What do you do when your business usually delivers coffee to office workers, but they’re not there anymore? Like so many other businesses, New York-based coffee maker Wandering Bear7 – the first company to make boxed cold brew – has had to adapt its traditional sales model to survive in the ‘new normal’.
At the start of the pandemic, it saw a dramatic rise in e-commerce sales as work-from-homers sought to get their caffeine fix by ordering coffee online. “It’s like the tale of two cities. Our e-commerce business is going crazy [seeing] 200% week-over-week growth with panic-buying, while our office business has ground to a halt,” Matt Bachmann, CEO and co-founder of Wandering Bear Coffee said at the time8.
“Consumer behaviors are changing and people aren’t receptive to the same conversations they once were because retailers aren’t in growth mode, they are in stock-the-shelves mode and making sure the warehouses are full. It’s a totally different mentality. It’s also about preparing for the new normal.”
For Wandering Bear, this preparation involved retraining field staff – who could no longer make in-person visits – to support the business in other ways, and switching its focus from offices. The company has recently launched a new range of products designed for consumers at home, including 32 oz. multi-serve cartons of the brand’s signature cold brew coffee, coarse ground coffee beans, and a 1-gallon cold brew bag-in-box. All packaging will carry the slogan “Stronger Coffee Tastes Better”, which signifies a broader repositioning of the brand.