The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2024–2025
Dwell Dripper ships in a lunch-bag truss of one folded board — Pentawards 2025 Platinum
Zenpack packs Verve's first brew device in a foldable board shaped like a paper lunch bag — a truss that displays, protects and carries it, plastic-free.
Verve Coffee Roasters · Zenpack
What it had to solve
Verve Coffee Roasters — founded in Santa Cruz in 2007, with 11 California cafés, seven in Japan and the 2024 Roaster of the Year title — was launching its first brewing device, the collapsible, bottomless silicone Dwell Dripper. It wanted packaging that would create a theatrical shelf display, protect the product in transit and stay cost-efficient, so customers waiting in line could see the product while they waited.
How it works
The Dwell Dripper is Verve Coffee Roasters' first brewing device: a collapsible, bottomless pour-over made of 100% BPA-free silicone in seven colourways, inspired by Japanese single-use brewers, which brews a cup in under three minutes. Launched in October 2024, it was designed with Bould Design, while packaging agency and manufacturer Zenpack handled the packaging and a matching silicone scoop.
The packaging brief was theatrical: Verve wanted customers waiting in line to see the product on the shelf, while the pack still had to protect it in transit and stay cost-efficient. Zenpack designer Andy Cho — who first encountered the American brown paper lunch bag after moving to the US from South Korea at 13 — realised the folded bag's tapering triangle could act as a sturdy structural truss, and that 'aha moment' became the design's foundation.
Zenpack engineered a single-part dieline in E-flute cardboard and printed SBS that folds into a triangular carrier with an easy-grab handle, a side-locking mechanism, a die-cut window and a dedicated compartment for the scoop. The 17-month process balanced nostalgia with function: one foldable piece that ships flat, nests to minimise raw-material waste, and contains about 60% recycled content with no adhesives or plastic inserts.
The result won the Pentawards 2025 Platinum in Home, Leisure & Other Markets plus a Bronze in Sustainable Design, and a 1st Place at the Dieline Awards 2025. Judges highlighted how the structure drew on 'paper-bag lunch' cues to deliver a friendly, take-anywhere unboxing — purposeful, plastic-free and retail-ready.
Why it lands
- A personal memory — the brown lunch bag — supplied the structure; the design borrows a universally friendly form instead of inventing a cold geometry.
- One single-piece dieline solves display, protection, carry and storage, collapsing four requirements into one fold.
- Eliminating glue and plastic inserts made sustainability structural rather than a material claim.
- The matching scoop, designed with the same radii as the dripper, extends the brand from product to unboxing.
- The Platinum and Bronze pairing shows the idea was judged both commercially strong and sustainable.
What it did
The packaging won the Pentawards 2025 Platinum in Home, Leisure & Other Markets (Household Goods) plus a Bronze in Sustainable Design, and a 1st Place at the Dieline Awards 2025; Zenpack took four Pentawards in the season. The dripper itself earned a CNET recommendation — 'coffee brew-at-home newbies and seasoned coffee snobs will both get a lot out of it' — and the pack became Zenpack's flagship example of structural storytelling.
What you can take
Mine a designer's lived memory for structure: a lunch bag's folded triangle became a load-bearing truss, showing that packaging can carry the product's story and its physical weight at the same time.
Since then
The lunch-bag truss became Zenpack's flagship case: that Pentawards season the agency took four awards, including PulpFixin, a paper-based labware system replacing single-use plastic in medical labs — proof the Dwell pack was not a one-off but part of a wider material strategy. Verve still sells the Dwell Dripper across its cafés and online, and the pack circulated through coffee and packaging press as both theatre and structure. Andy Cho, early in his career, called the Platinum win 'surreal' — a sketch from a childhood memory now holding one of the industry's top honours.
Sources
- Interview with 2025 Home, Leisure & Other Markets Platinum winner (Dwell Dripper for Verve Coffee Roasters)
- Dwell Dripper for Verve Coffee Roasters — Zenpack portfolio
- Zenpack Wins at Pentawards 2025 — Four Projects
- Announcing the Second Annual Sprudge Design Award Winners
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card