Instant coffee is cheap coffee?

In today's coffee industry, the origin of coffee beans, roasting methods, hand brewing appliances, and the flavor presented by light roasted coffee are increasingly valued. This is known as the third coffee wave.

Opposite it are the first and second coffee waves. The core of the first coffee wave was the commercialization of coffee, which brought the prosperity and popularity of instant coffee. The second time, after the 1970s, Starbucks popularized Italian steam-extracted espresso technology, and ordinary consumers drank a latte, cappuccino, caramel macchiato and so on.

But now, a new product is emerging that seems to blend the first and second coffee waves: instant coffee, which emphasizes selection and roasting.

Voilà, which recently started crowdfunding on Kickstarter, is one of them. It starts by emphasizing the quality of its coffee, meaning that quality assurance roasters Ruby Coffee, Supersonic Coffee and 1000 Faces are all its suppliers, thus distinguishing itself from most people's inherent belief that instant coffee is cheap.

Secondly, drinking coffee of this quality does not need to carry a grinder, coffee pot or electronic scale with you. It is so troublesome to make it by hand. It only needs a cup and hot water. The packaging of Voilà is like a bag of cold granules. You can drink it after tearing open the mouth and soaking in a cup of hot water.

Of course, its price is also relatively expensive. In the crowdfunding platform's package,$10 includes a VIP membership and just a packet of coffee samples.

With lifestyle in mind, Voilà, which is suitable for all kinds of hurried occasions, posted an outdoor poster and appeared with a stainless steel cup from Snow Peak, a well-known outdoor brand, which costs more than $30. It deliberately eschews those scenes, suggesting instead that Voilà is more of an embodiment of a lifestyle.

Starbucks launched Via, a quality-focused instant product line, as early as 2009, the second year Howard Schultz returned to Starbucks as CEO. At the time, Schultz called it "the category that will change the coffee industry," and spent the largest amount of money in the company's history to promote it, including designing dedicated pages and pushing TV ads. However, at that time, the awareness of boutique coffee was not popular, Starbucks also fell into the competition with wheat coffee tired of fighting, to the present, even if the emphasis on quality can not reach the boutique standard Via failed to become Starbucks internal prominent product line.

Beyond Voilà, there are several companies that are moving into the instant boutique coffee space. San Francisco Sudden Coffee. The first thing it evades is the market's stereotype of instant coffee--the idea that it's offering cheap coffee to cut costs. Instant coffee is made through a process of extraction and spray drying. To show that they are raising costs and standards, Sudden Coffee guarantees that they will use professional La Marzocco Linea machines for extraction.

Sudden Coffee is packaged in plastic test tubes.

In addition to Sudden Coffee's role as a competitive barista founder, Kalle Freese, the investors behind the company include Flickr, social platform Jaiku and Groupon co-partners. Kalle Freese closed his cafe in 2015 to focus on a business that sets the standard for instant coffee because it has great potential. It currently costs $6 a cup.

"One of my biggest dreams is that this instant coffee can beat Cold Brew." Freese said. Cold Brew is currently a popular coffee category in the United States.