Coffee’s ‘Fourth Wave’ Rides into the Bay Area with Brewbird’s High-Tech, Simultaneous Machine – The Mercury News
Mickey Du was wandering around San Francisco’s Hayes Valley during a college break when he noticed a commotion in an almost identical neighborhood. Curious, he approached, only to find himself in front of a rolled up garage door with a barista inside making freshly roasted coffee.
On that morning in 2005, he drank a cup of coffee from Blue Bottle’s first brick and mortar store. He had unknowingly stumbled upon the “third wave” of the coffee industry that was less commercial and more artistic.
“The explosion of flavor blew my mind,” Du said. “It made me realize it was possible.”
That meant, 20 years later, joining the “fourth wave,” reinventing disposable coffee and raising $32 million in Series A funding along the way. Combining robotics, engineering and a coffee lover, Du has created his “Brewbird” smart coffee machine that brings the “perfect pour” from local specialty roasters into the office break room – all in a plug-in pod. The key? Filling the pods with whole beans is ground inside a Keurig-like machine for each cup. Using a QR code on each pod to measure the coarseness of the grind and the amount of water, a hot cup is delivered in 60 seconds.
Brewbird sources coffee beans from 14 local roasters, from Verve Coffee Roasters in Santa Cruz to Mother Tongue in Oakland. The machines are very expensive – about $ 10,000 each – sold only in corporate offices at the moment. About 30 companies have them, including Meta, LinkedIn, Gap, Palo Alto Networks, SAP, Sephora and the law firm Wilson Sonsini.
In the meantime, one has to ask: in a post-pandemic world where many workers prefer to work from home, will a perfect cup of coffee entice them to return to the office?
In an interview from his San Carlos headquarters, edited for length and clarity, Du began by choosing a pod from a local roaster:
Question: I’ll have what you have.
A: Because you guys are the San Jose Mercury News, we got to try San Jose’s local roaster – Academic Coffee. This is a lighter roast that will be more delicate, fruity and floral.
Question: Mmmm. So how does this thing work?
A: The machine reads the QR code. Understanding what kind of coffee is here, how much coffee, whether it’s 19.1 or 19.2 grams, how fresh it is, and then using all those parameters to come up with the right recipe — how to grind it, how to brew it, how to heat the right amount of water to the right temperature to bring you that perfect cup every time. When you grind coffee, you lose 95% to 99% of that flavor profile within 10 to 20 minutes. It is very important that we put together a program that combines the comfort that people want with the quality that today they can only reach if they go to a great roaster like Academic in San Jose, or take a lot of time to invest in a lot of training.
Question: How would you describe the perfect cup of coffee?
A: It really depends. You want to use a different recipe for a dark roast versus a light roast, versus a light roast that has specific flavor profiles. That’s what we do automatically in our machine, so you don’t have to worry about it, and you know you’re getting perfectly brewed coffee every time.
Question: What’s so special about Bay Area coffee culture?
A: Its roots are because the port of Oakland is one of the world’s largest importers of green coffee beans. So it was a Cambrian explosion of really good coffee finding its place here in the Bay Area. And I think that’s what has led to the Bay Area being a testing ground for amazing roasters who are pushing the boundaries of this industry forward.
Question: How would you describe the four waves of the coffee industry?
A: The first wave was Folgers and Maxwell House just bringing coffee as a category to the world. The second wave was Starbucks and Pete brought it to the real world. The third wave is coffee as craft and terroir (like wine.) The fourth wave is the same craft and terroir, built for consistency and impact (data, automation, scalable more.)
Question: How did you find local roses?
A: The first reaction was universal skepticism, because for them, as a special roaster, quality and craftsmanship are very sacred. And so it’s like, ‘Oh, a system that can make really good coffee in a machine. Yes, of course.’ But then when they tasted the coffee, very quickly it went from skepticism to wow.
Question: Can’t do that with a bag of coffee beans that you grind at home?
A: You can do it, but it takes time. It takes practice, and you won’t always get it perfect. There are all those variables that are very important because coffee is very sensitive.
Question: What challenges have you faced to please consumers?
A: We need to ensure the beans are freshly roasted. We need to make sure we have a machine that can do the job of grinding freshly ground and cooking it on demand. And we needed to make sure it happened as quickly as possible, because people are impatient. If you have to wait four to five minutes like it takes in a cafe, that’s not good enough in this world.
Question: How far would you go for a good cup of coffee?
A: To this day when I travel, I will look for really unique cafes. I was in Amsterdam a few weeks ago and I passed by this amazing local roaster called Dak, and this is the coffee I brought back with the tasting notes of, I don’t like, bubble gum.
Question: How did you convince Sequoia Capital, Kyber Knight, the former CEO of Peet’s Coffee and other big business companies to invest in Brewbird?
A: Coffee is one of the biggest markets yet to be disrupted by technology. Coffee is a billion dollar market. It’s too big. There are a billion cups of coffee served every year, and we think we can put a reasonable spin on converting many of those cups from bad cups to good ones.
Question: What is your competition?
A: No other pods have a complete bean, which only takes one touch to activate. There are whole beans in consumer pods, but you have to do a lot of manual labor yourself.
Question: Can a good cup of coffee lure employees back to the office?
A: Brewbird has actually driven a strong return to the office with an improved workplace and employee experience, which sounds crazy. And our customers have told us exactly that – they can see badge swipe data from their employees. One customer in particular told us that he saw a lot of traffic coming to the site where our machine was installed. They started with two machines. They are 43.
Question: A $10,000 coffee pot, though? That’s a lot. Where do you take the business from here?
A: We’re on the way to further lowering costs and making it more affordable for everyone, everywhere. We will begin to provide a way for companies outside of the Bay Area to start being able to access it a little over six months from now, and finally to the home buyer at an even lower price.
Question: How many cups of coffee do you drink a day?
A: Too many.
Mickey Du
Age: 39
Education: NYU undergrad (double major: Psychology, Economics), Stanford MBA
Hometown: Palo Alto (living in Palo Alto again now, after 10 years in San Francisco)
Marital status: single
Past jobs/jobs: Started career in CPG (Diageo), moved into tech (VC at Sinovation Ventures, a16z, fast-growing consumer fintech Nerdwallet)
Fun Facts
1.Great food / likes to find the best local cafes in each city
2. Stayed at a secret military resort during a visit to North Korea in Nov 2015, after being caught in a freak storm
3. Made a hole-in-one (albatross) on the Par 4 at Deep Cliff Golf Course in Cupertino
4. She enjoys her collection of over 300 Heath Ceramics bud vases
5. Lover of a small dog, with a poodle named Doudou
