A bag of coffee can tell you quite a lot about what happened before it reached your kitchen. There is the country of origin, the roasting method and, if you have bought a particularly ambitious bag, a promise of tasting notes you may never manage to identify. What happens after brewing receives rather less attention. Once the cup is full, the grounds have largely served their purpose. At least, that is how we tend to think about them.

Copenhagen-based Kaffe Bueno has built a business around what remains. Founded in Denmark in 2016 by three Colombian entrepreneurs, the company turns coffee by-products into ingredients for other manufacturers, including those making skincare and haircare. It is an appealing proposition. Something left over from your morning coffee could become a useful part of your evening skincare routine. However, describing a raw material as waste can make the economics sound rather easier than they are.

The first complication is that someone has to collect it. A bucket of grounds from every café makes an attractive picture of a circular economy, although the collection route still needs paying for. In an interview conducted in 2022 and published by The Zero Waste Coffee Project, co-founder Alejandro Franco explained that Kaffe Bueno focused on suppliers producing large volumes, rather than collecting from coffee shops. Asked whether the company paid for the grounds, he said it depended on the supplier. Even the assumption that waste must be free needs some qualification.

The supply also extends beyond what is left in an espresso machine. Finnish food and drink company Paulig described supplying coffee waste from its Vuosaari roastery when its venture arm, PINC, invested in Kaffe Bueno in 2020. This gives the business a more industrial character than the familiar image of rescuing yesterday’s cappuccino. Larger suppliers can provide more material at fewer collection points, making the journey to a processing facility easier to organise.

Getting it there is only part of the problem. In the same interview, Franco described preservation as a central challenge and said the company carried out microbiological tests when grounds arrived and throughout production. Storage, transport and quality checks therefore start adding costs before there is an ingredient to sell. A cheap delivery becomes considerably less attractive if too much of it cannot be used.

The next stage takes place at the company’s Copenhagen biorefinery, where coffee by-products are processed into separate ingredients. One of these is KAFFOIL, a coffee oil marketed for uses including serums, creams and hair products. Extracting the oil gives manufacturers something they can work into a formulation. Yet the original material still influences what the finished ingredient looks and smells like, and those characteristics matter when it is going into someone’s bathroom cabinet.

Kaffe Bueno describes its original KAFFOIL as dark, viscous and strongly scented. It also offers KAFFOIL-R, a semi-refined version that is lighter in colour and aroma, which it positions as an alternative to argan oil. The distinction is quite revealing. A skincare brand may like the idea of using recycled coffee without wanting its face cream to look or smell like it. Making the ingredient easier to use requires further work, which has to be reflected somewhere in the price.

The result also has to be consistent. A manufacturer needs the next delivery to behave much like the previous one, otherwise a formula that worked during development could produce a different colour or texture in production. This is where standardisation becomes commercially valuable. The buyer is paying for a dependable ingredient with specifications it can assess. Taking an unpredictable raw material through that process is a substantial part of what Kaffe Bueno has to offer.

Still, why would a manufacturer replace an ingredient it already knows? Its existing supplier has the advantage of familiarity. The formula works, the purchasing arrangements are in place and the production team knows what to expect. Changing an ingredient can mean further formulation work and testing, with no guarantee that the finished product will sell any better. Kaffe Bueno needs to offer a benefit that justifies that effort, whether through performance, cost or an environmental claim the brand can substantiate. A good story may persuade someone to request a sample. The sample then has to work.

Price, however, is more complicated than comparing two quotations per kilogram. The amount needed in the finished product matters too. For illustration, if an ingredient made up 1% of a 100-gram cream, paying €10 more per kilogram for it would add one cent to that cream’s raw-material cost. These are hypothetical figures, but they show why a more expensive ingredient can sometimes fit a manufacturer’s budget. The calculation changes if it requires a higher dose or complicates production. Development and testing costs also have to be recovered, so a small difference in the ingredient bill does not settle the decision.

There is already evidence that an established industry supplier sees something worth working with. In June 2020, Givaudan launched Koffee’Up, a coffee oil developed in collaboration with Kaffe Bueno. For a startup selling ingredients, a partnership of this kind can help get its product in front of manufacturers willing to evaluate it. It is a meaningful step towards finding customers, although the launch announcement tells us little about subsequent sales volumes or the profitability of supplying them.

Producing those ingredients at scale brings another set of commitments. When Kaffe Bueno opened its Rødovre biorefinery in September 2023, it announced initial capacity to process 500 tonnes of coffee grounds annually, supported by a €2.5 million European Innovation Council grant. That figure describes the plant’s announced processing capacity, rather than how much it has actually processed or sold as finished ingredients. Equipment and staff still cost money when a factory has spare capacity.

A busier facility can spread those fixed costs over more saleable output, provided customers want what it produces. The proportion of usable material extracted from each batch matters, as does the cost of processing it. Scaling up too slowly can leave production expensive; expanding too quickly can leave the company paying for equipment it does not yet need. Grants and investment help finance the machinery and development. Repeat orders have to support the ongoing operation.

The environmental case deserves similar attention to what happens in practice. In 2021, Paulig reported that its Finnish coffee-production waste went into biogas, composting or other uses as a raw material. It would therefore be misleading to assume every batch used by Kaffe Bueno has been rescued from landfill. A useful comparison would consider where the material would otherwise have gone, alongside transport, processing energy and the ingredient being replaced. The story is still interesting when those details are included. They make it possible to judge what has actually improved.

For Kaffe Bueno, the opportunity is to earn a place in products that manufacturers continue making long after the novelty of recycled coffee has worn off. Its product range and collaboration with Givaudan show that the idea has progressed beyond an appealing use for leftovers. A durable business depends on delivering consistent ingredients at prices that cover the work required to produce them. The story on a skincare label may begin with yesterday’s coffee. The manufacturer placing the next order needs to know exactly what will arrive tomorrow.