Not So Small
Running a small business is anything but small. In each episode our host, Sam Bauman, asks small business owners about their challenges, triumphs, and the passion that keeps them going. Through this, Not So Small seeks to spotlight and strengthen the small businesses that are dedicated to their community and care about more than the bottom line.
Not So Small
Good To Go Cups: Melissa Seeley
In this episode, host Sam Bauman sits down with Melissa Seeley, co-founder of Good To Go Cups, an innovative business tackling the enormous waste problem of single-use coffee cups. Melissa and her business partner Michelle developed a circular system using compostable polymer cups that can be reused multiple times before being ground down and made into new cups. Their elegant business model makes sustainability accessible to both coffee shops and customers through a simple app-based membership program. With a background in recycling and sustainability initiatives, Melissa brings deep expertise to this mission-driven venture. She shares insights on developing their product, building relationships with coffee shops, and the challenges of changing consumer behavior. Learn how this Twin Cities-based company is expanding across the country and making it easier for coffee lovers to reduce waste one cup at a time.
Guest Info
Community Shoutout
Other Links:
Reuse Minnesota
Host & Show Info
- Host Name: Sam Bauman (she/her)
- About the Host: Sam is the President of Mellowlark Labs, a Twin Cities-based small business consulting agency. She has a masters degree in counseling psychology, a field she worked in for several years before applying her skills in business, and is certified in Organization Development.
Podcast Website
Sound Editing By: Adam Rondeau
Podcast Art By: Andy Bauman (website)
Hey everyone and welcome back to not so Small, the podcast where we ask small businesses the big questions. I'm your host, Sam Bauman and this week I sat down with Melissa Seeley, co founder of Good To Go Cups. Melissa and her business partner Michelle have a long standing passion for sustainability and are also good friends. Together they founded Good to Go Cups in an effort to put a dent in some of the single use cups that we see at coffee shops. Good to Go Cups has a really elegant and effective business model that makes it super easy for both customers and coffee shops to say yes to reusable cups. We actually have tried their cups and they work great. They're very cute and they're available at a lot of local coffee shops and coffee shops across the country. I had a lot of fun learning about the way that she has developed this really unique business model and I hope you enjoy our conversation. Well, I'd like for you to just start off by introducing yourself and tell me a little bit about your business.
Melissa Seeley:Great. I'm Melissa Seeley. I am one of the co founders of Good to Go Cups. We are, we've been in business since 2021. My business partner Michelle and I have been focused on sustainability issues almost for the last 20 years. Mostly focused on recycling and composting and sort of that whole realm. And we've sort of morphed into always in professional volunteer roles. And so we wanted to try something on our own and so decided to focus on this one little area of sustainability.
Sam Bauman:Very cool. And your company is Good to Go.
Melissa Seeley:Good to Go Cups. Yep.
Sam Bauman:Tell me a little bit about your business model.
