Yallah Coffee Roasters
A Circular Returnable Cup Case Study
What are the nuts and bolts of your Returnable Cup system, how does it work?
For a £1 deposit, customers can borrow a Circular Returnable Cup and bring it back next time for a refill or a refund. The roll-out of the scheme has been a huge success, and will be launching at our kiosk and cafe in St Ives over the next few months. It was important for us that the scheme was easy to communicate to our café customers and staff, and at an accessible price point.
What motivated you and the business to introduce a returnable cup system?
Our ambition at Yallah is to eliminate single use cups for good across our cafés and in our wider community, which would inevitably end up in landfill. In the process, we strive to demonstrate an accessible system for change that is accessible for other cafés.
Our priority at Yallah is to promote environmental prosperity, and minimise our impact as a business. We strive to eliminate all single use products,, and have already taken huge steps towards this goal with our packaging, which is 100% plastic free and can be recycled with household paper. The returnable cup scheme is the next step towards this goal.
POS: Returnable Cup Door Sticker
POS: ‘How it works’ display
POS: Counter-top cup display
How has the system landed with your customers and staff?
A large proportion of customers at our Penryn café live locally, making the scheme particularly successful at this location. The system has been met with a positive response from both our customers and staff, and sparked many conversations around the environmental impact of single-use products.
What do you think is the future of your Returnable Cup System?
Dreaming big, we want to work alongside Circular&Co. to eliminate single use coffee cups in Cornwall for good.
Our ambition is to connect with other cafés and businesses to spark a reusable and transferable cup initiative that is accessible to everyone.
By engaging our customers in the scheme, we aim to inspire conversations around single-use products and encourage daily habits to eliminate waste.
Why did you choose the Circular Returnable Cup for the scheme?
We are proud to be partnering with Circular&Co. to pilot the Returnable Cup Scheme in our cafés. Our partnership with Circular&Co. is motivated by a shared goal to eliminate single-use products and reduce CO2 emissions. A fellow Cornish based company, Circular&Co. stood out to us as pioneers in sustainable innovation and design within the industry. Ashleigh and the team are research-led and understand the importance of creating a system that is easy to implement across multiple locations. We have worked alongside Circular&Co. to create a package of design assets to communicate the returnable cup scheme to our customers.
The Returnable Cups are of a premium quality and enjoyable to use. We were searching for a returnable cup solution which we would be happy to recommend to our customers and network of wholesale accounts. and we have found that with the Circular Returnable Cup.
