Melbourne’s First Press Coffee reveals how Tetra Pak helped bring its cold-drip to the ready-to-drink market.
How people take their coffee is down to personal preference: some keep things black, others add a dash of milk, and few shovel in the sugar. Yet for First Press Coffee Founders Jimmy Elias and Hamish Walmsley, this wasn’t being addressed in the ready-to-drink (RTD) market.
According to the duo, the difference between the movement to specialty coffee in the café scene and the RTD coffee beverages available in supermarkets was significant. They spotted a glaring gap in the market and the opportunity to launch a premium cold-drip coffee range for retail.
“There was nothing in the market for people who didn’t want large iced coffee drinks with a big serving of milk and sugar, so we created a black cold-drip coffee range that enabled consumers to drink it by itself or add their own milk,” says Jimmy.
It was after the pandemic that Jimmy and Hamish started to notice First Press’ cold-drip coffee was taking off. They put this down to the growing demand for a quick specialty coffee experience.
“In 2020, you could see there was a real sophistication in the way people were drinking coffee at home. Consumers had more time to enjoy different styles of coffee and were not heading to the café every day, so it wasn’t unusual for people to be upgrading their habits from instant to an espresso machine, AeroPress or V60,” Jimmy says.
“However, when everyone went back to work they found themselves short on time and weren’t able to continue these habits. With this transition back, we saw a segment of coffee drinkers who didn’t want to go back to their previous at-home habits like instant coffee. It was like trying to get someone who has acquired a taste for premium wine to go back to the cheap stuff.
“At the time, we thought the retail coffee space wasn’t reflecting the changing tastes of how people were consuming their coffee at cafés, which was stronger with less milk, like the piccolo or three-quarter latte. Once we noticed this, we decided to develop a product that enabled people to have an enjoyable coffee experience with less milk.”
Exploring different avenues to bring a product to market, the idea surfaced for a multi-serve solution that enabled consumers to have their week’s iced coffee in the fridge.
“We knew we needed great packaging, as we thought this was the best way to bring an affordable premium product to the consumer. We also knew that with the help of Tetra Pak, we could sustain the beautiful flavour of the coffee while also getting the shelf stability that’s a really important factor,” says Jimmy.
“The main feature of the packaging is obviously the size. For large iced coffee drinks in the retail space, the standard is 750 millimetres which usually contains a lot of milk for one to three coffee shots. It jumps up to two litres and even this has only around six to eight shots of coffee, which means consumers have to drink a lot of milk to have a strong coffee,” he says.
“We chose to include 10 shots of our strongest cold-drip coffee and blend this with full-cream milk, which is more than double the caffeine per serve compared to other iced coffees on the market. This is the unique standpoint of the product and Tetra Pak has helped us package it in a one-litre container without having to compromise on the components of our brew.”
The ability to keep the product fresh for a long period of time was crucial to First Press to ensure customers would experience the drink as if it had just been brewed.
“When you package a product in Tetra Pak packaging, it’s processed in a way that you can pretty much maintain the flavour for a long period of time. We know we can get up to 12 months’ shelf life on this product and that the flavour will remain the same,” says Jimmy.
“We extract the coffee using cold water. It is then blended with milk and goes through a rapid heat treatment and cooling before being packaged to maintain the rich flavour of the coffee. We simply don’t have the business logistics to provide a short shelf life for our drinks. Working with Tetra Pak has enabled us to get our product to stay delicious for a long period of time and maintain that freshness.”
Designed to meet the needs of those who live an active lifestyle, the product has been developed to be both convenient and flexible.
“When stored in the fridge, you can pour the product over a period of seven days. That way it can accommodate any usage pattern. For me, I can pour out a little bit if I just want a coffee to keep me going throughout the afternoon or I can have a bigger one if I want to at the start of the day,” says Jimmy.
“The beauty of it is that it allows people to have that extra level of convenience, especially if they don’t have the time to go to a café during their working day or to make their own coffee.”
After launching the product in 2024, Jimmy and the team at Tetra Pak couldn’t be happier with what they have achieved in the RTD coffee space.
“We’ve been able to bring consumers into the fridge space by using Tetra Pak packaging. There is a huge amount of opportunity in the RTD market. It still has a long way to go, but we are hoping as a brand we can help pave the way for other specialty coffee producers to jump on the trend,” says Jimmy.
“In terms of our coffee, we want to help people feel better throughout the day by offering them great coffee at convenience. That’s what we’ve been able to achieve through this partnership.”
For more information, visit tetrapak.com/en-anz
This article appears in the October/November 2024 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.
