The cup with a chip and made in Barcelona that wants to be seriously reusable

BarcelonaReusable cups have been appearing at festivals and major celebrations in our area for some time now. The model has been expanding with systems such as requiring the consumer to pay a deposit to return the cup at the end of the event or with tokens that you must strive to remember to lose during an unpredictable night of partying in order to get your euro back. Even so, These formulas are often accused of falling into environmental whitewashing. (greenwashing, in English), since it is very common for the organizer itself not to have adequate logistics to make it easy and the customer gives up due to the long lines.

Ten years ago in Barcelona, ​​​​a group of entrepreneurs – the Belgian François Jozic and the French Loic Le Joliff, founders of the electronic music parties Brunch Electronik – began to think about how they could solve this problem. In Spain, the reusable cup was not yet widely used at mass events, and they applied the idea first to their own festival. Later, they created Re-Cup, a subsidiary dedicated solely to this service, which they offer to other clients such as Barça, the Estadi Olímpic de Montjuïc, the Palau Sant Jordi, Sónar, and Cruïlla.

The company is now called Encore! –the English word for an encore at a concert and also the French word for requesting one more song at the end of a recital– and has decided to incorporate more technology so that its cups are actually returned. "After COVID, we restructured the company, changed our name, and increased the capacity of our washing center. We've gone from being a small cup company to a larger one," says Teddy Sant, CEO of Encore!

His idea was to copy what fashion chains like Zara and Uniqlo are already doing thanks to RFID technology. "You take a product and give it an identity. So each cup is unique," explains the executive. This is achieved with a tag-shaped chip that attaches to the back of the container to digitize it. Readers are then incorporated at each stage of the purchase and return process: at the bars, there is a smart mat that can link up to 10 cups at a time to a single payment method when the containers are placed on top. "It changes your mindset, because then that cup is yours alone and you take better care of it," says Sant about this solution, which they've dubbed Smart Flow.

The process of returning the cup when the concert or festival is over is also simplified. "There's no need to queue because there are automated return machines. You just leave it and go. It takes a second per person," notes the general manager of Encore!. Furthermore, Sant points out that, for security reasons, in spaces like football stadiums it's difficult to have a staffed return route because the venue has to be emptied quickly and there are too many crowds. Their system recognizes up to 25 cups simultaneously and issues instant refunds. The containers used during the day are then taken to Encore!'s washing center, where two million cups are cleaned annually.

Savings and sustainability

These smart containers can withstand up to 100 washes and are between 15% and 20% more expensive than traditional ones, an additional cost borne by the event organizer. "Our way of presenting it to promoters is to convince them that the operation will cost them more, as it did when recycling was introduced, but that they will gain in terms of cleaning, personnel costs, and, above all, image, which is increasingly important," Sant argues. He also points out that one of the keys to getting consumers to return the cups is to ensure that the design isn't particularly attractive, to avoid them becoming nostalgic collector's items.

For now, the new technology from Encore!—which has a workforce of 20 and a turnover of around €3 million annually as part of the Centris group—has already been tested in Barcelona at the Brunch Electronik festival, at an event that brings together more than 5,000 attendees at the Poble Espanyol. However, the company is in talks with other promoters, event organizers, and football clubs such as Barça and Atlético de Madrid to incorporate this smart reusable cup service into their facilities.

Sant believes there is still a significant gap in the Iberian Peninsula for business, but acknowledges that there is more competition in northern Europe because these systems are quite widespread in countries like Sweden and Finland. The next step will be to expand the same concept to other types of packaging such as plates, bowls, and coffee cups, so that they are also truly reusable.