Edible Coffee Cup, Cupffee Cup, Wafer Cup You Can Eat with Your Coffee, Tea, Espresso and Any hot or Cold Beverage. Eco Friendly, Good for Vegans, Coffee Gifts, Desserts, Yogurt Parfait, etc.

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Whilst this invention represents an exciting step forward, for such containers to become fully integrated into everyday life, it may be necessary to develop resealable containers which can store greater quantities of fluids. Traditional examples include sausage casings, banana leaf plates, and nature’s favourites, such as orange and banana peels. Plenty of coffee chains even offer incentives for customers who bring their own cups, with things like discounts or extra loyalty stamps available for environmental do-gooders. There isn’t a guidebook on how to make an edible cup, so it was a big challenge,” says Hutchins. During the testing phase, “we had lots and lots of leaking cups”. The main goal of the EIC grant is to further the technological innovations and business improvements at Cupffee, to propel the company towards ‘gobal leadership’ in the production and sales of edible cups and stirrers.

After hundreds of hours in the kitchen refining their concept, the duo took it to market. Their start-up, Good- Edi, now offers an edible, biodegradable, plastic-free alternative to the standard polyethylene-lined paper cups used for coffee that largely end up in landfills or get incinerated. From Eleven Ventures’ perspective, Cupffee represents ‘one of those rare start-ups’ that has moved beyond the lab to establish an industrial process and production. Cupfee is a certified patent owner of its edible coffee cup, and having moved to a fully automated manufacturing line in 2020 now has a production capacity of 2.5 cups per month. But whereas finding sustainable plastic, paper or some other bizarre new material is the primary goal of most companies, when it comes to single-use cups, we already have an answer. The start-up’s sales pitch is primarily about sustainability, and Good-Edi says its offering is better for the environment than a plastic-lined paper cup even if it isn’t eaten.But you’re right, there was a lot of R&D, a lot of trial and error in terms of specific ingredients. We found that sometimes you’d get one ingredient but then use the same ingredient from a different brand which would react slightly differently with all the other ingredients, so we really had to nail down what we wanted to use and even the brands that we wanted to rely on. For example, all the vanilla that we use in the cookie is all-natural vanilla from Tonga. So everything in the cup has no added preservatives, flavours or colours. It’s 100% natural. An app on your phone reminds you if you’ve forgotten to return a cup, and if you fail to do so you are charged, in a similar vein to city bike rental services. Cupffee is designed for cold or hot drinks and can withstand temperatures of up to 85˚C. “The cup remains crunchy for 40 minutes and does not leak for 12 hours,” ​Zapryanov told FoodNavigator. “The Cupffee cups don’t alter the taste of the beverage – the taste is natural,” ​he added. Ploymateria Ltd states that its long service life plastic degrades in six months to three years, whereas the short life service plastic will degrade in less than six months – a significant improvement on the materials currently being used. Edible containers The world goes through more than 250 billion plastic-lined, paper drink cups every year, the UN Environment Programme estimates. Only about 1 per cent of those cups are recycled. Good-Edi says about 2.7 million disposable cups find their way to landfills each day in Australia.

However, as part of a World Earth Day stunt last year,Cupfee was served on a plastic-free, ultra-long-haul flight from Abu Dhabi to Australia, the first environmentally-friendly flight of its kind.Currently only available at some London offices and University campuses, CupClub, allows coffee consumers to buy their hot drinks in a reusable mug, and then drop it off at a collection point later. But the start-up wants to increase its penetration in existing market, expand its sales and marketing team, and stimulate demand for sustainable edibles. Securing a €1.3m grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) and closing a €500,000 Pre-Seed investment round led by Eleven Ventures will help it achieve these goals, suggested Zapryanov.