So we're like, still early in our journey when it comes to partnering directly with farmers. And really, like, we love, especially partnering with folks like Diego who are, like, pushing the limits. And I had thought, you know, five years ago, are we going to help, like, need to help some of these farmers get some more innovative stuff? Off the ground. And no, they are. They are well ahead of us. And, like, it's pretty incredible seeing some of the operations. I mean, the guy I mentioned, he's taking this really rare varietal of coffee. You like the Stellar Series 1. We sent you the geisha coffee.

Oh, yeah, I still have two left. I have two. I tried two of them. I'm just like, oh, my God. I haven't tried all the flavors yet, but that one's number one for me so far. And just like completely just like flipped everything I know about flavor upside down.

So geisha coffee is a varietal. It's an arabica subspecies that only grows on the very top of mountains. So it's a pain in the ass to grow. It needs a lot of care, but it's so dense and juicy with flavor and it's limited on where you can grow it because it only grows at high elevations. This guy is grafting the geisha plant to a robust a root and he's growing delicious geisha at different elevations. So, you know, that's a coffee that I'm hoping in five years from now you could enjoy that every single morning instead of it just being a rare, unique lot. When he has a killer plant, he doesn't just grab the seeds and throw it in the dirt. He actually clones that plant. So, like, there's some real time innovation happening. And it's about time because I think five years ago I could probably point to one vineyard and, you know, Northern California that sees more investment than like all the farms in Costa Rica combined. So, like, wow, if people are drinking specialty grade coffee, right, and the farmers are seeing like the 2x the Fair Trade prices, they can invest more into their farm. They can produce better coffee. And we just kind of like being part of that beautiful loop. So we're in good shape if more great coffee is grown and coffee gets better and better. And we're just tagged in for that last leg, that brewing step. We're going to brew as well as that master barista and freeze it. So something like you, Casey, you don't need to know any of the science, any of that stuff. If you can melt an ice cube, you can have the best coffee on the planet. And we think that's going to bring a lot more people into the industry because with the scales and the grinders and the YouTube videos and all that stuff, like, it's complex. And I'm a big, you know, hazy IPA guy, right, boss. A lot of good breweries, if I was sent, like the hops and the yeast and expected to brew my beer at home. I would just take whatever's in a can. So we're hoping that this gets more people into the space.

Absolutely. Man, it's so cool to hear that. And just like being a part of that full circle and allowing farmers to like reinvest in innovation more like it only makes the process better and better over time, I'm sure. A couple more questions here, Matt. One is obviously I see you're drinking your coffee now. What's your typical coffee intake daily? I think that's a. I'm very curious to know.

Well, as much as it takes. Right. I've had days where it's like, you know, I'll drink eight cups and then on a normal day I'm usually between 3 and 4. But like back to one of my original points, like not every cup's created equal. So like 1 comma tier is equal to 3 times the amount of coffee as like an original Nespresso capsule. Right. So we have a buck 80, we put 18 grams into a capsule. So I'm about at three or four of those. But like, trust me, there are some days where you have three or four.

Pods of cometeer a day.

Oh yeah. Well, my tolerance has improved a little over the years and you know, I work late so I've been on the.

TUA day the last couple of days. So I try to cap myself at it too. But it's cool to hear that you're pushing it over there.

Yeah, well, there's this study out right now. I think it was the British Journal of Medicine. And there are all of these benefits to drinking coffee. Again if you're loading it with cream and sugar is not good, but like three to five cups a day is healthy for most people. And of course it'll depend on your caffeine tolerance. It's like another rabbit hole we could go down. But yeah, I'm comfortable at three or four.

Wow. Yeah. I try to not exceed 400 milligrams of caffeine a day when I have days. But I'm one of those people that I could drink. I'm. So my tolerance is high where once a year, I'm sorry, obsessed with coffee and hence even caffeine. But I try to do a two week detox just once a year and I notice when I go back to drinking my coffee, the sensitivity is much. I kind of reset my sensitivity there and haven't done it so far this year. But I definitely noticed that I'm like, wow, my tolerance is A lot different. But I'm sure there's, there's levels, as you're saying.

There's so much to uncover on how caffeine actually impacts the body. I know you had Will Ahmed from Whoop on, and I'm close with some, with Will and some other people over at Whoop and this CPO over there, you know, a friend, investor Ed Baker, he said that when he actually drinks coffee, like, he has a positive recovery. So, like, caffeine is misunderstood and it's going to impact everyone differently. It's going to depend on what you actually absorb in your gut and then your tolerance upstairs. And, you know, it impacts everyone differently. But certainly I've added to my tolerance over the years and I usually start every day with like the three cups. Don't eat until like three. If I need like something like eating a banana is a trick in the industry. It tends to suck up some of the caffeine and even you out a little bit. But yeah, it's definitely different for everyone. So you're a two cup guy.

