Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. Announces New Keurig® Brewing Platform
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. announced the expansion of its line of Keurig® single cup brewers with the addition of the Keurig® Vue™ brewer, a premium new platform designed with the ability to brew stronger, bigger, and hotter. The new Vue™ brewer, paired with new Vue™ packs, maintains the simplicity and convenience of the existing Keurig® K-Cup® system with added customizable features so consumers have control over the strength, size, and temperature of their beverages.
With Custom Brew Technology™, the Vue™ brewer adjusts water pressure, timing, and air flow so consumers can brew to better suit their taste preference.
Consumers can brew a larger travel mug with new Vue™ packs specially formulated to brew a bigger cup up to 18 ounces.
Vue™ offers a brewing temperature range between 187 and 197 degrees Fahrenheit so consumers have more ways to customize the perfect cup.
The Keurig® Vue™ V700 brewer is the first of a planned Vue™ Series for home use. The product will be available for purchase in Bed Bath and Beyond stores nationwide as well as GMCR’s two consumer-direct websites http://www.greenmountaincoffee.com and http://www.keurig.com in the coming weeks. The Vue™ V700 brewer and associated Vue™ packs will become more widely available in a variety of retail stores over the coming months.
A commercial Vue™ brewer for away-from-home workplace use will be available through Keurig authorized distributors in the fall of 2012. This platform will incorporate Vue™ packs embedded with RFID technology. This technology is designed to simplify the brewing experience and ensure beverages are of the highest quality and consistency for those users who may not be familiar with the brewer.
GMCR’s new Vue™ brewer and Vue™ packs will complement the current Keurig® K-Cup® brewer platform and its K-Cup® packs.
“Developed jointly by GMCR’s brewer, coffee, packaging and manufacturing experts, the introduction of the Keurig® Vue™ brewer is a significant milestone in the evolution of our company and required exemplary coordination and synergy across the organization. That teamwork, coupled with our continued focus on scale and technology innovation, gives me the confidence we can continue to build a great company and maintain a competitive advantage over the longer term,” said Larry Blanford, president and CEO of GMCR in a prepared statement
“The new Keurig® Vue™ brewer represents the next advance in single-serve beverage delivery and is a great example of GMCR’s commitment to delivering sustained innovation. By adding new features that allow consumers to brew what they love the way they love it – stronger, bigger and hotter – we’ve further enhanced consumer choice and we believe broadened the appeal of the Keurig® Single Cup Brewing system,” said Michelle Stacy, president of GMCR’s Keurig business unit.
“The Vue™ platform was engineered first and foremost to deliver an exceptional cup of coffee. Moreover, in designing this addition to the Keurig® family, we also looked to a pack design and brewing technology that would allow us to continue to expand the variety of beverage categories we’re able to offer to consumers, and we’re excited about the existing choice and future possibilities that innovation supports,” said Scott McCreary, President of GMCR’s Specialty Coffee business unit
The design of the new, patented, single-serve Vue™ pack accommodates varying grind volume and packing requirements so that consumers can enjoy a variety of beverage options including coffee, tea, hot cocoa, iced, fruit-based, and frothy café beverages.
Vue™ packs will debut with more than 30 varieties representing a mix of brands and taste profiles including Green Mountain Coffee®, Barista Prima®, Tully’s®, Coffee People®, Gloria Jean’s®, Green Mountain Naturals®, Café Escapes®, Caribou Coffee®, Celestial Seasonings®, Emeril’s®, Newman’s Own® Organics, Timothy’s® and Van Houtte®. In addition, exclusive to Vue™ is GMCR’s newest beverage innovation, two-step Barista Prima® Café beverages, which includes separate dairy frother packs designed to deliver a high quality blending of premium gourmet coffee and creamy froth while maintaining the convenience of Keurig® brewing. GMCR expects to offer up to 50 varieties by the end of June.
The Vue™ system represents an incremental step on GMCR’s journey to reduce its environmental impact. The Vue™ pack’s cup is made from polypropylene #5 plastic and can be recycled wherever polypropylene/#5 plastics are accepted, currently in approximately half of the communities in the U.S.
