Dejan Mitrovic - Founder - Moree

Have you ever spent an hour talking about coffee bags?

Well I have and it was great.

I had breakfast with Dejan Mitrovic, founder of Moree, and we ended up talking about the surprising power of a coffee bag. (Moree - reusable food packaging)

Moree is on a mission to help food brands move away from single-use packaging. 

The model is simple but smart. Brands pay per use. 

Customers return packaging easily, with digital rewards as an incentive. And the supply chain benefits from new data and insights on how packaging is actually used.

What stood out was Dejan’s decision to focus. Reusable packaging could, in theory, be applied anywhere. But by starting with coffee roasters, Moree has found a space where three things align. The logistics are straightforward. The waste is immediate. And roasters often run their own closed delivery loops, which makes the return system far more seamless.

It’s a reminder that when building something new, going deep in the right niche can create more momentum than trying to go broad too early.

We also spoke about the wider picture. 

Regulation can be the catalyst, as we’ve seen in Germany where reusables have gained traction through government direction. And some markets are simply more ready than others. 

In the Gulf, for instance, vertically integrated operators mean the infrastructure already exists to make reusable packaging easier to adopt at scale.

For me, the breakfast takeaway was this: change doesn’t happen just because the solution exists. It happens when the conditions are right. 

Focus on the sector where the loops are already closed, build momentum, and then scale.

Sometimes big shifts start with something as small as a bag of coffee beans.