alex.moskalyuk

Every time I get a cup of hot coffee, I am always curious about the coffee sleeve, usually featuring the patent 5,425,497. It’s a pretty simple, yet incredibly useful invention that obviously was scratching an itch that many people have had whenever buying hot coffee.

The inventor is Jay Sorensen and the one-product company is Java Jacket out of Portland, OR. You get the coffee sleeve for free whenever you buy a beverage at a coffee shop, but according to Entrepreneur magazine, the company’s revenues were estimated at $12-15 million dollars back in 2003. The company got started with $15,000, back in 1993 when the patent got granted. The venture got started after an unfortunate accident with hot coffee, Fast Company magazine says:

One morning, I spilled the coffee in my lap. I didn’t get burned badly, but I thought, Maybe there’s a better way of doing this.