Lay Day Coffee

Lay Day coffee cans in Light and Dark Roasts / Source: Makebardo

Food & BeverageOceaniaPackagingPaperTin

5 MINUTE READ

Kaltrina Bylykbashi

WHAT WE SAY:

Never before has there been so much choice for coffee drinkers: whether to get take-out coffee or pods for a coffee machine, roasted coffee for a cafetiere or grounds for a moka pot. It creates a multistep process for what should be a simple cup of joe and, more to the point, it comes with a lot of waste.

The coffee industry generates thousands of plastic pods, takeout lids and laminated bags that come with difficult-to-recycle parts. In response, Lay Day is going back to basics and rethinking the humble instant coffee container – designed with plastic-free, recyclable tin and PCR paper labels. A low-waste cup of coffee is music to our ears, but the question is: does this cut through to something special or just add to the noise?

KEY FACTS:

Australian brand Lay Day wants to help its audience ditch takeaway cups and convoluted, waste-heavy coffee-making by rebranding instant coffee.
To regain relevance in a competitive market, Lay Day worked with creative agency Makebardo to develop two container designs for its premium, ethically-sourced arabica beans.
Its containers are made from Tin, which is 100% infinitely recyclable kerbside and its labels are made from 30% post-consumer waste Paper, which is also recyclable kerbside.
Lay Day sells Camp Mugs manufactured by Miir, a certified B Corp, further promoting coffee drinking without the waste. The cups are made from stainless steel – a robust, durable material designed for decades of use, which is recyclable at the end of its life.
The brand’s strapline, ‘Premium Instant Coffee for when you can’t be f*cked,’ highlights its desire to tap into an audience that has grown tired of the increasingly complex, wasteful coffee-making mechanisms available in the market today. Its simple, stripped-back branding echoes this with tones of brown, cream and orange, evoking 70s nostalgia.

Lay Day's tagline, 'Premium Instant Coffee for when you can't be f*cked' / Source: Makebardo

Lay Day Insulated Camp Mug with sealable lid from Miir / Source: Lay Day

DIVE DEEPER:

Packaging Online found that 350,000 coffee pods end up in landfill every year and may take up to 500 years to decompose. Because they are made from a blend of aluminium and plastic, they take longer to break down than plastic or aluminium would as separate materials. Their degradation will also pollute our soils and waterways forever.
The impact of our coffee drinking habits outside the home is clear to see too, with nearly 300 billion single-use takeaway coffee cups ending up in landfill each year.
Lay Day is taking inspiration from the past for both its product inspiration and its packaging, eschewing complex modern material mixes and plastics in favour of time-honoured tin and paper.
Metals have a 90% recycling rate in Australia and paper a 72% recycling rate, compared to a mere 12% for plastic. The magnetic quality of tin cans also makes it easier to recover the metal from waste streams, improving recyclability rates and avoiding unnecessary waste to landfill.
Lay Day operates with a “mission to revive instant coffee, ethically, refreshingly and simply,” using premium beans to create a blend that is considered a speciality coffee, graded 80 points in the 100 point ‘Coffee Review’ scale. By prioritising the taste as much as the packaging, the company ensures consumers are not trading flavour for sustainability – key for encouraging and rewarding behaviour change.
Lay Days’ two container designs represent two roasts: a dark intensely flavoured coffee and a more mellow blend.
The tins come in three sizes: 210 grams for AUD 49 (USD 33.80), 90 grams for AUD 24 (USD 16.55) and 45 grams for AUD 14.50 (USD 10). More dense than conventional instant coffee, only three grams (just under a teaspoon) of Lay Day coffee is needed per cup.
The bigger the tin, the better value for money, in turn prolonging the lifecycle of each tin container. A 210 gram tin provides 70 cups, equating to AUD 0.70 (USD 0.48) per cup. A subscription service offers a 9% saving, versus the cost of a one-time purchase and customers can choose how often they want their coffee to be delivered.
Lay Day says it sources its coffee beans from indigenous suppliers in Papua New Guinea, which helps to provide jobs for local communities. While it does not have a Fair Trade certificate, the company claims that it pays its supplier at, or above, fair trade prices.

"The brand’s strapline, ‘Premium Instant Coffee for when you can’t be f*cked,’ highlights its desire to tap into an audience that has grown tired of the increasingly complex, wasteful coffee-making mechanisms available in the market today."

Key Design Considerations:

Recycled is better on all fronts

Steel is infinitely recyclable without loss in quality and the use of scrap metal saves up to 74% of the energy needed to make cans from virgin materials. By using virgin steel, the only thing you gain is energy use, so why not prioritise recycled and contribute to a wider degree of circularity in the industry?

Hidden adhesives

Lay Day’s paper labels are adhered to the tin in some way, but the adhesive used is not clear. To be truly plastic-free, these glues must follow the same mandate and brands should invest time in the details.

Encouraging reuse through communication

With their pop art, tongue-in-cheek style, Lay Day’s cans lend themselves to being placed around the home after use. The brand has alluded to this by posting that it’s “a tin not for the bin,” but it could encourage reuse further in its communications. Douwe Egberts showcases its glass jars filled with jelly beans, craft materials and fairy lights in TV adverts, while Nescafé has a section on its website dedicated to the reuse of its jars. With some creative thinking, reuse can unlock a whole new avenue for marketing.

Refill to reduce impact

While less likely to end up in landfills, the making of tin cans is still emissions-intensive. The nearly two billion tonnes of steel produced every year, part of which goes into can making, generates 8% of global CO2 emissions. Putting appropriate refill infrastructure in place could reduce the emissions intensity of your product.

Making life easier

Sustainable choices are often considered to be more time consuming or the more difficult option by consumers. Lay Day subverts this notion entirely, with a product predicated on simplicity, even using it as the basis for the design of its reusable cups. If you can reduce waste while saving people time, you are onto a winning combination.

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Lay Day Coffee

WHAT WE SAY:

KEY FACTS:

DIVE DEEPER:

The impact of our coffee drinking habits outside the home is clear to see too, with nearly 300 billion single-use takeaway coffee cups ending up in landfill each year.

Lay Day is taking inspiration from the past for both its product inspiration and its packaging, eschewing complex modern material mixes and plastics in favour of time-honoured tin and paper.

Metals have a 90% recycling rate in Australia and paper a 72% recycling rate, compared to a mere 12% for plastic. The magnetic quality of tin cans also makes it easier to recover the metal from waste streams, improving recyclability rates and avoiding unnecessary waste to landfill.

Lay Days’ two container designs represent two roasts: a dark intensely flavoured coffee and a more mellow blend.

The tins come in three sizes: 210 grams for AUD 49 (USD 33.80), 90 grams for AUD 24 (USD 16.55) and 45 grams for AUD 14.50 (USD 10). More dense than conventional instant coffee, only three grams (just under a teaspoon) of Lay Day coffee is needed per cup.