Coffee's Fourth Wave' rides into Bay Area with Brewbird's high-tech, single-serve machine

"Mickey Du was wandering through San Francisco's Hayes Valley during a college break when he noticed some commotion in a dead-end alley. Curious, he moved closer, finding 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 perfect cup of coffee from local roaster Blue Bottle's first brick and mortar kiosk. He had unwittingly stumbled into the third wave of the coffee industry that was less commodity and more art form."

"Combining robotics and engineering with a coffee fiend mentality, Du invented his Brewbird smart coffee machine that brings the perfect pour-over from local specialty roasters into the office break room all in a compostable pod. The key? Filling the pods with whole beans that are ground inside the Keurig-like machine for each cup. Using a QR code on each pod to calibrate the coarseness of the grind and measurement of the water, a hot cup is delivered in 60 seconds."

"The machines are so expensive about $10,000 each they are marketed only to corporate offices for now. About 30 companies have them, including Meta, LinkedIn, Gap, Palo Alto Networks, SAP, Sephora and the Wilson Sonsini law firm. In the meantime, one has to ask: in a post pandemic world where many employees prefer to work from home, could a perfect cup of coffee lure them back to the office?"

Mickey Du discovered specialty coffee in Hayes Valley in 2005, which inspired a career focused on elevating coffee. Du founded Brewbird, a smart, Keurig-like machine that grinds whole beans inside compostable pods and delivers a pour-over–style cup in 60 seconds. Each pod includes a QR code that calibrates grind coarseness and water measurement. Brewbird partners with 14 local roasters and has placed about 30 machines, priced around $10,000, in corporate offices such as Meta, LinkedIn, Gap, Palo Alto Networks, SAP, Sephora and Wilson Sonsini. Du raised $32 million in Series A to scale the single-serve reinvention.

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