I figured if it captured his interest, I should look. Plus, I like coffee, and I was curious.
When I got closer to the products, I started smelling the coffee, too. Well, then I had to find out who put the coffee “perfume” into golf products and what they were. Turns out it wasn’t just coffee scented. It was REAL coffee. Let me explain.
Kristian Kohn, co-founder of GreenUp, was in the coffee business when an idea came his way, circuitously. Like millions of people around the world, Kohn was also a golfer. Like many golfers, he also talked about golf when he wasn’t playing it, and that’s when he found out that golf course maintenance people had a big complaint about wooden and plastic tees. They pitted the mower blades. It was a nuisance, and it cost money to repair or replace. So, he started out looking for a tee that wouldn’t harm the maintenance machinery, but would have the same characteristics of a “normal” tee.
Someone he knew made an outrageous suggestion: “Why don't you use coffee?”
Kohn pointed out that almost every mom knows that coffee is good for the garden, so it passed the test of being ok for the environment. He admitted putting coffee in a garden was news to him, but if it was safe for the garden, that was good enough for him.
“There was obviously some trial and error involved,” he explained after being presented with the concept of coffee.
He knew enough to know that he would need more than coffee grounds. But what he had to add was called “biomaterial.” That became the secret sauce. That made it possible to injection mold the shapes needed for tees, divot tools, ball markers and, what Kohn is most proud of, the coffee golf pencil.
Now, a short digression to answer what is “biomaterial,” for those of us who are not recycling experts. Europe is very serious about recycling, reusing and so forth, much more so than the U.S.
According to the Penn State College of Agriculture, biomaterial is “derived from, or produced by, biological organisms like plants, animals, bacteria, fungi and other life forms.” In other words, stuff you’d put in a compost heap, if you had one.
Now back to coffee tees. Kohn explained that theirs has vegetable oil, Ester grain, eggshells, and such.
“Whatever nature gives, we borrow and return it, and then we add the upcycle coffee,” he noted.
Their biomaterial is from Sweden, and the used coffee grounds are from Denmark, where Kohn lives.
“It used to be collected from cafes and restaurants, but due to the fact that this company has grown its sales and the wish for having no back train behind the coffee.,” he explained. “ You know where it’s from.”
They now collect it from big offices that control where their coffee originates.
“Obviously, the coffee is sustainable, has to be either fair trade or rainforest Alliance certified,” he added.
He knows all this because at one time he was in the coffee business. He was more than “in it.” He was a professional country manager for Denmark at Segafredo – a well-known Italian coffee company.
So, now the creativity began. He knew he wanted tees, but what else could be made? He added ball markers, a second kind of tee called the castle tee, then what the U.S. calls divot tools and what he called the pitchfork. But his pride and joy is the coffee scented golf scoring pencil which has only about a half inch of graphite inserted at the business end.
“I have never ever seen a golfer sharpen his pencil,” Kohn said, “So what we've done is that instead of having graphite all the way through, our graphite ends you know one centimeter below, so for that one person out of, I don't know, a million, a thousand, whatever, who has a sharpener, he or she can sharpen the pencil.”
He said adding graphite all the way through is just wasteful.
With that combination he had what he called a package of products that could be sold at high-end golf shops anywhere in the world. And because they were an unusual product and because he controlled the manufacturing, he could logo them as well. They were sturdy enough to play in the rain and tough enough to withstand the desert. But still, they would decompose.
Is it a good idea? The PGA Merchandise Show thought so.
They gave GreenUp the 2025 Best New Product Award.
Now, the challenge is finding them at a golf shop near you. If you don’t want to wait that long, if you want some coffee tees or ball markers for the upcoming spring and summer season, or for gift bags at an event, go to Volle Golf, the official distributor for the U.S. They are located in New Zealand, but New Zealand has golf courses.
A friend of mine ordered them already. He doesn’t like coffee. He just likes the idea of recyclable tees. With the amount of golf he plays wherever he goes, it could actually make a difference!