It just got more difficult to find a cup of coffee (and many other beverages) without Starbucks' imprint on it. The company vastly expanded its arrangement with an extension of its agreement with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, tripling the number of branded items made for Keurig single-serve coffee machines.

Starbucks saved analysts and journalists the trouble of evaluating the deal by calling it a "global single-serve coffee industry game changer" and a "win-win-win agreement for both companies and for premium coffee consumers around the world" in its press release.

Specifically, Starbucks will add new single-serve cup cartridges for Keurig machines under the Seattle's Best Coffee, Torrefazione Italia coffee, Teavana Teas and Starbucks Cocoa brands in addition to Starbucks branded coffees. Sales of Starbucks coffee K-Cup packs rose more than 75 percent in March compared with the prior year.Continue reading...

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Green Mountain Coffee is in a pot of trouble. And that's even before Starbucks introduces Verismo, its own single-serve brewing system for consumers that's rolling out in October (and already available on Verismo.com), to challenge the iconic K-Cup system by Green Mountain that features its Keurig pods. 

The brand has been a darling of consumers for several years, on a continued growth tear as K-Cups led a revolution in how Americans consume much of their coffee by making the single-serve system de rigeur in homes and offices. The company fed strong double-digit sales growth by continuing to proliferate the types of pods, to include "iced" drinks and juices as well as coffees and teas.

Green Mountain also had been a darling of investors seeking to cash in on a boom that, for the six years after the Vermont-based company acquired Keurig, managed to thrive without attracting the competitive interest of Starbucks.Continue reading...

K-Cups are everywhere in the news now that Starbucks is rolling them out from coast to coast. Yet in the grocery aisle, those little "K-Cups" designed for single serving Keurig brewing machines are highlighting the battle between store brands (private labels) with name brand consumer packaged goods for shelf space.

Both Kroger and Safeway, two major U.S. grocery chains, are launching private label "coffee pods" for the Keurig machine. Safeway announced it will bring to market five types of Keurig-compatible filtered coffee pods. The chain already makes three store brand instant products for the machine.

The move by Safeway and Kroger caused shares of Green Mountain, the company that sells K-Cups along with Keurig brewing machines, to plummet. Since September, in fact, its stock has dropped 82 percent, according to Reuters. Two of the patents that cover the K-Cup design will expire in September 2012, which means other companies, not just Green Mountain, could manufacture Keurig-compatible cups.Continue reading...

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