Yeah, definitely. Two cup guy is typically my go to. It's rare that I have a third. So we'll see. Maybe we push the boundaries today.

Well, to give you kind of a little glimpse of that future, most coffee is caffeinated and then it's run through a decaffeination process. And honestly, the technology on that front has been incredible. From Swiss water techniques to the sugar cane techniques. Not everyone's pouring a straight paint stripper through the bean. And there's ways just to kind of preserve the natural flavor of the bean. But there's this one species, a Lorena species, and we need to get some of this coffee more. But it's naturally decaffeinated and it almost tastes like that geisha coffee that you had. So we're hoping that, like, hey, if like, people can replicate growing that plant. Like, I would be drinking 10 cups a day if I could have something that tasted that good that late. But it's just like super rare and it's only micro lots right now.

Got it, got it, got it. There's so much depth here that I think, including myself, not only am I not aware of, but I can appreciate and we could talk for hours about all this stuff. Matt, you truly are such an expert in this field. And it makes me ask, before we start wrapping up here in the next couple of minutes, if you could go back and give yourself a piece of advice on the business front, but also just the education around this industry, what have been some of your biggest personal lessons, business lessons that you've learned while building this business nearly the last decade.

Yeah, let's see here. I would say certainly when you think about scaling a business and we went from five people to 12 to over 100, I think the thing entrepreneurs need to focus on the most when scaling is really just communication. It's that simple. And I think as you add layers to the business, you play more of a telephone game. So I think something that I learned, because once you got that series A funding, we scaled very quickly, and I did not immediately put the systems in place where I could address kind of the major themes at the business, what is most important. So everyone heard it from me because when you, you know, you just huddle up as a leadership team, you know what the leadership team knows, and all of a sudden, like, things get twisted or left out. And finally, when it hits some of the people actually doing the work, there's some messaging that's lost. So, you know, when you're a founder, you get to own communication, whether it is written, whether you like to address people in person or on a zoom call, and really do whatever works best for you and make sure that you take the time not just to address your leadership team on key issues and thinking everything's going to permeate throughout the company. You know, as you have rehearsed it, you really need to communicate with the. With the entire company and people hearing it firsthand has been super helpful.

Absolutely. No, that's. So that's great to hear, man. And last question before we wrap up, Matt, is, you know, you guys have been in this. This industry, this, working on this innovative product and company for nearly a decade now. When you think about the next five to 10 years and just the future of cometeer, what excites you the most regarding the industry or even just as a leader and as an innovator in this space?

Yeah. So I think for us, well, I already talked about the farm innovation, but when I think about what we're looking to do, we are looking to expand into new channels. We don't think we've optimized our format just yet. So we do have some technology that we're still working on. We still want to be an R and D company pushing the limits. So we have some surprises up our sleeve when it comes to making our product even more convenient. People are so used to that button press. Right? Yeah, that. Hey, there's. There's something there to take a frozen capsule and kind of assist and, you know, we're in Gloucester. I don't know if I mentioned this because the first flash freeze plant ever built was here in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Right. And it's well known now, like if you flash freeze something at its peak, like when they catch a tuna out here in Gloucester now, they freeze it right on the boat. Right. And it just preserves better. The top Nobu chef can't tell the difference. So I'm thinking that there's certainly the opportunity to expand what we're doing across different beverage categories and the highest quality ingredients flash frozen. And then, hey, maybe there's a device that melts and dilutes on your countertop in the future. We love the machine free aspect, but like we're continuing to poke at how we can, how we can advance, what can we do with the capsule to make it better. There's a lot ahead of us and like we just kind of launched the category three years ago. So there's still a lot of stuff to surface that we've been working on.

Absolutely. Well, Matt, as I said, man, we could talk so long about all different aspects of coffee and I gotta say, not only am I a huge fan of you, but the product and really your expertise in this space, man, it really shows since the moment we connected to how your, your team has been corresponding with me and just helping kind of understand the coffee. And it's really cool to hear not only your story, but the founding story here. And I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on and definitely can't wait to just continue following your journey, the company's journey and spreading the word over here. I am quite the share what I love in the world of coffee. So I'm sure there's me a lot of people hearing about commandeer from me in the here in the near future for sure.

I love that. Appreciate you having me on. And I think I mentioned I don't think I would have gone down this ten year rabbit hole if it wasn't for George Howell throwing his arm around me and debunking some of the industry. I had been living a coffee life, so we love educating people. We hope people will give our product a try. If you recognize one of our roasting partners, they know what they're doing, give their coffee a try and try sit black before you throw in all the, all the cream and sugar. We love the cream and sugar but like, if you can enjoy coffee more ways, there's a different beverage for every time of the year. So yeah, yeah, love the education and there's still more to come. So appreciate you having me on and giving me the time, Casey.

Absolutely.