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Tea Bag-Style Coffee Pack is ‘Steeped’ in Sustainability

Premium coffee producer Mr. Espresso enters the single-serve market with a tea bag-style product from Steeped that uses plant-based, compostable materials for the bag and outer film sachet.

The Steeped Coffee Method requires only hot water to prepare a single serving of coffee.
The Steeped Coffee Method requires only hot water to prepare a single serving of coffee.

Mr. Espresso is an Oakland, Calif.-based, family-owned and operated wholesaler of coffee products. It is the only major U.S. coffee company to exclusively use traditional oak wood-roasting methods for its beans, a process brought to America from Salerno, Italy, by its founder and family patriarch, Carlo Di Ruocco. With its customers comprising businesses such as offices, hotels, restaurants, and cafes, Mr. Espresso had long found it a challenge to break into the single-serve coffee market—especially given the available options for single-cup brewing.

“K-Cup and Nespresso capsule products are very easy and very convenient, but as far as sustainability and the quality of coffee they produce, that’s always been questionable,” says Luigi Di Ruocco, co-owner and Vice President of Mr. Espresso. “As a local, family-owned, quality-oriented roaster with a mind for sustainable methods, neither of those options fell in line with our values.”


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But in 2019, a startup out of Santa Cruz, Calif., called Steeped Coffee Company, launched a new product that allows coffee lovers to prepare a single serving of coffee using a tea bag-style, full-immersion filter packed with 14.2 g of freshly ground coffee in just a couple of minutes. Not only is the steeping bag a more environmentally friendly option than single-use, non-recyclable capsules—10 billion of which end up in landfills each year, according to Steeped—but the filter is made from renewable, biodegradable, non-GMO materials and is ultrasonically sealed, eliminating the need for glue or staples.

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