How edible coffee cup startup Good Edi found success despite launching in a pandemic

Aniyo Rahebi and Catherine Hutchins are friends with a professional background in food packaging and processing who wanted to make a bigger impact. 

Coffee-loving Australians send an estimated one billion single use cups to landfill every year and this fact weighed heavily on the young Melbourne-based duo. They thought the idea behind biodegradable and compostable coffee cups was admirable, but knew the infrastructure for them to be effective as a sustainable, environmentally friendly option didn’t truly exist (yet). 

So they came up with the ultimate disposal method — edible cups.

Fast forward through crowdfunding, business mentoring and product development and they’re riding high with their business Good Edi. Clever partnerships forged with cafes and the corporate sector now have the startup rolling out its cups in Australia’s biggest capitals of coffee culture — Melbourne and Sydney.

Good Edi is a first for the Australian takeaway coffee market with a customer list that includes a network of independent and boutique Melbourne cafes and — over the last few months — a growing number of cafes in inner Sydney.

Five key takeaways

1. Crowdfunding is a low-risk way to test your idea, come up with your minimum viable product and determine your market appeal.

2. Seeking out business accelerator programmes and mentors that are tailored to your niche can give you the edge you need.

3. For startups on a lean marketing budget, fast-track your visibility and reach through targeted partnerships, positive PR and consistent use of social media.

4. People will pay more for a sustainable product that ticks the boxes on design, desirability and convenience.

5. If you’re selling products to industries affected by COVID-19, focus on how it can help them to excite and bring in new customers. Everyone is struggling and looking for solutions.

Have your coffee and eat it too

When thinking about how they would approach the challenge of creating their unique sustainable cups, the Good Edi founders asked themselves, “What goes with coffee?” with the obvious answer being “biscuits and waffles”. And so Good Edi’s tasty prototype cup was born.

Made from a mix of oats and grains and able to hold hot liquid for several hours, the cups are the result of an experimental journey. Starting with a series of “kitchen bench” trials, the pair worked through various iterations that eventually culminated in a marketable product.

Good Edi cups don’t affect the flavour of coffee and are made from locally and ethically sourced ingredients. Paper sleeves are used for hygiene and convenience (and have the added benefit of being able to be branded for corporate use). And if you choose not to eat part or all of the cup, Rahebi and Hutchins explain, “It will break down over time in the same way as any other food product.”

Good Edi cups are leak-free for eight hours. Source: supplied

Crowdfunding and finding the right mentors

For Good Edi, winning the 2020 Taronga Zoo HATCH Accelerator award (with $50,000 in prize money) and going on to secure over $150,000 in crowdfunding and seed investment was a definite coup, giving the founders the funds needed to source a bespoke cup making machine to start operations.

According to Rahebi and Hutchins, the crowdfunding campaign conducted through platform ReadyFundGo was an ideal, low-risk way to test the market and gain an understanding of key customer segments.

“We knew this was something that people were going to buy. And for us that was invaluable because we were able to get the answer even before we launched,” the pair said after meeting and exceeding their target.

And according to ReadyFundGo chief executive Jill Storey: “The key to success of any crowdfunding campaign is the work undertaken in the pre-launch phase.”

“Catherine and Aniyo did an excellent job in starting to engage their community early,” Storey said.

The founders got a keen sense of product appeal by attending local Saturday markets to let people see and sample their edible cups. But winning the Taronga HATCH award put the pair in touch with experts and mentors who have been critical to their success and helped them build a supportive network and start production.

As so many funding and accelerator programs are aimed primarily at the tech sector, having access to ones developed specifically for environmental and social enterprise businesses was particularly valuable.

“In the corporate world you’re specialised. In a startup you need to know everything and that’s how a tailored accelerator can help by giving you access to knowledge,” Rahebi and Hutchins said. 

Building partnerships and a customer network

Partnering with Genovese, one of Australia’s oldest coffee roasters and a leading industry advocate for sustainable practices, resulted in Good Edi getting access to a dedicated production space.

The Good Edi founders are confident that the ongoing support of Genovese will be key to their success and their ability to extend their reach through the cafe network.

In addition, the business has tapped into the corporate and hotel market and has supplied over 10,000 cups for use in cafeterias and corporate marketing such as the recent Investa Property Group promotion in Melbourne during Plastic Free July.

Good Edi cups ready to be used. Source: supplied

Paying a premium for a sustainable product

The Good Edi founders also put things in perspective when encountering push-back on pricing. They point out that the small premium you’d pay for their cups compares to the extra cost of a coffee with soy or almond milk instead of regular milk.

Ultimately, the business can charge a premium for its products and have consumers choose it over cheaper disposable alternatives because people are on board with its ethos. But more than that, Good Edi cups stand on their own merits. The fact that they’re a cool product with loads of appeal for a trendy, inner city demographic doesn’t hurt either.

“We’ve done everything we can to be transparent and to keep the cups affordable.”

And as for the pricing, Rahebi says “they’re in a sweet spot that makes it easy for people to make a sustainable choice.”

Generating positive PR on a budget

The simple truth is that most startups don’t have bucket loads of cash to throw at marketing. The power of social media and positive PR has helped Good Edi grow its brand recognition on a shoestring marketing budget.

Rahebi explains that they hadn’t been able to capture the attention of the corporate market until coverage in the mainstream media, food industry press and other niche publications raised their visibility.

That, “and being regular podcast guests”, Hutchins adds, has seen interest from a range of new customers grow exponentially.

Beyond the buzzword of sustainability

For Good Edi, sustainability is something that permeates the business.

“We’re not just about edible coffee cups,” Rahebi points out.

“We looked at the full value chain of what we were going to do. And we wanted to be sustainable in every single way. From sourcing the ingredients, producing the product, packaging and shipping it. And where we ship it to.”

Packaging in particular provided its challenges.

“There’s no single product out there that’s sustainable. We’ve done months and months of research to find a sustainable material that gives us the shelf life that we’re after. That in itself was a project,” Rahebi says. 

According to Hutchins, being sustainable is not something that’s done and dusted in one step.

“It’s not like you get to a point where you can say ‘OK, we’re sustainable now.’ You may find an ingredient and then maybe in a few months time you find a better one. It’s about making continual improvements,” she says. 

Scaling and plans for the future

Rahebi and Hutchins are, for the time being, focused on expanding their customer base among Australian cafes, corporates and the direct-to-consumer market (you can order cups via their website to take with you to a cafe).

“We don’t want to create a carbon footprint by sending our product overseas (for now). Our plans for the future are to have franchises in different countries if we want to expand,” they said.

The pair plan to seek finance for the expansion of their operations over the next six months.

“We’re looking to raise more capital and attract investors for the next phase of our journey, to scale up production, decrease our costs and increase our capacity. Offering cups at an even more affordable price point means we’ll ultimately be able to have a bigger impact.”

With Australian states fast-tracking plastic banning policies, the writing is on the wall for environmentally unfriendly food packaging — placing businesses like Good Edi that provide sustainable and affordable alternatives in the driver’s seat.