The Grab and Go Coffee Market

The grab and go coffee industry is primed for an explosion in growth as high-quality drinks from specialty beans sourced from artisanal local roasters are available at the push of a button. Here is why it’s an important shift with room for expansion.

The “Grab and Go” industry has spread through all areas of our professional lives. From supermarket meal deals to click-and-collect takeaways, our increasingly busy schedules have sought a way to mitigate the time it takes us to acquire food and drink, without having to sacrifice quality.

This is shown by just how far lunchtime deals for the workplace have come. Initial offering off a basic cheese and ham sandwich on white bread have now been eclipsed by deli style rolls, prepackaged salads, and even Japanese style filled rice balls championed by students and professionals alike, showing our tendency to want new and exciting food to break up the day. So why are we still so limited for grab and go coffee in these same places?

Shifting perceptions of coffee

As a nation, our relationship with coffee has changed over recent years. What was initially a luxury, became a fuel, and is now an enjoyable part of our routines. Looking as the consumer spending on hot drinks such as coffee shows significant increase with money spent more than doubling since the early 2000’s.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/289932/expenditure-on-coffee-tea-and-cocoa-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/

This is most evident during the pandemic era. The world was unstable and fearful, and so as our freedoms returned, we sought comfort in coffee to reintroduce some normalcy, causing a spike in sales.

This is not just related to visiting coffee shops too. Personally, I love waking up on a Sunday and selecting one of the several varieties I buy from fantastic artisanal roasters but this is a hobby I often do not have time for during a busy work week, so where can I go to that is able to fulfil my love for coffee, but within  the tight restrictions of my daily grind (pun very much intended)?

Grab and Go

Odds are your favourite local coffee shop can make your drink “to go”, and whilst this will fulfil the desire for high quality caffeinated beverages, it either is too time prohibitive or too expensive to make a regular occurrence.

This means the average worker will often resort to either what is on offer within the workplace, or the self-service machine found within the store where they grabbed a meal-deal. This niche was identified and exploited by Costa Coffee, who have become a dominating brand within the grab and go market across the UK, and have upwards of 13,500 machines across the world. Whilst this is an impressive accolade, Costa express primarily targets those who view coffee as a necessity, so those who want low effort, yet intriguing and artisanal blends are not being catered too.

But there is an alternative! With the advancements made in bean-to-cup technology, professional coffee machines such as the Crew range can replicate the tastes and textures of even the most highly trained baristas, with just the touch of a button. When paired with local beans sourced from independent roasters, a high-quality drink that can be made utilising the self-service models already in place in shops and service stations and proven to be effective.

We can start to see shifts within the coffee grab and go industry that mirror that of the meal deal market. Earlier this year, popular coffee chain 200 Degrees unveiled their first automated coffee machine within student accommodation showing the increase in demand. Most importantly however this movement of putting roasters front and centre within the grab and go coffee market increases visibility and transparency in an industry that can often be overly obfuscated.

Customers want to know about coffee they are drinking, so the branding of bean to cup, self-service coffee pods as the roasters who are supplying them allows for customers to directly make these connections and understand where the quality is originating from. This allows for repeat business, and even the potential of marketing to loyal customers by presenting deals and subscriptions on the machines themselves.

This is an exciting time for the coffee industry, as customers want high quality, green logistics, fully traceable, products, and the rolling out of self-service coffee machines is the perfect way to implement these principles on a large scale.