Major Expansion in Ready to Drink Products

Steam Dot employs 45 people across three facilities in Anchorage, Alaska. The company's primary product is roasted coffee. They recently expanded into ready-to-drink cold-brew coffee products. Their primary market is the local Anchorage market. However, the expansion into shelf-stable, ready-to-drink products has expanded their market to the Pacific Northwest.

SteamDot invested a significant amount of time and resources into developing a canned cold brew line and was one of the first to market in the state of Alaska for locally-manufactured canned cold brew. Originally they were approved to sell the product in the refrigerator section of local retailers and within their own retail location. However, due to regulation changes this approval was pulled. Eventually they were able to negotiate a situation where they could continue to sell the product at the existing retail locations but Steam Dot couldn't expand to any new ones unless they could prove that it was a shelf-stable product. This greatly hindered the company's growth and put them in a position where their return on investment would not be realized unless they could achieve shelf stable approval. For help, Steam Dot turned to the Alaska MEP, part of the MEP National Network™.

To achieve shelf-stable approval, SteamDot needed a lab to test the cold brew product and empirically prove that it was safe at room temperature for at least 6 months. The Alaska MEP assisted in coordinating a relationship between Steam Dot and a lab capable of completing a challenge study and ensuring that proper funding was available to complete the project. To do this, the lab received a sample of SteamDot's product and monitored it for harmful growth over the course of 6 months. At the end of the 6 months the sample didn't have any growth and passed with flying colors. The test results enabled SteamDot to receive shelf-stability approval and begin expanding into new markets. The approval has enabled the company to save costs and expand across the Pacific Northwest.