Marketing Analysis for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc.,
Single-cup coffee brewer market

Table of Contents

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters 3

Competitor Analysis 5

Market Analysis 10

Environmental Analysis 14

Recommendations 16

References 17
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Green Mountain Coffee Roasters opened as a cafe in 1981 in Vermont. They roasted their own coffee and before long, demand grew and local restaurants and inns began to order their premium roasted coffee as well. Today the Company has extensive wholesale, direct mail and e-commerce operations. Green Mountain Coffee now has a distribution facility and two production sites in
They make up the cost in less than six months just on the sales of their K-cups. Keurig has licensed several additional coffee roasters to package gourmet coffee and teas into K-Cups, all of which pay royalties to Keurig based on the number of K-Cups shipped. In addition to offering Green Mountain Coffee and Newman’s Own Organics and Celestial Seasonings Tea brands, which are packaged and sold by Green Mountain Coffee, Keurig offers several other North American K-Cup brands, such as Caribou, Folgers and most recently, Starbucks (Starbucksdrinks.com). The weaknesses of GMCR's Keurig are that the K-cups are not recyclable and create more waste than traditionally brewed coffee, since the cups are made of plastic and aluminum. The company has received some bad press for being not eco-friendly enough. Another significant weakness is that Keurig's strategy relies heavily on selling K-cups. The company makes most of it's profit from the sale of coffee. However, in the fall of 2012, two of Keurig's patents expire and other companies will likely begin producing pods that are compatible with Keurig brewing systems. Already, there are reusable cups on the market that consumers can buy to fill with the ground coffee of their choice. Tassimo is made by Kraft and was first introduced to