Atomo Beanless Coffee Is Leading the Change

Coffee is in trouble. This February, the price of Arabica, the main coffee species that accounts for more than half of the world’s coffee production, hit an all-time high. This is part of an upward trend that’s expected to continue as changes in weather and temperature cause crop yields to plummet and prices to soar. On top of that, coffee farming is a leading driver of deforestation, further exacerbating climate change.

“If the demand for coffee increases, which it does every year, let’s stop tearing down a forest to meet that demand,” says Andy Kleitsch, a former software developer at Microsoft. 

A few years ago, Kleitsch decided to quit his job, break that cycle, and engineer a better cup of coffee. A product that still had the familiar flavor, fragrance, and caffeine, but didn’t come with coffee’s ecologically darker side. He partnered with food scientist Jarrett Stopforth in 2019, and together they launched Atomo Coffee, a coffee made without a single coffee bean.

Engineering a better brew

The flavors of conventional coffee are complex, ranging from fruity to toasty to everything in between. To replicate that complexity, Atomo draws on a wide variety of sustainably sourced ingredients, chief among them date pits left over from making date paste for nutritional bars. The pits are washed, marinated, roasted, and granulated, then combined with other ingredients, such as strawberry fiber left from pressing strawberry juice, green bananas deemed too small for retail, and caffeine reclaimed from decaffeinated green tea. 

The resulting grounds have the same rich, complex flavor profile as a dark roast, and can be brewed just like conventional coffee. Thanks to the green tea, the caffeine experience is a steadier, “no crash” one. (Food & Wine editors taste-tested Atomo, and were uniformly impressed with its satisfying taste and even-keeled caffeine delivery.)

The future of beanless coffee

Atomo has seen rapid success. They’ve opened a 33,547-square-foot roasting facility in Seattle and attracted major investors, including the Japanese multinational beverage company Suntory. Cup for cup, an espresso made with Atomo’s beanless coffee creates 83% fewer carbon emissions and uses 70% less farmland than its conventional counterpart. 

Atomo is not trying to compete against conventional coffee. 

“If we had 50 years to build a business the size of Starbucks, I could do that. But the truth is that our environment and the world needs action now,” says Kleitsch. “To make a difference in the world, you have to do it at scale. To do [a product like ours] at scale, you have to work with the existing coffee companies. You’ve got to make them the hero, not the villain. That means partnering and blending with them so that their products can be more sustainable, and they can be the hero.” 

To date, Atomo Coffee has over 73 café partners in the U.S., Japan, and the UK, where customers can opt for 100% Atomo espresso instead of conventional coffee. The company sells Atomo Coffee-branded 50:50 Blends (a blend of Arabica coffee and Atomo) on an Amazon storefront. They’re also looking to partner with larger coffee companies on similar Atomo-Arabica blends, to offer them a way to keep the price of their coffee down and offer consumers a more sustainable cup while maintaining the quality. 

The biggest hurdle is getting traditional coffee companies to think beyond the bean. Over the past few years, the fastest-growing segments of coffee have been ready-to-drink canned and bottled coffee, pods, and capsules. 

“You’re not touching the bean, you’re not grinding the bean, you’re not looking at the bean,” says Kleitsch. “If the coffee industry can embrace the fact that blending [their beans] with other ingredients can get them the same result at a lower cost, more people will be able to enjoy coffee. That’s what this next era is all about.”