A Coffee Cup Lid Experience

I want you to picture a fresh brewed cup of joe and really wrap your mind around what your senses can pick up from that image. It's dark (maybe with some creamer, not so dark), it's hot, and the steam is coming off aromatic. I love this filtered liquid that some people think of as bitter water. It has an energy in itself, potentially many health benefits, and is a great social gathering excuse.

Generally, when we're talking about coffee, we have got two options:
1. You are sitting down on a comfortable couch, relaxing with your favorite mug, and a dark roast from Colombia (by far my favorite)...
2. You're in a scramble to get to school, and you may just need a little pick-me-up on your way from that crappy corner coffee shop near your place.

Whatever your reason for drinking this nectar from the gods, if you're like me and you love coffee, you know drinking from a paper cup with a plastic lid is not the ideal experience.

This is a site dedicated to the coffee, the cup, and primarily critiquing the hell out of the current lid design we all know.

When I order a cup of black coffee, I order it full, up to the brim, with no room for cream. This presents a problem.

It makes me have to manuever a full cup of hot liquid, without the proper insulation protection or spillage protection, to the "lid/insulator/creamer area". The area is typically on a back wall of the cafe. I will say Starbucks has this solved by handing me a cup that has the lid attached already, but this is the anamoly from my experience (as the cream and sugar are with the lids).

Obviously, there's an immediate improvement that could be made to the "send-me-to-the-back-wall" cafes - put the coffee lids and insulators directly at side of the pick-up position!

More about the paper cup: It's not paper
It's actually made from cardboard with a thin layer of WAX around the interior. The wax prevents liquid from soaking into the cardboard and getting all soggy. Unfortunately, this makes the cup essentially non-recyclable - which I didn't know until I started this website. It's actually a pretty sizeable disconnect between people's perception and the reality. In fact, over 58 billion cups paper are thrown away every year (source). Not a huge fan of the sustainability of using these cups.

It's worth looking at a few of the different designs that have been patented over the years. A few of my favorites are shown here, but for a solid list of lids and advancing the concepts of the coffee lid, reference this article.

My favorite designs:

A kiss

Mountains

Unclear if this is functional, but maybe an airplane?

Clearly functional - the lid serves its purpose (see constraints section - which the lid meets all of them).

But there are still a few critiques I see with improving the lid:

1. The "sippage" from the small opening is really weak - in comparison to drinking out of a mug, it's not as enjoyable. You don't know when it's going to hit your mouth, so you slowly approach the opening.
2. The "aroma" factor is just completely missing. I like to smell that hot coffee in the morning.
3. There's no indication that this thing is snapped on, which leads to the first photo on occasion.
4. Non-recyclablable!

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The lid needs to meet certain criteria, which is generally does:

1. Allow beverage to pass through somehow (you want your coffee)
2. Locks on to cup
3. Durable (needs to endure liquid temps of up to 190F)
4. Low cost for manufacturing (typically that means one piece only)


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This new lid I found while researching options solves one of the biggest critiques: It drinks like a ceramic mug! The viora lid is the first of it's kind with a lip that extends above the opening and rounds out. It also has a much bigger opening to allow for more aroma to hit your noise. It's still plastic, but it's a huge improvement over the typical plastic lid. And also, it's RECYCLABLE!

Redesign comes at a cost - particularly for Viora a few cents more per lid than the standard design. The typical solo-cup lid costs between $0.03-0.05, while the Viora upgrade is double the price at $0.07-0.10 (source). Unfortunately, they haven't caught on in the market, my guess is because of this cost increase, not even at the "hipster" cafes. I believe it could be a worthwhile investment for hardcore coffee cafes trying to set themselves a part. Or maybe it's a BYO Lid situation for me :)

The Viora Lid - A big improvement

The Viora lid does appear to be an exceptional improvement, but no design is perfect. It still doesn't solve the "this cup may or may not leak on me" problem. Although this is a once-in-a-few-hundred-cups problem for me, I do believe it should just stop happening all together. There are some additional improvements linked below.

1. Seal Confirmation - Make the lid change color upon engagement around the cup rim. The lid could take a play from ziplock circa 1996 and allow for a transparent lid to change colors upon contact.

2. Seal Guarantee - Another nice feature to have is to have a gasket of sorts to seal the top of the cup to the lid. Line up the lid and make it suck down on to the cup. Potentially dip the paper cup in this special material (upon further material science research) and have the lid lock to it.

3. One Piece Option - Keep the lid, but eliminate the lid-to-cup interfaace all together. Although the cup would still have to be stackable, multiple oragami experts have come up with a way to eliminate hte lid for a great looking idea

4. The Juuuust Right Temp - Have the lid change color when it reaches a specific "drinkable" temperature. Take a play from hypercolor circa 1991! What a classic! I understand cost and FDA approval for food-grade materials would need to be considered, but how cool would it be if the coffee lid (or cup) told you it was ready to drink?


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So why hasn't this happened yet? Even a basic product like a coffee cup + lid has a complex supply chain and design system behind it (don't forget about the 40+ patents over the last 90 years). There's no one correct answer to the "why does my coffee lid still suck (literally)?", but here are a few potential reasons...

1. The problems with this lid aren't great enough to drive the change. With the standard lid, problems with the lid happen pretty rarely - the thing is fairly secured on the cup.

2. The business is invested in the current system. It would take millions of dollars for a redesign and resupply.

3. Indifference for consumers - I don't believe consumers aren't going to pay more for a nicer lid experience.

4. There hasn't been a "big disrupter" in the market for years. It's been the same players (solo, dixie, dart) for years and Viora is the closest thing we've seen to the next level design. The threat of substitutions is low as the big players do the job adequately enough.


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