It’s a good time to be in cold coffee. According to Beverage Marketing Corp., ready-to-drink coffee beverage consumption was up 52 percent last year from 2009. The popularity of cold brew coffee has made coffee giants like Starbucks and Peet’s take notice and offer the drink, but one company is credited with popularizing the beverage. Stumptown Coffee Roasters, based out of Portland, OR, which began selling ready-to-drink bottles of cold brew coffee years ago, is now betting on a big future for cold coffee, reports BeverageDaily.
The company has several new ready-to-drink cold brew coffee options in the works and is growing its retail footprint. Stumptown’s 10.5-ounce ready-to-drink beverages—oftentimes referred to as a “stubby”—are even offered through some OCS operations in the U.S.
The biggest challenge for Stumptown in scaling their ready-to-drink cold brews, Beverage Daily reports, is maintaining quality and temperature during distribution.