Paramount Coffee launches Joe Knows Coffee cold brew in four flavors

Paramount Coffee pushed Joe Knows Coffee into the ready-to-drink case on June 25, unveiling Joe Knows Coffee Cold Brew as a premium 12-ounce canned line in four flavors: Caramel Café, Mocha Mo-Joe, Vanilla Chill and Tall, Dark and Handsome. The launch marks a clear shift for the Lansing, Michigan, company, which says it has spent 90 years perfecting hot coffee and is now cooling things down for a faster, colder, more grab-and-go moment.

That move matters because Paramount is not starting from zero. The Joe Knows Coffee brand was introduced in 2009 and has become Paramount’s best-selling ground coffee line, giving the cold brew extension a name with shelf recognition instead of an untested label. Joe Knows Coffee already spans ground coffee, single-serve cups and compostable pods, so the RTD cans look less like a one-off novelty than the next step in a brand the company has already stretched across formats.

Paramount has also been working from a base that is much bigger than a regional roaster with one hot-cup play. The company describes itself as a 100% employee-owned coffee company in Lansing that roasts, blends and packages coffee for home and business customers. A recent local profile called Paramount Lansing’s oldest coffee roaster and noted that its brands are sold at retailers including Marshall’s and Costco, underscoring the kind of distribution muscle that can make a cold-brew launch more than a shelf experiment.

The flavor lineup points to the audience Paramount is chasing. Caramel Café, Mocha Mo-Joe and Vanilla Chill lean into the kind of dessert-adjacent, easy-drinking profile that has helped canned coffee win space in office fridges, convenience coolers and summer coolers alike, while Tall, Dark and Handsome keeps the brand’s playful, coffee-nerd tone intact. That mix suggests Paramount wants Joe Knows Coffee Cold Brew to read as familiar enough for mainstream shoppers and branded enough to stand out in a crowded cold-coffee aisle.

The company’s existing portfolio helps explain why this launch feels deliberate. Paramount Coffee’s site already lists Joe Knows Coffee in 12-ounce ground coffee and 50-count compostable pod formats, and the cold brew now adds a packaged drink that can travel farther than a bag of beans ever will. For a 90-year-old coffee company, that is the point: Joe Knows Coffee is no longer just what goes in the grinder. It is now what comes out of the fridge.