coffee
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Starbucks is buying back the coffeehouse
The company made coffee a place to go. Then convenience crowded the room. Its return to hospitality comes with a $500 million staffing investment and a lesson in what customers actually buy.
Smucker made a billion dollars by cutting the crust.
A frozen peanut butter sandwich explains The J.M. Smucker Co. better than a jar of jam. Its next lesson comes from a much more expensive snack.
Royal Cup sells the morning.
The coffee is only part of the order. Royal Cup built its business around everything it takes to keep the next cup coming - and its 2026 expansion makes that bet bigger.
Kopi Kenangan made room for everyday coffee
A tiny Jakarta takeaway counter found the space between instant coffee and an expensive café. More than 1,500 outlets later, the harder trick is making growth pay.
The Jam Company That Quietly Took Over Your Pantry
Smucker spent 129 years turning a horse-drawn apple-butter route into a $9.1 billion portfolio of coffee, frozen sandwiches, pet food and snack cakes. The wager now is that old brands, sharp distribution and one very modern PB&J can keep growing together.
Dutch Bros Coffee
The Oregon drive-thru that turned a pushcart, a windmill logo and a blue energy drink into a $1.6 billion coffee company - one Rebel at a time.
Agridence
Agridence is a Singapore technology company that helps global agri-commodity supply chains prove where their raw materials come from. Born in 2018 as HeveaConnect, a digital B2B marketplace for physical natural rubber, it rebranded in 2022 and expanded into a modular traceability and compliance platform now spanning rubber, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, coconut and more. Its tools trace commodities from the farm plot to the shipment and file the paperwork regulators such as the EU Deforestation Regulation demand, serving tyre makers, food multinationals, traders and industry associations.
Koltiva
Koltiva is a Swiss-Indonesian agritech and climate-tech company that makes agricultural supply chains traceable, inclusive, and climate-smart. Through its KoltiTrace software platform and KoltiSkills field services, it connects smallholder producers to global brands with seed-to-table traceability, farm mapping, deforestation and EUDR compliance, carbon assessments, and digital finance. Founded in 2013 and led by co-founder and CEO Manfred Borer, Koltiva reports work with over 2 million registered producers across dozens of commodities and more than 90 countries.
ProfilePrint - AI-driven Ingredient Quality Platform
ProfilePrint is a Singapore-based B2B platform that turns the molecular signature of a food ingredient into a digital fingerprint and uses AI to predict its identity, origin and quality within seconds. Built on patented digital food Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) technology, it pairs proprietary near-infrared hardware with custom machine-learning models so agribusinesses can grade coffee, cocoa, tea, dairy, oils and other ingredients without slow, subjective lab work. Founded in 2017 by Alan Lai, the company is deployed across roughly 50-60 locations on six continents and counts industry giants such as Cargill, Olam, Louis Dreyfus and Sucafina as investors and customers.
World Market
World Market (legally Cost Plus World Market) is an American specialty retailer that has sold globally sourced furniture, home decor, gourmet foods, wine, coffee and gifts since 1958. From its first shop on San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, it grew into a chain of roughly 240+ stores across the United States plus a fast-growing e-commerce business, built on the idea that a shopper in suburban America can fill a cart with hand-picked goods from dozens of countries at affordable prices.
Fellow
Fellow makes design-led gear for people who take their home coffee seriously - the gooseneck Stagg EKG kettle, the Ode and Opus grinders, vacuum-insulated travel mugs, and a roaster-rotating subscription called Fellow Drops. Founded by Jake Miller in 2013 after a Stanford d.school project, it bootstrapped its way from Kickstarter to a $30M Series B in 2022.