CBTL single serve beverage system by Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf

by Chee Leng
(Singapore)

What did I say -single serve coffee is the segment to be in if you are in the coffee business.

And from Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf comes CBTL, their version of gourmet coffee with a push button.

The California based Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf is really an unlikely entrant to the single serve coffee segment. Personally, I would expect Starbucks to roll out a single serve coffee maker (after having so much tassle with Kraft over Tassimo issue).

But, guess Starbucks is too busy with their Via and their latest launch was an upsized cup Trenta, so Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf have the first mover advantage -they are the first specialty coffee company to roll out their own single serve coffee maker, termed CBTL.

CBTl comes with all the single serve coffee maker trappings, easy to use, easy to clean and it looks good. The CBTL that Coffee Bean & Tea Leaft partner with Caffitaly System comes in two model, Cotata and Kaldi.

Contata is the more economic model but in my opinion not so attractive.

Kaldi, is slightly pricer but comes with an ultra seleek design, really like the Metallic blue model.

The coffee pods called capsules is similar to all other pods, hermetically sealed to lock in the flavor and there is the internal double filtration system to ensures evenly balanced extraction of the optimal flavor.

The CBTL system are priced $129.95 and $149.95 for Contata and Kaldi while the coffee pods are about $0.50 per piece.

The range is lesser than what Keurig has, but they have a tea range so is wider than what Nespresso is able to offer.

This offering by Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf takes after their specialty cafe positioning. They are merely offering what their cafes have.

Which in my opinion is a dangerous move, the differentiating factor is not strong enough to compete in the single serve coffee market.

When we think of range, we go for keurig, when we want just many different types of coffee, we go for Nespresso. This has etched in consumer mind.

If CBTL just want to sell to their own cafe following, it might not do justice to the time, effort and money spend on this system.

Anyway, this is just my $0.02.