Hobby in “beanless” espresso is emerging, nevertheless it poses incorrect ultimatum

• “Beanless coffee” – made via synthesising or extracting compounds from alternative plant-based resources that mimic the flavor and aroma of actual espresso – is attracting consideration from customers and buyers homogeneous.
• The USA’ Atomo raised US$7.8mn in January 2025 to increase global café collaborations and not too long ago introduced in the United Kingdom. Manufacturers like Minus, Voyage Meals, Desire, and Compound Meals have observable indistinguishable ranges of luck.
• Beanless espresso manufacturers in large part place their merchandise as a sustainable supplementary to the espresso trade’s provide chain, with a particular focal point on environmental problems.
• Even supposing it’s a disruptive signal of innovation, beanless espresso is not going to problem the intake of conventional espresso any future quickly.

Traders and consumers homogeneous are appearing a rising passion in “beanless” espresso. 

In most cases constituted of substances like while pits, sunflower seeds, millet, carob, and pea protein, beanless espresso guarantees the similar flavour profile of conventional espresso.

Alternatively, producers declare it has a greater sustainability footprint than actual espresso, serving to lift hundreds of thousands in investment to scale merchandise and increase café partnerships. Seattle startup Atomo Coffee, a leader in the market, raised US$7.8mn in Series B funding in January 2025 to ramp up sales of its 50:50 beanless blend thru global partnerships.

Day it’s disrupting the trade, positioning itself as a sustainable supplementary, beanless espresso has a protracted solution to advance ahead of it demanding situations the condition quo.

Dr. Steffen Schwarz on the Coffee Consulate and Andy Kleitsch at Atomo Coffee proportion their perception.

You may additionally like our article on Px coffee.

What’s “beanless” espresso?

The promise “beanless coffee” has proliferated lately, as mainstream media outlets report on its potential to replicate one of the world’s most popular beverages. However what’s it precisely?

Even supposing substances range between manufacturers, beanless espresso steadily comprises a mixture of other meals merchandise. Those can come with while seeds, sunflower seed take out, pea protein, millet, chicory, lemon, fenugreek seeds, lupin, chickpea, and malted barley. Inexperienced tea take out is steadily added to spice up caffeine ranges, too.

In the long run, the function is to build a product that carefully mimics the flavor, aroma, and look – and subsequently the whole consuming enjoy – of actual espresso.

Day it represents high-level innovation in meals engineering, the idea that isn’t completely unused. 

“If history has taught us anything, it’s that scarcity often breeds invention,” says Steffen, the Managing Director of the Coffee Consulate, a espresso analysis and coaching centre in Mannheim, Germany. “When Prussia banned coffee in the late 18th century, roasted chicory and barley were the solution. During the world wars, when beans were rationed, acorns and rye were the alternative.”

Those historic ties colleague beanless espresso with classes of monetary adversity or shortage. Alternatively, lately’s inventions advance a ways past easy substitution.

Trendy manufacturing processes steadily make use of refined tactics, together with fermentation and blazing, to build advanced flavour profiles. Nowadays’s beanless espresso merchandise also are grassland and designed to be brewed the use of the similar forms as conventional espresso, keeping up the familiarity of the brewing ritual.

Funding alternatives are rising

The beanless espresso division has skilled vital enlargement over the occasion 5 years, with investor passion using innovation and marketplace enlargement.

In June 2025, Belgian startup Koppie Bean, based via a former marketer from Danone and Alpro, and a bioscience engineer, fix an invisible quantity of investment to scale up its generation, which utilises native fermented legumes. In a similar fashion, beanless espresso emblem Singapore’s Prefer recently raised US$4.2mn in a funding round, demonstrating sustained investor self assurance within the division’s doable.

Atomo Espresso is a leading instance. In December 2023, the corporate received a multimillion-dollar investment from Suntory Holdings – a Eastern corporate that manages a numerous portfolio of sentimental beverages, espresso, tea, and effort beverages, and alcohol manufacturers. Extra not too long ago, Atomo fix just about US$8mn in investment, that means the logo has secured close to US$60mn in investment since its launch in 2019. 

“Many of our early investors told us they saw beanless coffee as an ‘inevitable technology’ due to the climate impacts affecting coffee-growing regions over the next 30 years,” says Andy, the CEO of Atomo Coffee. “Our early investors are largely mission-driven, focused on bringing climate-focused solutions to market.”

