A Minnesota Twin Cities startup called Good To Go Cups recently launched with a novel approach to the reuse of to-go coffee cups.
Created by longtime Edina friends and environmental advocates Michelle Horan and Melissa Seeley, Good to Go has been getting the green light at more and more coffee shops throughout the United States, with participating shops now in five states.
The two entrepreneurs have previously participated in numerous recycling and composting schemes locally, yet their focus is now more squarely on the issue of reuse.
“[With] most disposable single-use things, people don’t always pay attention and really realize the scale of the problem,” Seeley recently told Daily Coffee News. “Once we started looking at this circular economy concept and looking at single-use coffee cups specifically, we realized there was a lot of opportunity to make an impact in the reuse sector.”
Seeley and Horan developed the Good to Go cup from scratch with a manufacturing partner in California. According to the company, the cups are made with a BPI-certified-compostable material while boasting heat tolerance that can withstand repeated hot beverages and commercial dishwasher uses.
“When they do reach end-of-life, we’ll send them back to our manufacturer to be ground up and made into new cups — and that’s an infinite closed loop,” Seeley said. “That, too, is another aspect to our program that sets us apart from the competition.”
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While a number of reusable cup schemes have emerged in recent years — including a brand new citywide pilot scheme in California — widespread adoption among retailers, as well as consumers, remains elusive.
“It’s a tough battle,” said Seeley. “It’s just raising the consciousness of it, the awareness of the scope of the problem, and then getting people to agree and participate in the solution.”
The Good to Go Cups model is designed to remove as many barriers as possible for participating coffee shops. Good to Go supplies shops with cups for free and remotely manages their inventory through QR coding. An added benefit pitched to shop owners is the potential reduction in expenses tied to cup purchasing.
Seeley used the example of a shop purchasing 1,000 single-use cups per month in two sizes. “They are purchasing 24,000 cups a year, which means that’s a lot of cups that they have to buy, but a lot that are being thrown away,” she said.
Meanwhile, Good to Go Cups earns revenue through consumer subscriptions. Through the Good To Go Cups app, coffee drinkers can join the membership program for $19.99, which includes 50 cup uses. Users either leave the cup at the shop or return it upon their next visit. In many existing cases, participating coffee shops offer some kind of discount to Good to Go Cups users.
Seeley and Horan are hoping to build the brand’s existing network of coffee shops, while refining the physical and information infrastructures required by the reuse program.
“We want to be everywhere so that people don’t have to remember their cup because they’re already ‘Good To Go,’” said Seeley. “People want to do the right thing — they really do — we just need to give them the tools and a little help so that they can.”
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Daria Toptygina Daria Toptygina is a freelance writer, avid coffee lover and social media manager of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
