Seattle’s Best Coffee, part of Starbucks Corporation, showed double-digit growth in the office coffee marketplace during the last year, bringing its coffee brand to new places, including corporate offices, commercial spaces, and government buildings.
For Seattle’s Best Coffee, the office coffee category represents another opportunity to extend brand exposure and complement its presence beyond the 50,000 locations where a cup of Seattle’s Best Coffee can be enjoyed, including cafes, college campuses, restaurants, hotels, airlines, cruise ships, and movie theatres.
“The time is right for a brand like Seattle’s Best Coffee to win in the workplace because our premium coffee is an easy and affordable way for companies to deliver an extra perk to employees,” says Chris Bruzzo, chief marketing officer of Seattle’s Best Coffee.
“Giving more people the opportunity to enjoy great coffee, especially in new and different locations where it traditionally has been hard to find, is the key to our brand’s continued growth and success.”
In the office, where the choice often has been either mediocre coffee or no coffee, a premium beverage clearly represents an extra perk. A recently published consumer survey by the National Automatic Merchandising Association found that 60 percent of all employed coffee drinkers consider free coffee an employee benefit. Additional research shows that among the 55 percent of adults who drink coffee every day, 34 percent prefer a premium coffee.
The evolution of single-cup machines has broadened the options for companies that want to serve fresh premium coffee in their locations. Seattle’s Best uses a single-cup machine called the Seattle’s Best Coffee Premium Brewer, which features the familiar Seattle’s Best Coffee brand.
Seattle’s Best Coffee says that its coffee is served at thousands of business and institutional locations.
The Seattle’s Best Coffee growth in the office coffee category is significant in that it counters the trend of the overall market. According to industry research firm Technomic, the office coffee services segment declined in volume by 2.5 percent from 2010 to 2011. During the same period, Seattle’s Best Coffee volume increased in volume more than 12 percent in the office coffee marketplace.
