Coffee Without Beans? Atomo is Pioneering the Revolution

The price of coffee has seen a meteoric rise, and what better time for this innovative company to present cost-effective and sustainable alternatives?


Coffee, in short, is crying for help. February witnessed Arabica prices—that sort that feeds the interests of more than half of the total coffee production of the world—peak at the highest ever recorded. This is just an instance of a larger phenomenon that is expected to be ongoing as weather changes and temperature increases diminish yield drastically, and, really, coffee farming is quite a key cause of deforestation, making matters worse for climate change.


If coffee demand, which grows ever increasing each year, Kleitsch insisted on refraining from cutting down forests to satisfy that.


Some years ago, Kleitsch decided to sever that contract with coffee and build a better cup for the planet, such that it had all the great tastes, scents, and jolt of caffeine, minus the wretched ecoclandestine that coffee is familiar with.


A gamut of flavors exists in real coffee, from fruity to toasty to rubbery, with plenty in between. Oddly enough, atoms are coming close to matching that level of complexity with a smash-up of sustainably sourced ingredients led by date pits. The date pits undergo washing and marination before being roasted and ground. Other additives include fibers from pressed strawberry juice and green bananas too small for trade and caffeine recovered from decaffeinated green tea.


They brew like any coffee, producing flavors characterized by a dark roasted quality yet very complex to build back from. Green tea gives a nice lift without the crash.


"This isn't trying to dethrone regular coffee," Kleitsch said. "If we had 50 years to build a business the size of Starbucks, I could do that. The truth is, though, the environment and the world need action now. In order to affect change on the planet, you have to do that at scale. For something like ours to be done at that scale means disruption of the current coffee business. You've got to make them the good guy, not the criminal. That means walking hand in hand with them, changing their product into one that can be more sustainable, and then they become the good person."


The biggest challenge will be to change minds, especially of traditional coffee producers, when it comes to coffee-friendly ingredients. Canned and bottled ready-to-drink coffee, pods, and capsules have witnessed the fastest growth over the last few years.


"The coffee industry would not dare touch the bean; they are not grinding it, are uninterested to look at the bean!" Kleitsch says, "If the coffee industry can embrace the concept that blending with other ingredients can get them the same result at less cost so that even more people can enjoy coffee, this is what the next era is about."