Submitted by: Submitted by shermc
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Pages: 4
Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 09/24/2015 10:12 AM
Coffee Industry: Background
The coffee industry in the United States is valued at about $19 billion each year. Gourmet and Premium Coffee account for about half of that industry value. The industry will continue to grow as food enthusiasts are trying to increase this value even more by promoting new coffee-industry trend: paring specific coffee blends with food to enhance the flavor of both items, much the same way as particular wines are matched with particular foods. According to the Coffee Research Organization and the National Small Business Development Support Center Clearinghouse, more than 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed each day, making it the most popular beverage in the world. Statistics estimate that Americans consume 400 million of those cups of coffee daily (which equals about four-and-a-half thousand cups of coffee each second), making the United States the leading consumer of coffee in the world. The average American drinks 3 cups of coffee a day with 69% consuming coffee during the morning and/or breakfast. Even though coffee shops make up the fastest growing part of the ‘restaurant coffee business’, 74% coffee drinkers prefer to consume coffee at home, while 17% prefer to drink coffee at work (62% inside the work place).
Keurig Inc
Keurig was founded and launched through the strategic combination of engineering intelligence and business savvy. In 1992, Ian Greenwood, an engineer in the electronics industry and Peter Dragone, an MBA graduate from Harvard, came together to form their new company, “Keurig”- Dutch for “excellence”. The modified yogurt cup in which single serving coffee would be held was named the “K-Cup”. After a number of failures in attempting to find VC funding or an experienced manufacturer with strong distribution channels who might be interested in collaborating with them, they finally received a small investment from the Food Fund, a small VC firm specializing in food-related products. The company used...