The Future of Single Serve: Pour-Over Perfection

If you have ever had the opportunity to travel to Japan, you may have left with a couple of takeaways similar to my experiences while visiting the beautiful country. First, it is incredibly challenging to find a place to dispose of trash or bin to recycle your empty beverage container. Secondly, coffee is big business in Japan. So much so that Japan ranks in the top six importers of coffee globally behind the U.S., Germany, France, Italy, & the Netherlands. Lastly, their attention to detail when it comes to packaging or displaying their products come second to none. Don’t be surprised to find that the bakery gift box set you purchased from the train station contains boxes within a box wrapped meticulously with beautifully printed paper and decorative ribbon, then re-wrapped in a bag to protect the gift. Overboard? Not in Japan. This is the same level of attention to detail I have experienced firsthand while buying just about anything in Japan.

What does this have to do with coffee? Well, a lot actually. Generally speaking, the same delicate care that goes into their packaging is the same care they have for the quality of products they consume. Single-serve pour-over coffee is a perfect example. It is fresh ground coffee sealed in a personal pour-over filter packed into flexible film; then nitrogen flushed to preserve the freshness of the coffee. Singe-serve pour-over is sold across all channels, including Grocery, office, convenience, and foodservice, and is the predominant single-serve delivery format for fresh ground coffee in Japan.

Single Cup Pour Over coffee was first introduced in Japan in 1984 by Kataoka & Co., LTD. under the Mon Café drip coffee brand. Since then, the format has been adopted and sold in Japan or marketed under several various brand names in Japan, including but not limited to Starbucks Origami, Illy Café Drip Coffee, Doutor Drip coffee, & UCC Drip Coffee with approximately 2 billion cups sold in Japan annually. There are many theories as to how the format became so popular in Japan. But for me, based on my very first experience, it is simple. The single-serve pour-over offers the only delivery method for fresh ground coffee that replicates the same high-quality cup of coffee as a drip coffee maker while providing the convenience of a single cup in that you can brew a cup of coffee literally anywhere. It is a way to slow down, enjoy taking part in brewing your coffee and savor the aroma coming from the cup.

I clearly recall the first time I was given a pour-over coffee from the CEO of NuZee, Inc., Mr. Masa Higashida, who had just returned from a business trip to Japan. We were in his office when he pulled a pouch from his bag and placed it on the cup. With the recent trend of cafés across the US, offering pour-over coffee as their preferred coffee experience, the product he was about to demonstrate needed no introduction or explanation, just hot water. We brewed the cup, and at first sip, I was blown away by the quality of coffee that was replicated by a simple but very effective product. In that very first experience with pour-over coffee, the future of single-serve coffee in America became clear to me. NuZee’s mission became to make the single-serve pour-over format a nationally recognized and accepted delivery method for single-serve coffee in America. Though a simple concept, vast amounts of hard work and passion were required to execute. Today we are private labeling and co-packing for nationally recognized brands like Gevalia from Kraft Heinz as well as distributors like Royal Cup Coffee & Tea, a significant contender in hospitality coffee.

NuZee has built a state of the art SQF Level 2 certified co-packing facility in Vista, California with a current annual capacity of over 65 million cups and is in the process of expanding our production capabilities in Texas, with the ability of adding an additional 100 million cups per year to our capacity over the next 18 months as demand increases. We have recently just signed a joint-venture agreement with El Marino to establish NuZee Latin America to introduce single-serve pour-over coffee to Mexico and beyond.

We believe consumers will continue to demand cost-conscious high-quality products that do not contribute to our carbon footprint and leave bulges in our landfills. Therefore, as a company, NuZee continues to explore better packaging alternatives for single cup coffee rigorously. We have a goal of offering zerolandfill options in all the products we manufacture that will keep the coffee fresh and that consumers will love. To learn more, please visit us at www. pourovercopacking.com and be sure to say hello.