Coffee Maker Heats Up Machine War

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Since the advent of the single-serve K-Cup coffee system nearly 20 years ago, Keurig Green Mountain Inc. in Waterbury, Vt., has come to dominate the single-serve coffee market, despite competing products from L.A.’s Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Seattle coffee giant Starbucks Corp.

But Sam Kim, chief executive of Touch Coffee & Beverages in the City of Industry, thinks he can make a splash in the market by competing on taste.

He spent the past two and a half years developing Touch’s proprietary brewing machine, which Kim claims makes a better-tasting cup of coffee. And while he developed his own cups, he also designed Touch’s brewing system to work with Keurig’s ubiquitous cups, so customers shouldn’t worry about being stuck with the coffee equivalent of Betamax tapes.

“Put a K-Cup in our brewer and it tastes better,” he said. “We made a little better mousetrap.”

Though this is his first coffee-specific venture, Kim has developed appliances and other gadgets for more than 25 years and spent a long time working with legendary TV pitchman Ron Popeil. He said he took a piece of Popeil’s advice to heart when he decided to get into the coffee business.

“One thing I learned from him is that you have to focus on making the product the best tasting,” Kim said.

So he decided to begin with the premise of making the highest-quality coffee possible within the K-cup platform.

Kim introduced the Touch brewer at a Chicago trade show earlier this month and is now working on distribution. He plans to focus first on selling to office and commercial clients – the same way Keurig started out.

– Matt Pressberg

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