Melissa Seeley:Yeah, so we, our whole mission is to just try to make a dent in the enormous waste of single use coffee cups. That's one of those just again, tiny little things that people don't necessarily pay attention to in their day to day life. But as we all know, there are lots of people who make trips multiple times a week to coffee shops and that waste really adds up. So again, like I said, were initially focused on recycling and that whole realm and really came to realize that recycling is just not going to be enough to address our waste and our consumption. And so focused more on the circularity issue and then decided to focus more specifically on coffee cups. So what we do is so we designed our own reusable coffee cup. So we took a really long time informing the whole concept of our business from what it would look like down to the cup and the material that we use. We really wanted to try to stay as true to our mission as possible of circularity and as close to zero waste as possible. So we spent a lot of time designing and finding a manufacturer of our cup, which was great. Our manufacturer is based in California, it's called Beyond Green. And they had access to this very new material of a high heat tolerant compostable polymer. And so we decided to use that, which is great because so it's a BPI certified compostable material. But, but it has a longer life. It's not a single use. That's something that we have found in our day to day life that, you know, a lot of these coffee shops are like. But we have compostable coffee cups which is fantastic. But A, they're still single use and B, most of the time those don't end up in the proper waste stream either. So while the material of our cups is BPI certified, they do have a multi use life. So they've been really standing up longer than any of us anticipated, which is great. So obviously in any reuse system, the more uses of a product you can get, the better. And then at the end of life, we collect the cups back, send them back to our manufacturer, they grind them down and make them into new cups. So really just that completely closed loop system. So sorry, that was a long answer about the cup itself. But so we take those cups and we partner with coffee shops and our goal is to just sort of have a reuse option built into the coffee shop. And so we partner with the coffee shop, we provide the cups and the marketing materials to them. And then the other component of our business is we developed an app. And so the app is what manages our entire program. So customers who are interested in participating download our app and they purchase a membership in the program. That membership allows them uses of the cup they're not buying. We didn't want to just sell people another reusable cup that we hoped they used and might just sit on their shelf. So this is a little bit of a different model. They purchase a membership that transaction is done through the app and then it's really simple. Each time they go into a participating shop, they order their drink as they normally would. They open up their app and they just indicate that they're ordering a new drink, they're returning their old cup, and they scan a QR code that we give to each of the shops and that's it. That tracking mechanism is built into our app so they always know how many uses of the cup they have left. They also know, wait, did I take that cup with me, and I need to remember to bring it back, or I finished it in the shop and I left it there.
Sam Bauman:So.
Melissa Seeley:Fantastic. I have a reusable cup waiting for me at the next participating shop that I go to. So really tried to make it be as easy as possible for both the coffee shop to participate and for customers to embrace this reuse option.
Sam Bauman:That's awesome. Can you tell me a little bit about the process of developing. Developing the cup itself? I've always been kind of curious about that kind of product development and what your involvement in it was.
Melissa Seeley:Yeah, like I said, we really looked at sort of all the available reusable cup options on the market, and for various reasons, we just really felt strongly about finding the right material and creating it on our own. It's not like the design is anything special. It's a very pretty straightforward, simple, reusable coffee cup. But the material selection was really important to us. Again, if there was an option to not add to the waste stream, we really wanted to figure that out. So, again, like I said, we had looked at many manufacturers, and were just fortunate enough to find a manufacturer who just happened to have access to this material. And so we worked with them. They were great. They helped us with the design as far as just kind of going back and forth with different design options and things like that. It's an injection molding process, so they built the actual mold itself for us and then obviously had the material that creates the cups. So it's a cool. I got to go to the facility and sort of see it all in real life. And, yeah, it was great. It was great. It took a lot longer than we initially had planned, but I think we are really happy with the end product, especially since, like I said, at the end of life, we can make new cups out of that material. So it really fits in our whole mission.
Sam Bauman:Yeah, that's amazing. I feel like that's actually kind of a unique element to your reusable cup model. I've seen these programs before, and they're often just using kind of your typical, you know, metal or plastic cups. And those are great. Like, they're still reusable, but like you said, I mean, if you're able to literally recycle the recycled product, that's an extra bonus.
Melissa Seeley:Yeah, yeah.
Sam Bauman:I heard you use this word circularity a couple of times. Can you talk to me about what that means to you and how it plays into your business?
Melissa Seeley:Yeah. So, like I said, initially, were very focused on recycling and composting and all of that in our. In our previous live. And were lucky enough to find the Ellen MacArthur foundation, which is a pretty internationally recognized organization focused on circularity. Circularity is just this concept of. Versus a linear economy where you make a product, you use it, and then you dispose of it, either through landfill, recycling, composting. That's got a pretty straight line to it. Circularity envisions a system where those components are in a circular motion. Right. You. You create the product with the end goal in mind, the. The end of life in mind. And so thinking about designing and creating things that either in whole or in part, can be taken apart, reused, you know, in all kinds of settings and iterations. So it's just really more about the whole system, thinking about everything from product and, you know, design and creation all the way to end of life, and thinking about how those items can be. Can be reused or repurposed versus just landfilling them or recycling them.
