KeepCup is synonymous with sustainability and reusability in the coffee space. Now, with a new campaign and refreshed approach, it’s shifting the narrative on what a reusable cup can be.
When KeepCup launched in 2009, it was one of the first real movers and shakers in the reusable cup space. As social consciousness around the individual’s impact on the environment around them has grown, it’s an industry that has expanded – and KeepCup, the original mover in the space, has remained a leader.
Now, it’s an industry is chock full of competitors all preaching messages of the benefits of sustainability. Reusable cups and bottles have become more than just accessories. Now, they’re full-blown fashion statements.
The brand is doubling down on the accessorisation of the humble KeepCup with its new campaign Sip Check, which spotlights KeepCup’s Cold Cup, designed for iced drinks, and reframes reusables as not just a tool for sustainability but for style.
As Co-Founder and Managing Director, Abigail Forsyth has been helping steer the ship since the start of KeepCup’s journey. She says this evolution into seeing KeepCups as more than just a reusable cup builds upon the brand’s heritage between sustainability and café culture.
“KeepCup has been around for 16 years. We started as an innovation that targeted sustainability and encouraged people to reuse, and we’re still very strong on that message,” says Abigail.
“Sip Check is really tapping into a new, younger audience. This is an audience that already knows reusing and sustainability are incredibly important, so this campaign focuses on when you leave the house you check if you have your phone, wallet, keys, and KeepCup.
“It’s a play on ‘fit check’ where you check your style before you go anywhere, and it helps define a KeepCup as a fashion accessory that is part of your outfit that you can’t leave behind, rather than something optional to take with you.”
This targeting of a younger audience coincides with the growth of the specialty and signature drinks space – where the drink itself is seen as much as an opportunity to post on social media and fit someone’s aesthetic as it is an actual beverage.
It’s a phenomenon that has swept the world, with some indicating it could be the start of the fourth wave of coffee consumption.
Whether it be through the creation of clear cups with straws, modular products like the Helix system, food containers, or receptacles that are equally as capable at keeping a beverage cold as hot, Abigail says the new campaign is the latest step for a business that has had its finger on the pulse for well over a decade.
“Sip Check is something as simple as if you’re having an iced coffee or other kind of iced drink, you want to be able to see it, so grab your clear KeepCup that has been created to give that consumer the same experience but in a more sustainable fashion,” says Abigail.
“The message of KeepCup is really just about rethinking what you need – having beautiful things but not too many of them, or just uniting them. It’s more a philosophy of not having too many things to protect the natural world and manage the future. The less we have, the more we keep.
“We started with design and a solution to a problem, and that has advised every decision we’ve made for the past 16 years. That’s attracted people who believe in us and want to take part in it to join us on our journey.”
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing for KeepCup, or the sustainability space over the past few years, with Abigail believing larger, more world-scale impacts on sustainability influenced the everyday individual that their efforts at keeping the world green may have been in vain.
However, she says people looking inward at what is most important to them is turning the tide, and the peoples’ power in sustainability is making itself felt around the world.
“In the 2010s sustainability was really starting to go mainstream, and there was a real sense of optimism that individual behaviour could change the world – that if we all adopted particular practices we could change the world.
“Recently there’s been a real sense of disconnection to that, but people are returning to their own values and what is important to them.”
Although whether a customer brings a KeepCup into a café mostly relies on the customer themselves, and Abigail says this type of sustainability action relies more on the consumer than the venue, she believes cafés still have a significant role to play in promoting sustainability.
While takeaway cups are part of the industry, Abigail says the openness for consumers to change often comes back to the environments they find themselves in.
“The role of the café in the community is to be place where people can meet and discuss ideas. A lot of change starts in cafés – apart from the serving of amazing coffee and great food. It’s those things that pull people together, and it’s that vibrancy that makes it such an important part of our community,” says Abigail.
“It starts at independent cafés. They were the ones that supported us when we first started, and something as small as a barista saying ‘that’s a cool KeepCup’ to a customer totally opens up the perception that it wasn’t just accepted that you brought a KeepCup to a café, it was encouraged.
“Baristas can be so influential to a café’s customers, and cafés are places that perform such an incredible role in our community. KeepCup is a huge part of that.”
For now, continue to watch this space. As Sip Check continues to gather traction on social media, Abigail teases there are still more exciting developments to come from KeepCup in 2026 and beyond.
“We’ve always been known for a single style of product and innovation, and it’s been a really exciting challenge for KeepCup to expand more into the lifestyle space and align with the modern consumer,” she says.
“But we’ve got lots of new products we’re preparing to launch that really get back into the coffee.”
For more information, visit keepcup.com.au
This article appears in the December 2025 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.
