Bonaverde is a Berlin-based company known for developing a roast-grind-brew coffeemaker. Though the company claims their product is the world's first of its kind, several roast / grind / brew devices existed in the 1990s, including the Unimax 555si, developed and sold in the late 1990s. Founded by Hans Stier in 2013, the company is entirely crowdfunded, and received widespread notice for its highly successful crowdfunding campaigns. The company is also known for its pioneering role in the direct trade coffee movement, running a cloud-based marketplace for buying and selling raw, green coffee beans.
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History
Hans Stier founded his first attempt at a roast-grind-brew concept, Kaffee Toro, in 2010. This version of the concept was based solely on providing consumers with green beans and a machine that could turn them into black coffee, without any connection between growers and consumers. After Kaffee Toro went bankrupt, Stier and a few members of the Kaffee Toro team refined the concept, this time opting to crowdfund the project. Stier also decided to crowd-source the initial design of the machine on Jovoto. The company’s 2013 Kickstarter campaign garnered wide notice for rapidly surpassing its $135,000 goal, with over 2,200 contributing to raise more than $680,000. An Indiegogo campaign followed, with over 430 backers helping to raise close to $125,000. In August 2014, the company ran a third campaign, this time on Seedmatch, raising over €1.5mn, officially overfunding by more than 750%.
The 2013 crowdfunding campaigns projected an October 2014 delivery date. Multiple development difficulties led the company to postpone their launch for two years, debuting the finished project at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2016.<
Bonaverde AG is a limited liability stock issuing company that is not yet publicly traded. Stier remains Managing Director, while the supervisory board is run by well-known German serial entrepreneur Michael Brehm. Brehm has funded and sold companies to Google, eBay, Amazon and Facebook. Adjunct to Brehm is Dr. Jens Odewald, former CEO of the world’s largest retail and electronics conglomerate METRO AG (former Kaufhaus AG) and former head of the supervisory board to Tchibo, Germany’s number one coffee player and the world’s sixth largest coffee house chain. Mark Hartmann, partner at Project A Ventures, oversees the board.
Machine
The first version of Bonaverde’s roast-grind-brew coffee machine, named Dalia, featured a crowdsourced, curved wood design and a dial with ten roasting profiles. After the crowdfunding campaign, difficulties over the course of the machine’s two-year development led to a series of changes, resulting in a rectangular, white machine designed by Berlin-based designer Daniel von Waldthausen launched in January 2016. Coffee beans are placed in the top of the machine for roasting, after which they drop into a steel cone grinder and are brewed using a rainshower brewing method.
The newest version of the machine, renamed Berlin, also features Internet of Things technology connecting it to the company’s cloud-based coffee marketplace. Each machine contains an RFID-reader, SIM card, and iBeacon Bluetooth reader, enabling it to identify RFID-tagged green coffee beans, connect to the company’s Coffee Cloud, and identify users' smartphones.
Coffee Packaging Line
Aiming to become an end-to-end system, Bonaverde developed a packaging line that packages raw coffee beans into the coffee filters that Bonaverde uses as pouches for their bean packaging. The filters are stitched closed by the packaging line and attached to a RFID through which the Grower can attach a relevant roasting profile and media info.
Marketplace
Bonaverde’s direct-trade coffee marketplace, the Coffee Cloud, is designed to enable trade of green coffee beans between farmers and consumers. Farmers package their beans in coffee pouches containing RFID-tags. These tags contain a serial number that allows machines to identify the coffee and receive roasting profile and other information from the Coffee Cloud. The marketplace is a membership-based service, with subscribers, called Coffee Changers, paying a set fee each month entitling them to free coffee at any machine made public in the marketplace’s network. Those with machines buy beans through Bonaverde’s smartphone app, where farmers offer beans for purchase from their own profiles.
Controversy
Many of the backers of the crowdfunded project have expressed dissatisfaction with Bonaverde’s development, both due to the delayed delivery and changes in the original design. Much of the controversy stems from accusations that the company is using RFID tags to turn the machine and marketplace into a proprietary system, a theory the company denies. Bonaverde responded to demands for refunds in 2014 by offering full refunds once the company reaches profitability.
Also, the company frequently markets their product as the "World's First Roast / Grind / Brew" product, even though there is ample proof that several similar products were designed and manufactured in the 1990s, including those by Unimax and Royalmax.