The benefits of investing in ready-to-drink cold brew pouches
Forward-thinking coffee businesses can enhance their brand appeal by sourcing packaging formats like ready-to-drink cold brew pouches that are designed to match sustainable, convenient, and quality-driven consumer trends.
As cold brew coffee continues to grow from strength to strength, breaking regional and seasonal barriers, more and more coffee brands are launching their own cold brew lines.
With its strong health and wellness consumer perceptions, portability, and customisation potential, cold brew is well suited to modern shopper preferences, and market forecasts indicate widespread optimism for the segment’s future.
By offering cold brew in high-quality, sustainable, and compostable packaging, businesses can economically capitalise on key consumer trends.
What are ready-to-drink cold brew pouches?
The term ready-to-drink cold brew pouch refers to a single-serve bag that contains a serving of liquid cold brew intended for immediate consumption and requiring no further additives or preparation.
Sizes vary, from smaller 185 ml single-serve portions designed to be consumed completely while on the go – similar to aluminium cans or cartons – to larger 3-litre bags that dispense ready-to-drink cold brew coffee and can be refrigerated and kept between servings.
In smaller sizes, pouches hold several critical advantages over the more traditional canned formats: they are lighter and more flexible, making transportation, storage, and stocking easier; they leave a smaller carbon footprint, thanks to logistics efficiencies and materials: and they are compostable and more environmentally friendly.
In larger sizes – 750 ml to 3 litres – cold brew pouches dispense ready-to-drink cold brew more sustainably than multiple single-serve units and more conveniently than concentrate. Each pouch can be stored ambiently for an extended period and, once refrigerated, provide multiple servings via a recyclable plastic screw cap. Then, once consumed, users can recycle one compostable unit instead of throwing it away or recycling multiple aluminium cans or cartons.
Why choose compostable ready-to-drink cold brew pouches for your coffee?
Sustainability and convenience are key drivers of modern shopper purchasing decisions, and businesses need to clearly exhibit their environmentally friendly credentials to succeed in a crowded, competitive marketplace. Compostable packaging – like ready-to-drink cold brew pouches – is an explicit demonstration of a company’s commitment to sustainable business practices.
A 2020 report from McKinsey & Company found that shoppers deliberately look for sustainability claims when choosing which products to buy and are willing to spend more to support them:
“More than 60% of respondents said they’d pay more for a product with sustainable packaging…and 78% of US consumers say that a sustainable lifestyle is important to them.”
“Products making ESG-related claims averaged 28% cumulative growth over the past five-year period, versus 20% for products that made no such claims.”
This performance was applicable across all business types, especially those touting private label products, where these items outperformed branded equivalents across 88% of categories.
In a 2023 follow-up study, McKinsey reported that consumers continue to be willing to pay more for sustainable packaging – with 7% happy to spend in excess of 10% more – citing ocean litter and environmental impact concerns and preferring compostable and plant-based packaging above others.
“The importance of environmental considerations as a key buying factor varies depending on age group and locality. In fact, 37% and 39% of Gen Z and millennial consumers, respectively, and 50% of those living in urban neighbourhoods cited environmental impact as an extremely or very important factor when making their purchasing decisions.”
Of the different food product packaging types, compostable packaging was perceived as the most sustainable by the survey respondents, with 31% believing it to be extremely sustainable, 41% very sustainable, and just 4% seeing it as not too sustainable or not at all sustainable.
Ready-to-drink cold brew pouches are the best method for coffee businesses to offer cold brew in compostable packaging: just 9% of customers reported perceiving aluminium cans as extremely sustainable.
McKinsey acknowledges that consumers lack the full understanding of sustainable packaging’s granular detail, but some key hygiene factors help businesses maximise their appeal. Compostable packaging is one such example.
By choosing ready-to-drink cold brew pouches instead of glass bottles or aluminium cans, coffee brands will stand to benefit from enhanced corporate sustainability credentials, more efficient transportation and storage practices, and greater customer appeal.
As younger generations grow to represent a larger portion of global purchasing power, companies need to clearly exhibit their commitment to environmental values. Those who help their customers meet their personal sustainability standards in a convenient way will stand out.
At Cold Brew Pak, we know that convenience, quality, and price remain the three most important purchasing factors. We also know that consumers want help achieving their own sustainability goals wherever possible.
Our ready-to-drink cold brew coffee pouches are designed to help businesses offer the highest-quality, most economically efficient, and most convenient cold brew in an environmentally friendly way.
Interested in learning more about Cold Brew Pak’s products? Get in touch with the team here.
Ready-to-drink cold brew pouches