Sam Bauman:So it's really another component of sustainability. It sounds like it is.
Melissa Seeley:It is. It's sort of almost that next generation, because again, look at how long we've had recycling systems, and yet still the rates are really low. And so it's just not enough to keep up with our consumption. And so this is another way. It's not in place of recycling or anything else. It's just another way to think about designing systems that can address that waste problem in a different way.
Sam Bauman:Yeah, absolutely. Tell me a little bit more about your past career in sustainability or environmental things.
Melissa Seeley:Yeah. So again, my business partner and I have known each other a really long time, and we hadn't seen. Our kids are the same age, and we hadn't seen each other for a long time. And we both showed up at this recycling meeting or conversation or something like that, and it sparked some conversations about, well, what could we do, you know, locally in our community. That led to she and I and another person starting the organics recycling program in the Dinah school district. We met with them. It was. It was really kind of the perfect situation where they were like, we'll give you the ability to do all, but you have to do all the work. We're not doing any of it. And it was great. So we could go in. We. They got a grant through Hennepin county, who was really focused on kind of this idea in school districts and things like that. So we worked with Hennepin county and sort of started and created that whole organics program throughout the school district. And then both of us served on the energy and environment Commission for the city of Edina. So that was, you know, a wider array of sustainability issues. So we. We've just always been really passionate about that in all the different forms. And then, like I said, because it feels like we would always sort of reach a point where were just volunteers. So we didn't really have the ability to make the change on the scale or certainly not on the timeline that we wanted it to be on. So were like, well, what could we do that we had complete control over? And again, had been sort of, you know, we had been introduced to the circularity concept and sort of focused on, well, what could we do in that realm? And so that's how Good to Go Cups got started.
Sam Bauman:I love it. That's really cool. And what a treat to get to be business partners with somebody that you've known for so long and are friends with.
Melissa Seeley:It's really cool.
Sam Bauman:So thinking about the last several years since you started Good to Go Cups, talk to me about a time that you took a risk with your business and what that was like and what you learned from it.
Melissa Seeley:Yeah, the whole thing is at risk, really. I mean, that's the bottom line. We, too, were very fortunate. Again, this relationship that we have had with Hennepin county, just knowing about their initiatives and their programs and their grant opportunities. We were really fortunate to get a grant that covered some of our startup costs when we first started. But that gets eaten up pretty quickly when you are developing your own cup and developing an app that we had no idea how expensive that was going to be. So I feel like each step along the way, it's kind of like you're making your best educated guess. Right. With every component of it. One thing that we did recently change is our pricing structure. We have had just one option for people from inception till just a month ago or so. And so we wanted to give people other options just as a point of entry, because it is a huge behavior change thing that we're trying to address here, too. I mean, there's the waste component of it, too, but we've really learned that the behavior change concept is maybe a bigger hurdle to tackle than anything else. So we thought that maybe changing our pricing structure, adding different price points, might be a better way to have people sort of dip their toe into this and see if it's something that works for them. So it's pretty new. So we don't really know how that's all working out yet, but that's really sort of the biggest change we've made thus far. To sort of really change the structure of our business model. So hopefully that will work.
Sam Bauman:Yeah, that's great. Are there big lessons that you feel like have come from this journey of starting this business at this point?
Melissa Seeley:Yeah, definitely. I think more than anything, I just feel like. I feel like resilience or flexibility is just really key, because with any venture, even if you're doing something that's a familiar thing or it seems like it's pretty straightforward, there's always going to be things that present themselves that you didn't think about or didn't anticipate. And so just really having that flexibility of being nimble, being willing to say, oh, I really had my heart set on this particular aspect of the business, and that's not working. So we really do need to pivot. And, you know, especially with a business partner too, sort of, you know, talking through those different aspects and getting on the same page of everything. And so, yeah, I just. That's been a big lesson for me is just really, you know, being able to be flexible, nimble, resilient, because things change a lot. And again, like I said, it's. It's. It's a customer, it's a behavior change, you know, so for us, we've got two pillars here. You know, we've got to make sure that our coffee shops are happy, and we're providing the service and everything to them, but we also need to make sure we're taking care of our customers. And so those are two different things in a lot of aspects. And sort of just making sure both of those things have to work. And so just trying to make sure that we're attending to the needs of both of those.
