You know the feeling: You're on your way to an appointment in the morning, quickly pick up a pretzel from the bakery and a coffee to go. It's quite convenient: You just quickly throw the paper cup in the nearest trash can. Many people aren't aware of the enormous amount of waste these discarded cups create every day. reCup addresses this problem and explains their idea in our 7 questions.
1. Who are you and what do you do? Please briefly introduce yourself and your product!
In September 2016, we, Fabi (27) and Flo (21), reCup and have since offered the first reusable system for coffee-to-go cups. It is particularly important to us to uphold the "coffee-to-go philosophy" and provide coffee connoisseurs and coffee providers with a simple, attractive, and sustainable alternative to the disposable cup. How does it work? Coffee drinkers can take their coffee-to-go in a reCup (reusable cup) with them or return it to any of our reCup partners for a €1 deposit. Coffee in a reCup is always offered at a lower price than in a disposable cup.
2. But that's been around for a long time!
Nope! While there are various campaigns currently offering smaller, isolated solutions (e.g., Freiburg, Hamburg, etc.), we are currently unaware of any other deposit system for reusable coffee-to-go cups that can work across the board.
3. What are the three main ingredients for your recipe for success?
- Get to market and connect with customers as quickly as possible
- Talk openly about the idea with everyone
- Try to build the business model from the ground up in a sustainable manner (economically, ecologically and socially sustainable)
4. Let’s get down to business: How is business going?
Excellent! We're currently preparing the rollout to other, primarily larger, cities. Rosenheim was a great test environment for us, but now we have to move on. We'll keep the rest to ourselves for now.
5. What does Munich mean to you?
Even though the startup scene in Munich is still relatively small, we enjoy the regular exchange with other startups and are happy to see the community growing. Since the largest amounts of waste are generated by disposable cups in big cities, Munich is also an interesting market for us, and we want to tap into it as soon as possible. For us personally, it's home and too expensive!
6. How will your startup become the next unicorn? Or will we see you soon at Epic Fail Night?
Every year, 2.8 billion disposable cups are used in Germany, just for coffee to go – that's 320,000 cups per hour. To become the next unicorn, we still have a huge pile of trash to dig through. There's definitely a lot to learn at Epic Fail Night, and we'd love to attend as visitors.
7. Hiking or beer garden?
Clearly: hiking! There's a good beer on the mountain and a wonderful view.
