'It feels like home.' You are bringing back the experience of coffee.'

“It feels like home”.

“Have you heard of the Finnish word Hygge? That’s how this feels.” (cosy, special, charming…)

“You are bringing back the experience of coffee”

This short story has been crafted to shine a light on some of the beautiful outcomes that we have discovered when you remove all single use cups from your café, the success factors that we have noticed so far in the 100-percent-ers, and those café owners and baristas that are now chasing that goal of 100% reusable cups. ?

As far as we know, five Australian cafes have achieved 100% reusable cups: bRU Coffee in North Bondi, NSW; Loafer Bakery in North Fitzroy, Victoria; Ocean Grind in Torquay, Victoria; The Green Pantry in Denmark, WA; and the most recent arrival to the 100% club – The Corner Store Café, Subiaco, WA.

This is what it takes:

·?????Committed Café owner(s) who are motivated (in varying orders of priority) by: their family; the environment; the sector; saving money; and meeting regulation.

·?????A strong and positive culture amongst the café team and “the regulars”.

·?????A team well educated on the vision and the approach, supported through the challenges, committed to the cause, and who celebrate the wins.

·?????A supportive local community – both individuals and business.

·?????The ability to hurry-hurry-wait -repeat. The resilience to remain committed to the vision as the internal and external environment changes: the pace in the café; the availability of the team; the change in the customer base (some customers will not give up the single use cup); the changes in regulation, local climate and more.

We realised that there is not one single solution to achieving 100% reuse, it’s hard to do on your own, everything is changing, and it’s hard to keep up with it all – health, regulation inflation, finding teams. So we established Our Kinds as a movement, where we can support each other to get there, together.

We now have 27 cafes in Our Kinds in WA, NSW, Victoria and South Australia. We are all working towards the one vision – to make the single use cup redundant. We are helping consumers to create a new habit, a reuse habit and we do that by making it as easy as possible for cafes to offer a reusable option. We want/help cafes and consumers to feel motivated to invest in that new habit.

There are enough cups in the world already. Our Kinds has not produced a cup, we work with any café and any standard sized cup. We measure in different ways. We review that measurement, and we adjust our approach.

In fact, we have supply chain relationships with Good Sammy Enterprises and Lifeline Australia . Real, emerging, win-win partnerships. We not only source and sort beautiful second-hand cups from those charities, but we also solve a waste problem, enable employment, and more. When a customer selects these ceramic takeaway cups, we have found that they are more likely to pause and enjoy their coffee, even better, they are also more likely to return their cup. They put a real value on the cups and the whole experience.

It takes time, courage, energy, and commitment for café owners and teams to make this transition. It takes all sorts of people and all sorts of cups to support them. These cafes will attract their ‘reuse renegades’, and more customers will enjoy the experience of coffee. When they do… it will feel like home.

All it takes – Just bring the cup back.

#justbringthecupback #unsdgs #climatechangeisreal #ESG #collaboration #movement