Sam Bauman:Yeah, yeah. Tell me more about what the coffee shop side of things is. Why would a coffee shop want to participate in this program?
Melissa Seeley:Yeah, so again, in our thinking through this entire program, before we even started, you know, it was, what can we do to make it as easy as possible for coffee shops to say yes? Because without the coffee shops, the whole program doesn't exist. So we provide everything to the coffee shop free of charge. We don't charge anything to the coffee shop to participate. There's no contracts. There's nothing like that. That's one. The other thing in our conversations when we first started with these coffee shop owners, it was important to them that the whole process was. Wasn't going to take a lot of time. If you've got 20 people behind you in line, this process cannot take a long time. And they also didn't want us to they didn't want to have to integrate anything into their own system. Hence our whole app development. So again we keep everything outside of the coffee shop's operation. And again all they have to do is, you know, press a couple buttons on their app and they have to scan the QR code. And so that hopefully doesn't take a lot of time. The real quantifiable win for the coffee shop is money savings. They could, you know, the more people that are using our cup, the fewer single use cups they have to purchase. That's a very quantifiable savings and hopefully a motivator for them to be letting their customers know that this is an option inside the coffee shop. Also, what we see time and again at every coffee shop is even when customers are offered four here drinkware, they will most often choose a single use cup and sit in the coffee shop, finish that drink and dispose of the cup inside the coffee shop. And that's cost to the coffee shop too. Now they've got to pay to dispose of all those single use cups. So those two aspects are hopefully motivation enough for a coffee shop to say yes. And it's really, you know, we give them a very minimal amount of cups, they're stackable. The only ask we have of coffee shops is just washing the cups as they're returned. So hopefully there's a pretty low barrier to entry. But we know these coffee shop owners, they work really hard and the managers and the staff, I mean, they work really hard, they're busy all day and you know, sometimes this just feels like one more thing on their plate and you know, we try to let them know that really it isn't, it really is pretty much a self sustaining model once you get it in place and your customers know about it.
Sam Bauman:Yeah, it's really clear that you've done your research on kind of who your audiences are and like you said, you have the customers as your audience and the businesses. And that's often really challenging to balance when you're serving two very different groups of people. But it seems like you've done a really good job of creating a pretty elegant business model that addresses the needs of both of those groups.
Melissa Seeley:That is our goal.
Sam Bauman:Yeah, that's great. So what has kept you motivated through this process, especially when things feel challenging or the development of the product is taking longer than expected?
Melissa Seeley:Yeah, yeah, really, it's truly a mission. I mean, we're really passionate about the whole mission of the company and we do. It's just, it's such a tiny Little thing. But the problem really is enormous. It's just one of those things that just sort of sits out there, like a lot of sustainability focused issues, I'm sure. But this is just one of those things where, like, if you just stop for a moment and pay attention to it's. It's really a huge problem. I mean, it's just. Even when you're walking around in your community, there's garbage receptacles filled with coffee cups and things like that. So it's just, it's really that mission of like, we just really believe in addressing this problem through hopefully a really simple solution. And again, it's that reuse concept on the wider scale. There's a lot of different entities doing a lot of work in this area. And if we can contribute just a tiny little fraction of that behavior change, we're super excited about that. So, you know, just kind of keep plugging along and try to promote that message in every way we can. So that is a big motivator for us.
Sam Bauman:Yeah, that's great. So you all are obviously based in the Twin Cities. How far reaching is the good to go model? You know, how far out have you gone with connecting with?
