Wandering Bear Targets At-Home Coffee Consumers with Expanded Portfolio

Facing major disruptions to its traditional business model, New York-based coffee maker Wandering Bear announced yesterday the launch of a new suite of products designed to bring the formerly office-focused brand into the at-home coffee space.

The new products include 32 oz. multi-serve cartons of cold brew coffee, coarse ground coffee beans, pods and a 1 gallon cold brew bag-in-box. The products accompany a broader repositioning of the brand, emphasizing high caffeine content with the slogan “Stronger Coffee Tastes Better” that will be included on all packaging.

According to Wandering Bear co-founder and CEO Matt Bachmann, the move comes as the company’s office business — which formerly accounted for roughly 50%-60% of revenue — has come to a halt during the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the company has worked to retain its consumer base through direct-to-consumer and retail sales, the uncertainty within the office channel led the brand to pivot towards at-home use occasions.

Though it may only be a matter of time until consumers do return to work in-person — and Wandering Bear is ready to resume business in the space as soon as possible — Bachmann said the company’s approach has been to move forward as though the office channel will never come back.

“We’re treating this as if we are relaunching,” Bachmann said. “With that there’s going to be a thoughtful evolution in scaling up the messaging. It is very on the nose and the core focus right now is communicating the consistency and the common thread that ties these different product lines together.”

The brand’s cold brew products boast roughly 30 mg of caffeine per ounce. The 1 gallon bag-in-box will be available in Straight Black, Hazelnut and Vanilla varieties. The 32 oz. cartons replace the brand’s 32 oz. bag-in-box products and are only available in Straight Black while the company will continue to produce its 11 oz. RTD line available in black and Vanilla and Mocha with coconut milk.

The pods, compatible with Keurig machines, contain 15.5 grams of organic coffee and 250 mg of caffeine per pod — a quality Bachmann said makes it the strongest on the market with 25% more coffee per unit than its competitors.

While Wandering Bear has taken a significant hit to its office business, down roughly 95% year-over-year, Bachmann said the brand has simultaneously seen significant growth in its ecommerce business. He estimated ecomm will make up half the company’s revenue in 2020, up from 20% last year. The company also relaunched its own website, rebuilding the online platform to streamline the direct-to-consumer experience, he said. In addition to its own direct-to-consumer platform, it also sells through sites such as Amazon, Walmart, Thrive Market, and Fresh Direct.

“With the wind at our back,” Bachmann said, the company committed in May to fast tracking an innovation pipeline to launch before the end of the summer.

“We condensed easily nine months worth of innovation, product development and brand thinking into nine weeks and did it all virtually,” Bachmann said. “We used our quarantine home kitchens as test kitchens. And with that, we were able to bring to market four new products and three new product lines, all under the Wandering Bear ‘extra strong’ brand umbrella.”

Though the office is, for the moment, in Wandering Bear’s rearview, Bachmann said he believes the company will come out stronger on the other side when the pandemic subsides and workers are once again taking morning commutes. Wandering Bear, he noted, undertook a marketing initiative at the beginning of the pandemic to retain the consumers who were used to having the brand on tap, using email lists and customer connections to refer them to online sales options. Even if the channel’s sales only comes back at 50% of its former heights, that additional revenue will become a supplement to the new strategy.

The 11 oz. grab-and-go products and multi-serve cartons are currently available in retail, but Bachmann said the dry products will focus on ecommerce before rolling out into brick and mortar in the future. Despite the launches, Wandering Bear is not seeking to grow its retail footprint, instead choosing to focus on its current partners — including Kroger and Whole Foods — and seeks to drive sales in its present regions, which include New York and Los Angeles.

“If we’re focused on building up ecommerce, we need to make sure that there aren’t drains on the profit dollars that are needed to fund that machine,” he said.