One usual declare amongst beanless espresso merchandise is that they may be able to support bridge the rising hole between provide and insist.

Circumstance volatility and fragile provide chains have created hesitation in conventional espresso markets, particularly within the terminating two years, throughout which green coffee costs have more than doubled. Diverse research assert that by 2025, the amount of land suitable for coffee production could shrink by as much as 50%. As world espresso intake is expected to get up for the foreseeable hour, this raises questions on how manufacturers will meet call for.

Sustainability considerations, together with deforestation in coffee-growing areas and the carbon footprint of world delivery, also are influencing shopper possible choices – and elevating their passion in beanless espresso merchandise.

Fitness issues additionally play games an important position; customers are more and more in quest of drinks which are gluten-free, caffeine-free, or gentler on digestive techniques. Emerging espresso costs upload financial drive, prompting espresso drinkers to hunt out choices – even though some beanless merchandise in fact value greater than espresso itself.

Others, in the meantime, assert that natural advertising innovation is the principle motive force of the division’s enchantment.

What does this heartless for the espresso trade?

Like several unused product construction, it’s a very powerful to query whether or not beanless espresso represents a passing development or a shift in intake that might reshape the wider espresso terrain. 

Instead than positioning itself as an instantaneous competitor, beanless espresso seems to be in quest of integration with present espresso trade markets. 

“We started Atomo to make the world a better place, and to achieve this goal, we must partner across the global coffee industry, supplying sustainable solutions to as many markets as possible,” Andy says. “We see Atomo as a technology and ingredient supplier for the conventional coffee industry, enabling everyone involved to bring innovative coffee products to market.”

The logo not too long ago partnered with US chain Bluestone Lane, which serves Atomo’s 50:50 blend (a mix of real and beanless coffee) at all of its nearly 60 locations – indicators that collaboration between the 2 industries is viable.

“Will it disrupt? Possibly not in the way synthetic textiles disrupted wool, but more as plant-based meats sit beside beef in today’s markets,” Steffen suggests. “They will coexist, sometimes complement, and in certain niches – such as wellness hotels, school canteens, or health-conscious homes – they may even displace.”

However the pathway to mainstream adoption faces a number of demanding situations. Component, particularly, left-overs paramount for shopper acceptance. 

“As we developed Atomo over the years, our early investors reminded us that although consumers want sustainable solutions, they first need a great-tasting, better-for-you, price-competitive product with the same brewing experience,” Andy notes.

The results for normal espresso manufacturers, in particular smallholder farmers, deserve cautious attention. Over 125 million farmers international depend on espresso manufacturing for his or her livelihoods, so minimising their get right of entry to to marketplace dangers a discount of their source of revenue.

“I don’t see beanless coffee affecting coffee farmers,” Andy says. “Coffee producers already face significant problems: frost, leaf rust, drought, labour issues, and climate change. Beanless coffee is the least of their problems. We need all coffee farmers to be wildly successful to meet the global demand, but what we want to avoid is the further deforestation of the last wild places on earth to grow more coffee.”

Alternatively, the espresso trade has already made vital move in addressing problems like deforestation. Ecu Union Deforestation Legislation-compliant espresso is already to be had available on the market, assembly the call for for extra sustainable choices.

“On one hand, a world that drinks less coffee could mean shrinking demand and falling prices, striking hardest at smallholders who already stand on precarious economic ground,” says Steffen. “On the other hand, new partnerships may emerge: farmers in Ethiopia or Colombia could diversify by cultivating lupine or chicory alongside their coffee plots.”

The long-term outlook suggests marketplace integration instead than displacement. In the long run, beanless espresso is prone to carve out its personal length inside the broader beverage marketplace instead than threatening espresso’s dominance. 

Beanless espresso is disrupting the trade, positioning itself as a sustainable supplementary. But it surely has a protracted solution to advance ahead of it demanding situations the condition quo.

Those choices are developing unused alternatives for innovation, sustainability, and shopper selection. Alternatively, the luck of beanless espresso depends on manufacturers’ skill to bring on flavour and property week pleasurable guarantees of sustainability.

As funding continues and main manufacturers start to experiment with those merchandise, beanless espresso may just change into an everlasting fixture within the beverage trade. For now, then again, its marketplace presence is minimum.

Loved this? Upcoming learn our article on why sustainability has become a buzzword in specialty coffee.

Picture credit: Atomo Coffee

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