Melissa Seeley:What's really nice is it is a very portable model. Like I said, we can ship. It's the cups and it's the marketing material and it's a QR code and it's that simple, you know, so we. It is, it can be dropped in anywhere we outside of the Twin Cities. Our next largest contingent of participating shops would be in Colorado. And then it's really interesting, we have just had a smattering of coffee shops all over the country that have reached out to us. They have found us somehow and they've reached out and said, hey, I'd like to bring this program into our shop. And we ship them there. We have not even been on site at some of these coffee shops and they make a go of it because it really goes a long way. If the owner of the coffee shop believes in the program, believes in the concept at least, and can really make sure to spread that message to their employees and make it just be part of the, again, the infrastructure, the ethos of that coffee shop, their customers then sort of get used to, hey, what is that cup? You know, and it just sort of, you know, builds upon itself. So those are, I mean, it's kind of gone both ways, our outreach. We're part of some different organizations that have some nationwide participants. And so word of, through everything we can possibly think of but again, some of the shops have come to us too, so.
Sam Bauman:Oh, that's always an exciting moment.
Melissa Seeley:Very exciting. Yeah, that's great. We're really excited. Actually, on Saturday, we are launching at the Wedge Co Ops, both in Linden Hills on Lindale. So that'll be really interesting because that's just a little bit different venue than just your traditional coffee shop. So we're really excited to sort of see how that all goes. It's a demographic that most likely would be interested in this concept. And, you know, a grocery store is something different than a coffee shop, so just that visual exposure, too, on a wider scale, on a more consistent scale with some people. I'm kind of curious and excited about what that might look like going forward.
Sam Bauman:That's very exciting.
Melissa Seeley:Yeah.
Sam Bauman:Kind of a new. A new segment of the market that you're exploring.
Melissa Seeley:Yep.
Sam Bauman:Very cool. So what. What is one tool or process or system that you use in your work that you feel like really contributes to, you know, how effective you can be or how efficient you can be that you found helpful?
Melissa Seeley:Yeah. You know, I thought about this question a lot because, like you said, it could be so many different things. I will say one thing that we did this past fall is were. We were part of a program at the University of Minnesota called the Impact Lab. And that was really a cool experience. So were basically like the case study business for this group of students for the whole semester. We went in and said, hey, these are some of our issues. And they split into different groups and addressed all those issues that we had. And it was such an. It was such a great experience. We spent time there each week with the students and answered questions and, you know, talked through some different issues with them. But it was really great to get some outside perspective and from a group of students that's very different than who my business partner and I are. And again, when you're running your own business, it can be very easy to sort of just be very myopic. And you're just really. It's just the two of you and you're bouncing ideas off of each other and you have your thoughts about how this should go and how it should work. And so it was really interesting and enlightening to bring in a whole group of outsiders to really examine the business on a micro level and get their feedback and suggestions. So that was just something that was really, really interesting and really helpful.
Sam Bauman:Yeah, that's great. I love that you use that as answer to this question, because it is a process that you found Helpful. Right. It's not necessarily a process that you're repeating regularly, but it could be in different ways. Getting outside voices, kind of going outside of your group to seek feedback or input to make sure that you're not, like you said, getting stuck in your own little bubble of, you know, an echo chamber, so to speak.
Melissa Seeley:Yeah. That may not be applicable to everybody's business model, but I. That is really. I didn't know it at the time, but it has turned out to be a really valuable thing. Like you said, it's just good to get anybody's perspective. Ask some hard questions, you know, go out to your customer base and say, are you happy with how this is working? Or what would you like to see happen differently? And, you know, it's valuable, good, bad or otherwise. It's always important to step outside of your little bubble and get some people's opinions.
Sam Bauman:Yeah. And if you don't like everything you hear, you don't have to take all that advice and run with it.
Melissa Seeley:Absolutely.
Sam Bauman:You get to sort of see what are all of the competing opinions about a topic.
Melissa Seeley:Yeah.
Sam Bauman:That's always good for creativity.
Melissa Seeley:Yep. For sure.
Sam Bauman:Very cool. So what advice do you have for people who are running their own businesses or thinking about starting a business?
