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New beanless 'coffee' emerges but does it taste any good?

Start-ups launch drinks that look and taste like coffee but they say are better for the environment.

“We take great offense when someone says that we're a coffee substitute,” says Andy Kleitsch, the chief executive of Seattle based start-up Atomo, whose pure, beanless ground product my espresso has been made from. But the newcomers intend to replicate one of the world’s most popular beverages from taste, to caffeine punch, to drinking experience – and the first of this nascent industry’s beanless concoctions have begun to appear. Over the past year the bean-free coffee products of Dutch start-up Northern Wonder, founded in 2021, has secured space on supermarket shelves in the Netherlands and Switzerland.

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