Elemental Beverage Offers Roasters ‘Snapchilled’ Canned Brew Collaborations

Elemental Collaborations products from Bolt Coffee Company, New Harvest Coffee Roasters and George Howell Coffee.

Elemental Beverage is widening access to its Snapchill technology and its online retail channel through a new co-branding, brewing and packaging service to coffee companies.

In hopes of generating mutually beneficial relationships that can add online revenue during this challenging time, the Watertown, Massachusetts-based company has launched a web store featuring “Snapchill Collaborations.”

Roasters provide coffees to Elemental for brewing and then chilling through Elemental’s Snapchill system. Elemental then packages the cans featuring the roasting company’s brand on the wrap before cans are sold through Elemental’s web store.

Sarah Amitay, chief marketing officer for Elemental Beverage, told Daily Coffee News that flexible revenue sharing agreements are designed to make the platform work long-term both for elemental and partner roasters.

“All roasters need to do is send us their coffees, work with us on designing a collaboration label, and we’ll do the rest — brew, chill, can and ship,” said Amitay. “We have a rev/share model, and our clients have a new channel and offering to get out to their customers via two-day shipping via USPS.”

With the Snapchiller’s ability to make hot brew cold almost instantly, as opposed to an exponentially longer traditional cold brewing process, collaborations can result in products quickly, according to Amitay.

So far, the brands on Elemental’s Collaborations page include George Howell, Little Wolf Coffee, Regalia Coffee and more, although in recognition of the challenges besetting coffee shops as well as roasteries, Amitay said that its service is by no means exclusive to coffee companies that roast their own.

“We’re open to conversations with anyone in the coffee industry that’s experiencing the impact,” said Amitay. “Additionally, we are also working on doing a bit of networking on behalf of partners to connect them with online order/delivery resources.”

The collaboration program was actually already underway with multiple partners for canned and kegged products. However, Elemental’s timeline for getting its new store up and running on the web was accelerated by the onset of COVID-19 and its related impacts, according to Amitay.

“When news of new regulations and closures started to hit here in New England, our hearts went out to all of our partners and friends in cafes, roasteries and restarants,” said Amitay. “Stories started to pour in about layoffs and we just knew in our hearts that if we could do anything to help, we would. As a result of renewed online efforts, along with our collaboration program, we’re happy to say that we’ve been able to reach out and hire a few former baristas and production assistants to help us. It is part-time shift work to start, we hope we can keep going and move some of these positions to a full time situation. We’re still very much a start up, so we’re growing as carefully as we can.”