Melissa Seeley:Yeah, I mean, I think I've touched on some of the concepts. I think I would recommend again that flexibility piece. And even when were starting, I was really mindful of networking, joining other groups. That was the first time I had gotten on LinkedIn, and it was just literally thinking of every single avenue that I could think of to reach out to people, network with people, get their, you know, advice, different business owners, things like that. We're also part of some different groups both nationally and locally. Reuse Minnesota has been a great organization for us to be part of, both from a. Learning from other businesses that are focused on reuse and also as a way for them to be aware of us. Upstream is a national organization sort of focused on reuse in the circularity concept. So that's both a. Again, it's great for exposure for us to meet other people and just that motivator. Again, this particular business can feel like we're just swimming upstream constantly, or we take two steps forward and five steps back because it's. It is. This reuse concept is really new to most people or even just the concept of thinking about their consumption and their waste production. And so to hear about other initiatives that are happening nationally, locally, meet other individuals who are having some of the same challenges, it's really helpful and it's just really that like, all right, I can plug along for another chunk of time here. Because other people are doing the same thing and having the same struggles. These problems are not unique to our business. It doesn't say anything about our concept. It's really a wider set of issues. And so it's always helpful to have those conversations with other people that are kind of going through that same thing outside of just being a business owner, that's its whole other set of challenges and rewards. But yeah, it's just really helpful to talk with other people who understand what you're going through on a day to day basis.
Sam Bauman:I love that. I feel like often we hear about networking and we think of it as basically a marketing tool to go out and meet people, get more connections, and ultimately the goal is to, you know, get business out of those connections. And you're also saying that one of the benefits of networking is just creating community and learning, you know, sharing struggles and learning what else is out there.
Melissa Seeley:Yeah. Yep, that's been really helpful. Yeah.
Sam Bauman:Is there a current project that Good to Go is working on that you want to share with our listeners?
Melissa Seeley:Yeah, I think this partnership with the wedge that we have coming up, I think that's really something that we're excited about. Again, just because it looks a little different than our current model and just to see what that brings and different options for people and yeah, we're just always, we're always looking for what's going to work for people. How do we make this easier and more efficient and more streamlined and. Yeah, so I'm just kind of, I'm really excited to see what that looks like, how it might be a little bit different than our current model.
Sam Bauman:Awesome. At the end of every episode, we ask our guests to highlight another business in the community that they think is doing good work and worthy of a little extra love and attention. So who would you like to highlight today?
Melissa Seeley:You know, I would love to just mention every single one of our coffee shops by name. They do such a great job and they have been such great partners to us, but I will not do that. But sort of tangentially related. So there is a company here locally in the twin cities called 16 ounce days and they have created a coffee compass. So it's basically a sort of a passport program, if you will. It's a great motivator for people to go out and discover some local coffee shops that they might not know about or take the time to go visit. Buy one, get one free at each of the shops that are listed in the booklet, they have all the shops listed on their website. But I've heard this from other people in our program, too, that they might be a regular at one participating coffee shop. And I've gotten that feedback from them, like, this is so great. I can. I've never been to this one shop and I've always wanted to go because what's nice about our program is you can take a coffee cup from Coffee Shop A and exchange it at Coffee Shop B. So it's a great way to just get out and explore some new coffee shops and support those local businesses that. That are all unique, but they, you know, create that sense of community and they really care about their customers. So it's just a great. Another great way to get you out and try some new coffee shops.
Sam Bauman:Yeah, that sounds awesome. Thank you so much for talking with me today.
Melissa Seeley:Thank you.
Sam Bauman:It's been a pleasure. I learned a lot about sustainability and circularity, and it's just been great.
Melissa Seeley:I really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks.
Sam Bauman:Yeah. Thank you so much to Melissa Seeley of Good to Go Cups for talking with me this week. You can find Good to Go Cups on their website@goodtogocups.com or on Instagram oodtogups. We'll put that information in the show notes along with links to some of the organizations that Melissa mentioned. If you've been enjoying our podcast, please rate us on your podcast app and follow us so that you can get notifications when we release new episodes. Thanks and tune in next week for more. Bye.
