Dripdash

Dripdash is a line of Japanese style ready-to-drink iced coffees that use Kyoto-style slow-drip coffee as their base. Originally launched back in 2019 in a single SKU, Dripdash now has three flavors and the products are packaged in 9.5 ounce cans.

The three flavors include original Kyoto Iced Coffee, Black Sesame Oat Milk Latte, and Lavender Maple + Oat Milk Latte. Like the original Dripdash that was packaged in a glass bottle, these products require refrigeration. The flagship Kyoto Iced Coffee does not feature any flavors or preservatives and has zero calories and 200mg of caffeine per can while the two oat milk latte SKUs contain 160mg of caffeine.  Black Sesame has 90 calories and 2 grams of sugar from added allulose (it also contains monk fruit) while Lavender Maple has 80 calories and 10 grams of sugar from maple syrup. 

Inside the cans, you’ll find a well-crafted and very enjoyable liquid that’s made with only natural ingredients. Starting with the flagship, Kyoto Iced Coffee really nails the bold but smooth flavor of its namesake style, and can definitely hold its own against any cold brew out there. 

The two oat milk lattes offer unique flavor combinations and definitely aren’t your run of the mill flavored coffees. Both start off with a lightly sweetened blend of oat milk and Kyoto drip coffee that is creamy but still has plenty of bold coffee flavor. From there, there’s a pleasant note of sesame in Black Sesame or a floral lavender note with a sweet maple note in Lavender Maple. 

If we had to pick one as our favorite, we’d have to go with Black Sesame, which adds a slightly savory note that really complements the coffee and oat milk flavors. The entire combination is probably one of the more memorable taste profiles that we’ve ever had in an RTD coffee.

Finally, there’s the packaging and branding. The can has a metallic label with bare spots exposed at the top and the bottom, giving it a very glossy look which certainly stands out. The label design has a Japanese aesthetic, starting with “coffee” written in Japanese running vertically down the left side of the front panel. The Dripdash icon (a water drop with a knocked out dash in it) sits in the middle and is the core visual element. At the top you’ll find the flavor name, while the word “Dripdash” sits at the bottom along with callouts for refrigeration, caffeine, and the can specs. 

Aside from the disconnect between the icon and the company name, we like most of what we see. Making the Dripdash name a bit more front and center would definitely be helpful.

On the two flavored SKUs we also noticed a pretty glaring omission: there’s no mention of “coffee” on the front panel of these two labels aside from the Japanese letters. 

In the end, this is a nice evolution of the Dripdash brand, with both a can and new flavors making it feel like it has the potential to reach a broader audience. Plus, we think the unique styling of the brand and choice of flavors should help Dripdash stand out.

Dripdash is a recently launched ready-to-drink coffee that is marketed as a traditional Kyoto-style coffee. The product is available in a single SKU and is packaged in a 6 oz. glass bottle that requires refrigeration.

If you aren’t familiar with Kyoto-style coffee, it’s typically produced using a glass tower (a device that’s specific to this task) with a top chamber of water that drips slowly through a center section of coffee grounds and then into a bottom holding chamber. The process is quite slow and, much like cold brew, delivers a smoother, more intense but less acidic cup of coffee than traditional hot brew.

As far as what Dripdash has put inside the bottle, it’s both smooth and intense; each bottle has 225 mg of caffeine. It largely tastes similar to what you’ll find in a high quality cold brew, which is a good thing. Then again, it’s hard to say that using a Kyoto-style method delivers a clearly superior coffee experience. In the end, to us the liquid is simply on par with regular cold brew.

To that end, the cold brew category has largely moved on from brands that only offer an unsweetened black variety as their only SKU. That’s a challenge that we think Dripdash will face as well, especially since the cold brew set has gotten quite competitive in terms of the variety that’s offered.

When it comes to branding, we’d describe Dripdash as minimalist but clean. The label is blue with a large white drop shape for its center portion. From there, the Dripdash logo (which is all lowercase and features an upside down “i” to create an additional drip image) and four lines of text is all that they’ve placed on the front panel. Turning the bottle to the left, you’ll find a paragraph of explanatory text that describes what Kyoto-style coffee is all about.

While all of this is reasonably intuitive, we feel as though Dripdash needs redesign the product  to give it a stronger presence. In addition, we think there’s some work to do to better tell the story of Kyoto-style coffee. As it stands right now, if a consumer isn’t in the know, it would probably be easier to just pick up a cold brew.

Overall, we like the idea of taking Kyoto-style coffee to the ready to drink space. Dripdash has definitely done this in a quality way, and, with some additional work on the branding -- and perhaps an expansion of the lineup -- this might be something with legs.