Episode 121: Reinventing Subscription Coffee with Matthew Roberts at Cometeer

Jun 20

Massachusetts native Matthew Roberts, CEO and Co-Founder at Cometeer, grew up in the Dunkin’ Donuts coffee culture of the northeast, and he could often be found with a jumbo Dunkin' iced coffee in his hand. When he was a junior in college, he went off to study abroad in Spain, and he found he missed the coffee from home.

He began experimenting with coffee and discovered that he liked melting frozen coffee ice cubes into his iced coffee. With further experimentation, he found that freezing coffee preserved more nuance of the flavor than any other form of traditional coffee packaging.

This discovery is what led directly to the concept behind Cometeer. It is a technology-driven company with a new-format coffee capsule that delivers high-quality specialty coffee in a unique, convenient format: a frozen capsule.

The inherent problem with coffee

Most consumers don’t understand the coffee industry very well, and few understand it better than Matt. Coffee is actually the seed of a coffee cherry that’s cooked or roasted and then dissolved into water.

When the coffee bean is cooked, the flavors and aromas of the bean are developed. But soon CO2 develops, pushing those flavors and aromas out of the coffee. This means coffee really only has a shelf life of three to four weeks.

Cometeer has extended that shelf life indefinitely with its flash-freezing process. They process, grind and brew the coffee fresh, then immediately flash freeze it to preserve the fresh flavors and aromas.

The specialty coffee industry

Matt believes that the specialty coffee industry is 15 years behind the craft beer industry, and 100 years behind the wine industry when it comes to consumer education and development. Beer and wine have an advantage, in that a consumer doesn’t have to make it, they just have to consume it.

A lot of coffee is made at home or in the office by the person who is going to drink it, and a typical consumer doesn’t know how to brew coffee in a way to get the best flavor and aroma out of the beans.

The best coffee comes from dissolving 20 to 22% of the coffee bean’s mass. Very few consumers know that, and they’re messing it up at home, introducing impurities into the coffee. Most consumers don’t want to buy expensive specialty coffee when they know that when they make it at home, it won’t taste nearly as good as it does in their local specialty coffee shop.

Educating the consumer

By brewing coffee with the best equipment and with the optimal techniques, then flash freezing, Cometeer eliminates the brewing process from the equation for the consumer at home or at the office.

In fact, with Cometeer capsules, consumers don’t need any special equipment to enjoy a great cup of coffee. They simply drop a frozen coffee puck into eight ounces of hot water, and the puck melts into the perfect cup of coffee.

It’s so easy that one of the biggest challenges Matt and his team face is educating consumers about their product. They have to teach people about the nuances of specialty coffee and what makes it different from the offerings in the supermarket. They have to inform potential customers that they don’t need any kind of special machine.

There is a lot of science behind the product, but they have found that it’s important to teach people how to make the coffee before diving into the science. And the best way for them to draw people in to learn more is to have them taste the coffee. Once people try the coffee, they want to learn more about it.

Customer acquisition channels

Matt’s favorite customer acquisition channel is field sampling. They can get potential customers to taste the product, show them how easy it is to make the coffee and get them to sign up for a subscription on the spot by offering them a premium, like some free coffee capsules.

But the Cometeer team can only do a limited number of in-person tasting sessions, so they use social media to get the word out about their new coffee product. Because they have to focus on consumer education, short-form video platforms like TikTok aren’t effective for customer acquisition.

They have had better results with influencer marketing on YouTube. Partnering with influencers whose audience is used to longer videos is a powerful way for Cometeer to acquire new customers. They use a revenue-sharing model with most influencers, so they can track who is giving them the most bang for their buck.

Referrals and gifts

Cometeer has a robust referral and gifting program to build its customer base. Coffee connoisseurs like to share their love of great coffee with like-minded people, and great customers will often refer fellow coffee lovers who also become great customers.

Customers also enjoy gifting Cometeer coffee to their coffee-loving friends and family members. Those friends and family members will often sign up for a subscription once they taste the product.

Matt and his team have learned that offering discounts for referrals or gifts isn’t the road they want to go down as a premium brand. They offer rewards that their customers find interesting, like access to a limited edition coffee from an exotic location or a free gift box to send to a friend.

Tracking the data

Matt and his team are big on tracking and analyzing data on their customers to find new ways to attract new customers. They have hired several data scientists from other industries to move that initiative forward.

They look at the buying habits of their good customers. They might find that a great Cometeer customer is four times more likely to shop at a certain DTC store than an average customer. They can then approach those other DTC brands about doing insert exchanges with the packaging. It’s a low-cost channel that generates solid results and brings added value to the consumer and both DTC brands.

They work hard to ensure that their data is as clean as possible. Even with the best data scientists in the world, if you’re analyzing bad data, you’re going to get bad results.