As the coffee industry enters 2025, one category is at the top of everyone’s mind: RTD coffee. Convenient, functional, aesthetically pleasing, and wildly popular with younger consumers, the RTD coffee market looks set to build on its significant momentum and become more widespread.
RTD coffee is a broad category, encompassing all convenient, grab-and-go coffee solutions, from canned cold brew to multi-serve bag-in-box brews to plant-based iced lattes. Market activity over the past twelve months has seen more and more coffee brands entering the space, some with unique, innovative twists. According to Statista, the RTD coffee category is currently valued at $37.64 billion worldwide and is expected to exceed $43 billion by the end of the decade.
The trends driving the RTD coffee space are interlinked with broader lifestyle trends, as well as core coffee elements. An increased emphasis on health and wellness, functional food products, cold beverages broadly, and diet-conscious consumption all benefit the category. As 2025 gets underway, we analyse the key trends to look out for over the coming year.
We spoke to Richard Dickson, co-founder and CEO of Play It Green, a certified B-corp, to learn more.
Widespread availability in the RTD coffee market
RTD coffee is incredibly convenient. It forgoes any requirement for the consumer to take time out of their day to visit a retailer who brews and prepares coffee beverages, including cafés, coffee shops, or QSR restaurants.
In times past, a ritualised stop at a coffee shop – high street or drive-thru – offered the most convenient, quality caffeine fix on the way to work or dropping the kids at school. Indeed, most consumers opted for a takeaway coffee in such a fashion over a home-brewed alternative due to the improved quality expected.
Premium beans, professional coffee machines, and expert baristas tempted consumers away from their home set-up and through café doors instead, despite the increased cost.
The increase in RTD coffee quality is challenging the coffee shop habit – younger consumers especially are opting for convenient canned coffee and perceive it to be increasingly indistinguishable from store-bought beverages.
One only needs to review the continuous R&D into canned coffee options by the world’s most well-known coffee brands to appreciate the shifting tides. Starbucks, Costa Coffee, Illy, and Douwe Egberts are all betting big on RTD in an effort to retain customers looking for an even quicker coffee.
As technology, brewing methods, and variety in the RTD coffee market increase, we expect more and more options in the coming twelve months. Young people believe firmly that quality can come in a can.
Beverage and flavour variety
The modern RTD coffee market consumers may be willing to rearrange their coffee habits, but they remain a demanding group and quickly grow bored of the same thing. Rapidly shifting dietary preferences and requirements and beverage trends mean coffee brands must be in a state of constant innovation and new product development to retain customer loyalty.
If coffee culture in the mid-2010s emphasised artisanal craft, today’s is all about variety. The introduction of barista-grade plant-based milk, low or no-calorie flavourings and syrups, and food-grade functional additives like L-theanine or protein powder has spawned almost limited customisation options for RTD coffee market brands.
In 2010, plant-based giant Califia Farms began life, offering citrus juice and almond milk to a nascent health and wellness-focused audience in California. Just seven years later, the company recognised a rising demand for cold brew coffee and brought three RTD products to market. In 2025, Califia will offer 15 different RTD coffee and tea products, as broad an offering as its foundational plant-based milk range and creamers.
Califia’s RTD journey is instructive of the broader trending demand for RTD variety. In 2017, three cold brew options satiated demand, but today brands in the RTD coffee market must be in a near-constant state of product development and launch to stay relevant.
The specialty coffee segment, often the source of eventual mass-market phenomena, is playing a key role in introducing consumers to new concepts and brewing styles. Cold brew, flash brew, and nitro coffee represent further roots of variation and customisation, and shoppers are responding positively.
In 2025, we expect to see an increase in new RTD coffee market product launches, be it plant-based variations, seasonal flavour combinations, or more widespread adoption of formats like nitro coffee, cold brew tea, cascara, and, of course, cold brew.
RTD coffee market sustainability and responsibility
“Sustainability is no longer optional,” says Richard. “A majority of consumers expect it.”
“According to the 2023 report by Trivium Packaging, 59% of shoppers are less likely to buy a product if its packaging is bad for the environment, and nearly half have already paid more for eco-friendly choices.
“This demand is only set to grow stronger as we move into 2025.”
Sustainability and the coffee industry have been synonymous on a number of fronts. Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance certifications emphasise the importance of responsible sourcing and buying practices and supporting local farmers and growers, for example.
On the retail end of the coffee supply chain, we have witnessed a widespread move in consumer preferences for sustainable packaging materials, especially at the coffee shop level, through items such as paper or aluminium straws, biodegradable cups, and drink discounts when shoppers bring their own.
For RTD, consumer demands are the same, if not even more discerning. Luckily, the most common forms of convenient coffee packaging are inherently sustainable. Aluminium cans are almost infinitely recyclable and form a planet-friendly closed-loop system that sees nearly three-quarters reused.
Aluminium cans are also lightweight, which helps to cut down on transport emissions and are reliably robust. Plus, customers know how to recycle them correctly and regularly do.
In 2025, we expect to see an even greater emphasis on sustainable RTD coffee packaging and for brands to take a more deliberate approach in highlighting the eco-friendliness of their packaging choices. Compostable and biodegradable RTD packaging is also cropping up.
Combined with eye-catching aesthetics, compelling brand storytelling, and sleek, elegant packaging formats, RTD coffee will only increase its appeal to the most eco-conscious generations, Millennials and younger.
At Hardtank, we offer a comprehensive range of private label RTD coffee products packaged sustainably in sleek aluminium cans. From nitro coffee to functional cold brew, cold brew tea, and vegan lattes, Hardtank offers a suite designed to help our clients offer a varied, stratified, and highly customised range of RTD coffee products and stay on top of 2025’s key trends.
For more information, visit our website or get in touch with the team directly.
RTD coffee market
