Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
post
Coffee-cup-lid

One man’s epic quest to sanitise filthy, germ-riddled coffee cup lids

This article comes with a WARNING! Because it may well be the last time you drink a take-out coffee with your innocence intact….

WHEN Bill Levey tells you that “coffee lids are one of the main exposed and mishandled food service item out there,” and that a 2010 study by the University of Arizona found up to 17% of the lids stacked by the sugar and milk in coffee shops everywhere are already contaminated with faecal matter, he does so with enthusiasm of a bottled water vendor anticipating a natural disaster.

For the past seven years, Levey has been working to invent a hygienically-sealed takeout coffee cup lid that he calls Clean Coffee. In essence, it is a standard plastic takeout lid with an adhesive seal covering the drinking hole and part of the rim, which can be peeled off like a sticker once the user is ready to drink from it.

“This is the simplest way to accomplish that objective,” Levey says of his patented prototype’s design, for which he’s currently working to secure a manufacturer.

Though he grew up tinkering with radios and other home electronics, Levey was working as a corporate lawyer in New York when the idea came to him.

“I was taking my coffee up to the office every day,” he recalls. “People at the milk counter were sneezing, handling money, and then handling the lids in the stack, taking two or three accidentally, then putting those back. The baristas would honestly hold their hand on top of the lid to slide the cup of coffee over to me!
“People at the milk counter were sneezing, handling money, and then handling the lids in the stack, taking two or three accidentally, then putting those back.”

Levey doesn’t consider himself a germaphobe….The awareness around food came from years worked as a waiter in restaurants, where safe food handling practices were drilled into him.

“You don’t really forget that,” he says, noting that in a restaurant it would be a unthinkable for a server to deliver a customer’s drink with their hands touching the rim. Levey wondered why coffee cup lids were the exception in an age where nearly every other plastic takeout utensil (cutlery, straws, bottled water lids) were mandated to be hygienically sealed.

The modern coffee lid market began blossoming in the 1980s, when America’s coffee shop and takeout culture grew quickly. Consumers wanted to drink their coffees on the go, and with the rise of Starbucks these drinks evolved from a simple cup of joe to elaborate espresso concoctions with layers of frothy, foamy milk.

“It’s a hard thing to design, because it has to solve a lot of different criteria,” says Louise Harpman, an architect who, along with her partner Scott Specht, has the largest collection of coffee cup lids (260 so far) in the world.

It is a remarkable piece of design for such a small surface; a light, malleable plastic object that perfectly affixes to a cup of scalding hot liquid, is food safe, and ergonomically designed to not only deliver the perfect flow of coffee (or tea) to the drinker through a small hole, but to do so while regulating temperature, channeling spillage, preserving aroma, and allowing the mouth feel of something like the fluffy peaks of a double latte to remain intact…..

Fast Company: Read the full article here