Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Keurig Coffee Case Study

Green Mountain Coffee Rosters (GMCR) and Keurig Coffee Case Study

Brief Description of company

            Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Keurig are company names. They are operating in processed and packaged foods industry and their sector is coffee makers.

Background and History of GMCR and Keurig

            Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (GMCR) was founded in year 1981 as a small café and combined its operations with Keurig in 2006; it has its head office in Waterbury, Vermont. As the case says, currently it is considered as the market leader in specialty coffee industry because it is offering top quality coffees, implementing innovative technology for brewing and fulfilling various socially responsible business practices. GMCR and Keurig had to master various skills to acquire top position in the market. GMCR is operating in coffee maker business and specialty coffee sector; it obtains, manufactures and then sells various kinds of coffee, teas, cocoa and other form of beverages in K-cup portion packs and coffee in conventional packaging style. It is believed that it is offering more than two hundred varieties of hot beverages. In addition to aforementioned products, GMCR is providing wide selection of whole beans, ground coffee in fractional packs and ground coffee selections in bags that can be easily used by customers of At-home (AH) and Away-from-Home (AFH) markets; AH and AFH has much more potential of growth as no coffee brand has been targeting these attractive markets.

            In 1998 (as the case says), Keurig was founded with an innovative concept that everyone should be able to make one cup of coffee at a time instead of a pot at a time; it is considered as the pioneer of single cup coffee maker and specialty coffees and teas. Recently, GMCR has done acquisition and mergers with various specialty coffee brewers; Keurig is licensing the patents for development of single cup known as ‘K-cup’ coffee packages that comprise of Starbucks Coffee and Dunkin Donuts. Currently, there are more than 5,600 employees in the company and Mr. Lawrence J. Blanford is Chief Executive officer of GMCR. The financial highlights of the company are shown in the following figure (ttm stands for trailing twelve months, yoy stands for year over year and mrq stands for most recent quarter).