When life gives you lemons -- and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (Nasdaq: GMCR) shareholders have seen plenty of those over the past year -- you make lemonade.
Today the company behind the Keurig one-cup brewing platform is rolling out K-Cup packs that crank out lemonade.
Lemonade by Green Mountain Naturals portion packs use the same brewing platform that millions of Keurig owners enjoy daily. The difference here is that the warm brewed lemonade is dispensed into a cup of ice.
Green Mountain has been rolling out java-based Brew Over Ice K-Cups to cash in on the iced coffee trend, but now it's going for something a little more traditional as the warm summer weather calls for refreshing beverages.
The only surprise here is that Green Mountain didn't take a page out of SodaStream's (Nasdaq: SODA) playbook and find a branded partner.
SodaStream --the Israeli company behind the popular namesake soft drink maker -- teamed up with Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT) to put out Crystal Light diet drink and Country Time lemonade flavors for its fizzy platform.
Using a warm coffee brewer -- and hoping that coffee grounds from an earlier brew don't trickle into the lemonade -- may make this a hard sell. Green Mountain also advises that cups being used for its Brew Over Ice line not be made of glass, so the iconic "glass of lemonade" isn't literally accurate.
There's also a matter of pricing. A 24-pack of the lemonade K-Cups retails for $17.49. Paying $0.73 for a cup of premium coffee is a great deal compared to what folks shell out at Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX), but it's not much of a deal for eight ounces of lemonade.
At least the timing is worth applauding. This has been a scorching summer, and cool beverages have been the drink of choice. SodaStream and smoothie chain Jamba (Nasdaq: JMBA) have been experiencing booming business this season.
There's a reason that Starbucks introduced its Refreshers line of iced beverages this summer.
Shares of Green Mountain have started to bounce back, but they're still trading a brutal 78% off from last year's highs. Some all-natural lemonade would hit the spot about now.
Brew ha ha
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