At Gloucester, tech startups envision the future of coffee

At its heart, Cometia brews the same high-quality coffee that a champion barista can make and flash freezes at -321 degrees Fahrenheit to trap the aroma and quality. These packs are approximately K cup sized and are delivered to customers in boxes of dry ice. All you need to do is put the coffee cube in a cup and pour hot or cold water over it to dissolve it. (Can be stored in the freezer and costs about $ 2 per capsule.)

Co-founder of Gloucester coffee startup Cometeer: CEO Matt Roberts (left) and CTO Doug Hoon.Pat Greenhouse / Globe Staff

The company is beginning to gain some traction. Respected coffee lovers guarantee quality. Venture capitalists are pouring millions of people into the company. Named after the comet’s icy name on Tuesday, Cometia said it had raised $ 35 million in new funding and brought total shipments to about $ 100 million.

However, the journey is somewhat hampered by a pandemic, and the highly competitive situation is cruel. It seems that coffee cafes specializing in brewing high-quality coffee are scattered throughout the city. Startups enter the market with giants like Nespresso and Keurig already dominating. And most notably, it’s still unclear if the product will move from a coffee fanatic to a mass market attraction.

Nevertheless, the founders of Cometeers believe they offer something simple.

In an interview, CEO Roberts said that there are many people who enjoy coffee and love coffee today. We believe we can improve their experience.

A 70,000-square-foot former seafood factory in Gloucester, the headquarters of Cometia.Pat Greenhouse / Globe Staff

Step into the Cometeers 70,000-square-foot factory in an office park near Gloucesters’ three wind turbines and you’ll feel like a biotechnology company, not a coffee maker.

A unique patented coffee brewer that fills a room of thousands of square feet or more is hidden behind a locked door. Advances in flash freezing technology are being completed. A coffee master with a degree from Princeton University and poached by companies such as Blue Bottle and George Howell Coffee, analyzes coffee quality. The company procures coffee beans from around the world and partners with professional roasters throughout the United States.

Doug Hoon, co-founder and chief technology officer of the company, which started manufacturing a lot of equipment in the Connecticut basement, said flash freezing and brewing technology are important.

To extract coffee and maintain high quality when instantly frozen, it is necessary to control water chemistry, brewing temperature, grinding size, etc., which is not possible with most industrial coffee machines on the market.

The extracts they brew are 10 times stronger than regular cups. After brewing, the company immediately flash freezes and stores in oxygen-free, recyclable aluminum capsules. Then discard these capsules in liquid nitrogen to freeze the coffee compound.

Hoon, a MIT-trained engineer, talked about the team’s journey to design machines and processes. It took me a long time to figure it out.

Carly Getz, Coffee Education Manager on the left, and Rachel Apple, Quality and Qualification Manager, prepare coffee samples for cupping. PatGreenhouse / Globe Staff

The story of the origin of comets dates back to the early 2010s. Roberts, a Bentley economics major, studied abroad in Spain and developed a love for good coffee. After returning to Boston, he started brewing himself at home and found it difficult to consistently make high quality cups.

Inspired by the workaround of freezing coffee in an ice tray, he began to mess with ways to make it better. At the same time, he was about to start his own venture, and coffee seemed more promising than Groupon-like e-commerce sites than his other businesses.

Without his own formal coffee training, Roberts set out to learn from the experts. Early on, he sought advice and tracked Boston entrepreneur George Howell, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of the coffee profession.

Roberts, who said he was a coffee rookie at the time, found Howell at a coffee conference in Boston. He argued that the attempt to freeze coffee was the next big innovation. Roberts introduced Howell to the taste of his early products. It didn’t work.

Roberts recalled that he actually spit it out.

But over time, Howell took Roberts under his wings. Roberts has begun flash freezing high quality coffee shots created by Howells’ director of coffee quality. He placed the coffee between two blocks of dry ice, vacuum-sealed it, and presented it a few months later. Roberts recalled that the flavor and aroma would still be preserved.

It said when I saw Georges’ excitement. That’s when we learned that we really have something. And that’s when I really jumped into this with a credit card.

Cometia product line.Pat Greenhouse / Globe Staff

Shortly after Howells was supported as an adviser, Roberts met Hoon, the father of one of his college classmates.

The duo worked to complete and protect the brewing and flash freezing techniques, along with the capsule design. A few years later, they were ready to introduce their products to the world of coffee.

In April 2019, we exhibited a booth at the Coffee Expo held in Boston. Their product, which looked like a K-cup, initially showed skepticism from the industry’s largest coffee snob, Hoon said. But after telling attendees that the company had something to do with a well-established coffee personality like Howell, people tried it. (The taste is often described as smooth and fruity.)

By the end of the weekend, you couldn’t get close to our table, he added. The product was only astoundingly accepted by the coffee professionals of this elite group.

Shortly thereafter, funds began to be poured. In November 2019, the company raised $ 10 million, PitchBook data show. In April 2020, an additional $ 40 million was paid. The company refused to disclose subscriber data, but said sales had increased tenfold since the pandemic began. Its investors include venture capital firms such as D1 Capital and Graycroft.

The Cometia team has grown to more than 110 employees. The factory, which once smelled like a fish stick, has been converted into a gleaming facility with an industrial freezer, nitrogen tank and coffee lab.

However, Roberts admitted that the pandemic hurt the pace of its growth.

He said coffee is great for others. Few people showed our products to their friends. … I think we missed the network effect of our products rippling without people going out into the world and meeting people over coffee.

Kent Bennett, a partner at venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, said Cometia could face the challenge of expanding complex production processes. He said it could also be difficult to smooth the supply chain of frozen products. (Bennet, who invested in toast and other food and beverage companies, is not involved in Cometia.)

But he said it might not be a problem if the company didn’t gain control in the coffee world.

No product owns the coffee market, Bennett said. If Cometia can deliver a really good tasting coffee that is convenient for production, there is certainly a large market for coffee lovers ready to accept it.

You can access Pranshu Verma at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ pranshuverma_.

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