2020 was set to be the year Cupclub would take the world by storm. Founder of Cupclub, Safia Qureshi, was trialling her end-to-end reusable cup service with some of the biggest multinational food and beverage names – MacDonalds and Starbucks. Cubclub had launched a pilot in the US Bay Area with a new operations partner across eight locations – bringing an urgently needed circular economy alternative to the world’s annual 16 billion discarded single-use coffee cups.
“We had launched in the US market for the first time with next-gen consortium brands – Starbucks, McDonald’s, Coca Cola. Cupclub was selected to help identify and design a reusable system that would be able to scale for some of these major restaurant players and coffee brands, bringing the opportunity of reuse in the everyday takeaway space,” says Qureshi.
But the looming pandemic threw a monkey wrench into Cupclub’s expansion plans, forcing the business to delay operations for about nine months.
The award-winning architect turned greentech entrepreneur engaged her team in a new brief: how might we best adapt to the lockdown and lay the groundwork for a stronger 2021?