Kalle Freese

Post-pitch story

Joshua Zloof and Kalle Freese pitched Sudden Coffee as instant coffee that didn't taste like instant coffee: specialty beans, freeze-dried with care. The startup got into Y Combinator in 2017 and passed 100,000 cups sold by 2018, but it struggled with the cost of delivering a premium product. Sudden Coffee closed around 2020, as the pandemic added to its shipping problems. Its founders went on to new projects. In 2025 Zloof opened The Cozy Dragon, an immersive entertainment speakeasy in Los Angeles, and he has written openly about what Sudden Coffee taught him. The company is gone, but it helped prove there's a market for premium instant coffee, a category that has grown fast since.