launched in Dec. 2024<\/a>, initially targeting the local Ann Arbor community before seeking broader expansion.<\/p>\nIn an interview with The Michigan Daily, Adam Korsunsky, LSA senior and CEO of Free Bean, said the founding goal of Free Bean was to confront the two main issues they observed in the current coffee market in Ann Arbor: the rising prices of coffee and lack of opportunities for local businesses to advertise to college students.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to find a cheaper alternative for consumers, especially with everything going on right now and people\u2019s low willingness to pay,\u201d Adam Korsunsky said. \u201cWe thought, \u2018How can we solve that?\u2019 And that led us to potentially putting advertisements on the can, at which point we realized there was another problem \u2014 there was little to no advertising on university campuses (for local businesses).\u201d<\/p>\n
Brett Korsunsky, Business senior and chief operating officer of Free Bean, told The Daily there were challenges to implementing their model with no example to go off of.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\n\u201cGenerally speaking, when someone comes up with an idea, they think, \u2018Okay, let me lean on resources that have done something adjacent,\u2019 and they can look at that and see the results,\u201d Brett Korsunsky said. \u201cSo for us, the main challenge was basically, how do we do this? Through different research and connecting with people \u2014 talking to people who had either worked in the advertising space or worked in the coffee production space \u2014 we tried to combine all the accumulated knowledge from either side to build out our business model.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jett Zimmerman, LSA senior and chief product officer of Free Bean, told The Daily the University played an important role in supporting the team\u2019s growth and tackling challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDoing the entrepreneurship minor, I felt like there were times throughout different courses that I had to take, whether it\u2019s building out pitch decks or finding out how to locate your target customer, that really helped me throughout the process of building out a company,\u201d Zimmerman said.<\/p>\n
Local business Cinnaholic<\/a> also saw promise in Free Bean\u2019s model, partnering with the company during its launch. As the first local partner, Cinnaholic owner Doug Moeller saw an advertising opportunity in the company\u2019s distribution strategy. He reflected on his decision to work with the startup in an email to The Daily.<\/p>\n\u201cIt struck me as a way to get in front of students on a product that I knew they were going to be looking at for a bit,\u201d Moeller wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s so hard to find a way to get the attention of students. Social media advertising is just not as effective as it used to be, so there\u2019s not a lot of other options. The team was professional, responsive, and made the whole experience seamless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\nFocused on the future, Brett Korsunsky said Free Bean\u2019s founders have already set their sights on expanding beyond college campuses to office settings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we initially thought would be this sort of duplicated approach at different campuses across the country wouldn\u2019t help us scale as fast,\u201d Brett Korsunsky said. \u201cSo instead, with the advice of some people we spoke to, we decided to pursue office buildings and specifically co-working spaces. We\u2019re now in discussion with several co-working spaces in the Metro Detroit area, and we intend to start supplying coffee on a regular basis in the next two to three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daily Staff Reporter Nick Denenberg can be reached at <\/em>nicoden@umich.edu<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\n
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