CHARLESTON MAGAZINE'S NEW ONLINE DINING GUIDE
The City Magazine Since 1975

Cambio Roasters created the first aluminum, single-cup coffee pod to change the industry and protect the environment

Cambio Roasters created the first aluminum, single-cup coffee pod to change the industry and protect the environment
November 2024

The company shares its earnings with coffee growers through the Food 4 Farmers nonprofit



In September, Cambio Roasters launched the first recyclable aluminum single-cup coffee pod that fits into Keurig brewers. Founders Kevin Hartley and Ann Hutson traveled to Cauca, Colombia, in 2018 to visit some of the farms that grow beans for their coffee.

It’s hard to beat the convenience of the single-cup coffee pods that create the perfect pick-me-up. The problem is that each day in the US, an estimated 40 million of those plastic pods end up in landfills and oceans.

As the chief innovation officer at Keurig/Green Mountain, Kevin Hartley was part of the team that built the coffee company into the $14 billion brand it is today. “Half of people who have coffee makers use Keurig, and that’s 20 billion K-cup coffee pods per year,” he says. “Turns out, it wasn’t really our brilliant advertising, it was the huge pent-up demand of families sick and tired of pouring all that coffee down the sink.”  

But the number of pods filling landfills concerned Hartley, and when Keurig was sold and consolidated with Dr. Pepper, he seized the opportunity to find a better solution. In 2018, he and his partner, Ann Hutson, founded Cambio Roasters, headquartered at their dining room table in Isle of Palms. The new coffee company launched with easily recyclable pods that fit into single-cup brewers. In September, Cambio became the first company to launch all-aluminum pods. “Cambio is Spanish for ‘change,’” Hartley says, and he and Hutson hope to disrupt the industry with their 100-percent recyclable materials, 30 percent of which are made from already-recycled aluminum.

An added benefit of aluminum? It helps preserve the taste of coffee, which comes in eight organic roasts ranging from hazelnut to special dark, Hartley says. “Turns out, coffee doesn’t actually like plastic that much. Plastic is quite porous and lets in a lot of air. The coffee stops tasting the way the roaster intended within a few months.”

Hutson manages the marketing for Cambio and has grown the company’s e-commerce sales to more than one million pods and increased Amazon sales 243 percent year-over-year. The pods are also sold at about 1,000 stores, including 270 Harris Teeters in the Southeast. 

In addition to protecting the environment, Hartley and Hutson are committed to uplifting the coffee bean growers they depend on, sharing 20 percent of the company’s profits with about 10,000 farmers through a Vermont nonprofit, Food 4 Farmers. The couple has developed relationships with several of their growers, traveling to farms in Colombia and Costa Rica. “It’s a pretty eye-opening experience when we visit and plug in a coffee machine, and they see us brew their coffee in our cups,” Hartley says.

By the Numbers

  • $10,000 plus: Amount donated to coffee growers
  • 60,000: Pounds of coffee sold per year
  • 100s: Number of growers whose coffee beans go into Cambio
  • 15: Full-time and freelance employees