Our initial business model was based on selling our mugs. We realized, however, that this incentivized mugshare to sell as many mugs as possible, resulting in more materials usage and emissions from transportation. Further, cafes operate on thin margins, and asking them to pay an upfront cost to operate mugshare made it difficult for cafes to adopt the program.

We redesigned the business model to focus on a new metric: the per-use fee. We sold the mugs at-cost, and instead earned revenue every time mugshare was used. The per-use fee was less than the cost of a single paper cup, meaning cafes truly saved money every time mugshare was used.

In late 2019, we got a report from one of our cafe partners that a mug had cracked while a barista was pouring tea into the mug. We immediately performed our own tests. Could it be the temperature difference as mugs were transported in between the wintry outdoors and warm cafes? Or could it an user error? After doing our own tests, none of the mugs cracked under extreme conditions. We theorized that the regular wear-and-tear led to microfractures forming, which expanded into larger cracks when hot liquids were poured in.

However, we were still faced with a dilemma - how many injuries as a result of mugshare could we tolerate? What are the possible consequences and ramifications if we don't take action? After a thoughtful discussion as a team, we decided that we could not tolerate a single injury as a result of using mugshare. We notified Health Canada (the FDA's Canadian counterpart) and coordinated a product recall and offered refunds to our cafe partners. We braced at the backlash this could lead to - angry cafe partners, a bad reputation for sustainable initiatives. To our pleasant surprise, many of our partners responded graciously. I will always remember one of our partners telling us: "We need to take risks when we innovate. This is part of the process."