Stojo Stories

Settling down with a young toddler after a whirlwind career as an art dealer, Travas Clifton moved next door to a coffee roaster in Toronto where he realized everything he knew about coffee was wrong. 

After diving into his new obsession and learning everything about coffee processing and roasting, Travas moved to New Jersey where he began (illegally) roasting his naturally processed coffee beans that he sold from a converted hot dog cart in 2013. His unique product quickly caught on and Modcup has grown to three retail locations including a converted 1969 Citron truck that was once installed inside the Mack-Cali building along the waterfront at Exchange Place.

When we started to look for a collapsible coffee cup back in 2011, we came across the BetaCup contest website launched in 2010 (www.betacup.com).  We reviewed all the concepts, but none of them did what we were setting out to do. It was a bit intimidating because we weren't designers and a lot of the competitors were designers and engineers. Still, we knew that our envisioned cup was exactly what we wanted and no one seemed to be working on anything like it.  Since then, we learned just how hard it is to develop a product from scratch. Especially something that...

We’re three busy dads. Coffee fuels our lives. On any given weekday, we’ll have a cup before the kids wake up, take another one for the morning commute and grab one or two more at work. Counting weekends, that’s almost 1,000 cups of coffee a year for each of us! As New Yorkers, we work and live on the go. We seldom drive, which means having to carry everything with us that we need for the day. When you’re battling morning rush hour on the subway, biking to work, or pushing a stroller around, adding a bulky travel mug to...