After hiding in plain sight for years, could low-acid coffee be having something of a moment?
While it may represent just a fraction of the larger coffee market, the low-acid segment has become a small but steady profit generator for a handful of rising brands looking to separate themselves from the pack, whether as a central element or as a complementary piece.
“I don’t think we’ve made enough noise quite yet, but it will happen, I promise you,” said Charles Livingston, founder and CEO of low-acid specialists Lifeboost Coffee.
Ultra-lightly roasted varieties like gold coffee and “white coffee,” popular in the Pacific Northwest, have been part of the culture for centuries; yet, coffee acidity depends on a number of factors including the bean variety, origin, elevation, cultivation time, processing and roasting. But it’s thanks to brands like Lifeboost that stomach-friendly and low-acid have become recognizable marketing callouts. Aiming to be “the healthiest coffee company on the planet,” Lifeboost has made low-acidity one of its pillars, and quickly found an audience among older consumers who struggled to digest coffee as they aged.
“It resonated with a lot of people because it solved a problem — nobody wants to give up their favorite beverage,” Livingston said.
For brands like Atlanta-based Volcanica Coffee, moving into low-acid coffee has been something of a happy accident. The family-run company specializes in sustainably grown Costa Rican coffee grown high in the mountains of the Tarrazu region. As the brand expanded into other regions and geographies, it began adding coffees grown at lower elevations, from areas like Indonesia and Brazil, that were naturally less acidic. Highlighting that particular characteristic was not a strong focus for Volcania, according to founder Maurice Contreras, until consumer feedback warranted the company to take a closer look.
“We’ve been overwhelmed by some of the customer feedback, and we realized that this is something we need to capitalize (on); it’s an existing product that we have, we just need to better present it,” he said.
That sense of presentation is part of what Clark Nowlin is hoping to achieve with his brand. After discovering gold coffee while a touring musician in the Pacific Northwest, he launched Golden Ratio in 2000 to focus exclusively on the variety, initially selling exclusively in single-use sachets. While he admits that consumer education and awareness around gold coffee remains a hurdle, Nowlin said promising consumers a great tasting cup that is easier on their stomachs has made the brand a relatively simple concept to understand. The numbers back that up: Golden Ratio, which now also sells whole bean gold coffee, was recently named one of the top 25 fastest-rising D2C brands in Q4 2021 by research group Similarweb.
Yet coffee discovery remains tied to cafés, and Golden Ratio believes that’s where it has an opportunity to differentiate and balance its business. While the brand’s D2C customers are primarily daily drinkers who are sensitive to regular coffee, targeting coffee shops through distribution partner Odeko allows it to showcase its unique flavor and versatility.
“With coffee shops, it’s less of a problem we’re solving for them and more of a fun opportunity they can take part in,” Nowlin said. “People trust baristas, and they can really take this to so many places because of its really light flavor since the coffee is not burnt.”
Gifting has also proved effective in getting liquid to lips. Since stepping into that channel earlier this year, Golden Ratio has received large orders from corporate clients like Keller Williams Realty, insurance company Higginbotham and American Express, the latter of which mailed product samples to its Gold Card members as part of a gift box. A recently launched Birthday Cake SKU, Nowlin said, is the centerpiece of a new automated “Birthday Card & Coffee” delivery program that allows companies to treat customers and team members for “special moments,” such as workplace birthdays or anniversaries.
That type of innovation could help widen the path for growth across the category. Golden Ratio’s ingredient business, still in its early stages, could provide a further revenue stream, with Nowlin confirming the company has already landed a contract to supply a Los Angeles-based candy company with gold coffee, and is in discussions with several others. Meanwhile, Lifeboost has made the move into ready-to-drink products with the launch of a low-acid, bag-in-box cold brew earlier this spring.
“(Low-acid) is just like any other trend that’s growing — once it hits a certain amount where it starts to cut into their market share, a lot of these bigger companies will have their own that comes out,” said Livingston. “I don’t doubt that at all.”