Tempo

Tempo

School:Portfolio Center
Team:Lauren Bernstein, Elle Oser. Carter Tindell, Sam Jenkins, Kindall Palmer

Kuerig drinkers consider time to be a precious commodity. The young and upwardly mobile don’t have time to wash out pots, measure messy grounds, or fiddle with filters. That’s the reason why they are willing to buy into the convenience of the K-Cup system: because time is money, and Kuerig saves them time.

Unfortunately, this point of convenience is where the packaging fails.  K-cups are sold in packages of 18 and 36 stacked k-cups in a brick-like format. As soon as a box is brought home and ripped open, K-cups fall out onto the counter in a frustrating mess. The mess grows when multiple K-cup flavors enter the same kitchen, and becomes a frustrating and time-consuming experience to sort through the jumbled cups for your favorite brew. The K-cup convenience is lost.

This mess has spawned the creation of various aftermarket Kuerig dispensers. Wire carousels and drawer organizers are among the most popular of these ad-hoc solutions, but ultimately fail the user as loading adds another task, and, once again, takes away from the convenience of the K-Cup system.

Tempo Coffee effortlessly solves the lack of functionality in K-Cup packaging, not only restoring the convenience and speed to the Kuerig system, but adding a greater level of consumer experience to the Kuerig user.

On the shelf, Tempo presents a clean black-and-white exterior in the form of two large “sleeves,” or five-sided boxes, containing the K-cups within. As soon as the package is brought home, the two sleeves are pulled apart, revealing a quadrant of vertical K-cup dispensers, each containing seven cups of a different flavor: Accelerando (espresso), Prestissimo (dark roast), Moderato (medium roast), and Larghetto (light roast).

Tempo provides an attractive countertop feature, that will brighten up any kitchen and support the theme of convenience and speed inherit to the Kuerig brand. Tempo organizes the selection in a graceful display, that does away with the need to arrange the cups in a third-party K-cup-holder. The gravity-fed dispensers practically hand the K-cup to the consumer, and automatically stage another cup for the next thirsty user. A simple slit in the tower’s face allows for an easy inventory check.

The convenience of Tempo continues even after the coffee is brewed. The two “sleeves” that contain the Tempo system provides an easy way for the environmentally conscious user to separate the recyclable plastic cups from the foil lids, and keep K-Cups from filling our landfills.

For home use, Tempo is also available in single-flavor packs of seven, providing a week’s worth of coffee in the same tower format as the Tempo 28-pack. This single-user platform also includes the two recycling bins that double as a packaging sleeve.

The Tempo system supports the lifestyle of convenience that Kuerig has already mastered, all in one stylish, functional, and sustainable package. Tempo is designed for the rhythm of your life.