Keurig K-Rounds Pods and Alta Brewing System

Keurig’s venerable and ubiquitous K-cup has been on the market for many years. The K-Cup system is woven into consumers’ everyday lives and is a significant driver of Keurig Dr Pepper’s $14.8 billion in annual revenue. But at the same time, it is clear that consumers are increasingly concerned about their environmental impact, and the K-Cup is a glaring example of single-use plastic. Also, consumers’ coffee preferences have expanded to increasingly include brews beyond drip-style coffee, including espresso, cold brew, and specialty drinks.

In the spirit of disrupting yourself before someone else does, Keurig formed a separate team and created an off-site location to do just that – start from scratch, creating the next Keurig single-serve coffee pod and brewer system to enable a wider range of coffee, including espresso, drip, cold-brew, and specialty, and do so in the most sustainable way possible and creating no pod waste.

We considered eliminating the pod entirely, and just creating solid pucks of packed ground coffee, but this was problematic because the coffee would get stale quickly and would notably increase the complexity and cost of the brewer. Also, consumers don’t like to deal with the mess of grounds, and even more so for single serve, so this was a non-starter. In the end, we determined we needed to create a pod-type consumable, but it had to be made of a material that was sustainable and eco-friendly and consumer-friendly in its disposal.

  After many rounds of development, testing and iteration, inclusive both the consumable pod and brewer appliance, we leveraged a Swiss coating technology for K-Rounds which uses a seaweed-based casing material that can hold the grounds together, but is flexible enough to expand and deform when it comes into contact with water and crucially, does not impart any flavor to the brewed coffee. The natural seaweed-based coating is compostable, meaning spent K-Rounds can be wholly composted. No plastic, no aluminum, no separating, no waste.

Creating the new single serve system involved taking a system-level approach to all aspects of the project. Creating a new zero-waste consumable and the brewing mechanism to accept it and enable the range of coffee styles desired required deeply collaborative development and rapid iteration between teams spread across locations. Any change to the consumable pod affected the appliance, and reciprocally, as the appliance evolved, the consumable pod needed to pivot as well.

As a team, we understood that the entire product proposition needed to be sustainable, and the plastic couldn’t simply be shifted to other components of the packaging. After many rounds of design, iteration and testing with Consumers, through ISTA, and within sustainability targets, a cylindrical paper fiber-based tube was designed. With a minimal, slim round profile it is protective, space-efficient to ship and store, and easy to handle and dispense. The plain craft outer finish and minimal printing speaks to its eco-friendly credentials. No plastic, means no plastic, so this package has been designed to be recycled within the paper stream.