Coffee may not be my cup of tea, but this is interesting

I like coffee flavor, as in ice cream. I like iced coffee, any time of year. (New Englander, here.) I like the aroma of coffee. I enjoy an occasional cappuccino. But I've never been much of a coffee drinker. My hot bev of choice is tea, thank you.

This goes back to when I was a kid, and an after-school visit to my grandmother meant sitting at her kitchen table, covered with sticky oilcloth - the table, not me or my grandmother - - and feeling very grown up drinking cups of sweet, milky tea. The way I still like it. 

But I also like an interesting business, and Cometeer - a local "coffee tech" company - definitely caught my eye. 

The co-founder, Matthew Roberts, was a student at Bentley University who needed a daily coffee fix. But he didn't have time to brew up a pot in the morning before heading out to class. So he came up with the idea of freezing freshly brewed coffee in ice-cube trays. In the morning, he'd just plunk a few cubes in his to-go cup and by the time he got to his first class, enough would have melted to give him the eye-opener he was looking for.

And, as often happens to kids who are in a business school, that got him thinking...

So in 2015 he co-founded Cometeer. His co-founder, Doug Hoon, is an engineer (MIT pedigree) who is the father of one of Roberts' college classmates.

Working in a renovated seafood factory near the Gloucester shore, Roberts has recruited scientists from MIT, Apple, and Tesla to refine the company’s innovation: a flash-frozen coffee puck that yields a perfect cup, no experience or equipment required. (Source: Boston Globe)

Those coffee pucks are sort of like K-cups, only without all the packaging and the need for a coffee making device. You do need access to water, which is poured over the cube. If you want a hot cup of Joe, you need access to hot water. And if you like ice cubes in your iced coffee, you need access cubes. Other than that, easy-peasy.

Cometeer started out slowly - Hoon was building equipment in his basement, Roberts was experimenting with coffee-making-perfecting. And reaching out to local coffee maven George Howell and lining him up as an advisor. (Howell is the founder of the Coffee Connection, which in the mid-1970's introduced Boston to high end coffee with a West Coast sensibility. Coffee Connection was Boston's Starbucks. Until Starbucks acquired it in 1994. Howell remains a coffee man.)

Hoon and Roberts slogged away, working out the kinks. They introduced their product at a coffee expo in 2019. And the investment world took notice. 

They've raised over $50 million from primo VC's like Greycroft (where - name-dropper me - my cousin's daughter is  partner). And are spending it on a high-tech coffee factory and their 110 employees. 

Proprietary and patented coffee-brewing machines that fill thousand-plus-square-foot rooms are hidden behind locked doors. Advances in flash-freezing technology are being perfected. Coffee masters — armed with Princeton degrees, and poached from companies like Blue Bottle and George Howell Coffee — are analyzing coffee for quality. The company sources coffee beans from around the world, and partners with specialty roasters across America.

Hope George Howell was okay that Cometeer poached some of his QA folks, and doesn't view it as biting the hand that advised you. Or something.

They've got smart money backing them (c.f., my cousin's daughter), but who knows if they'll make it as a unicorn disruptor. Or whatever it is that VC's are looking for from their portfolio companies. Probably the worst that can happen is they get acquired by Keurig or Starbucks.

And if you're wondering about the name - as I was - here's the coffee scoop on "What's with the name?

Comets are frozen, forward-moving, and impactful. Just like us. (Source: Cometeer)

I like it!

In any case, coffee may not be my cup of tea, but I find the Cometeer story interesting, and I'm always rooting for the locals to succeed. 

Go, Cometeer!