We’re an investor in Atomo. When we invested in the Seed round the product was very good, but I thought it would be several years before it was great. Two months later they sent us their latest samples and it was the best coffee I’d ever had. With bean-based coffee you need to take the good with the bad, but with molecular coffee you can omit anything the consumer doesn’t like. It’s a great product, with a great team and a great mission.
I'll need to try it. I'm not a great coffee snob, but I do know the difference between a good bean and a bad bean. I'll admit that I'd slightly miss the variability that you can get with a natural product, but most people most days just want a cup of decent-tasting, caffeinated black water. (Often diluted with milk, and further modified with other chemicals so that it tastes like something other than coffee.) That's fine, just as there's a difference between fine wines and "table wines".
I'm on the fence about the environmental benefits. It comes at a cost to poor farmers -- but farmers who are massively abused. This is $5 for a can of coffee that is hopefully better than the $1 I can get at 7/11, for which that farmer would earn perhaps $.02.
If Atomo were to make a side business in also making the "fine wine" equivalent for coffee, paying farmers much more per pound to make the fanciest coffees, I'd feel more at ease about the whole thing.
So, is this product only for people that want to drink their coffee cold, and not those who appreciate a warm beverage in the morning? Also, what would all the (admittedly mistreated) coffee farmers around the world do for a living if this really took off?
I thin some of these companies would be better off investing in palm oil alternatives if they really want to make a difference.
