When Tony Bouie worked at Circle K, he was shocked to see how many lids were made unsanitary and thrown away unnecessarily.
Bouie, a 2005 ASU graduate, decided to improve the standard fountain cup.
His solution: The SwoopCup.
The SwoopCup, which Bouie began as a venture at ASU in 2005, has a curvy design with the lid embedded into a groove on its side.
The cup allows the customer to detach the lid and place it on top or keep it stored on the side for future use.
Regular cups with separated lids cost stores a lot of money because the lids are often wasted, Bouie said.
"[At Circle K] we literally walked every 10 minutes over to the drink station dispenser and threw lids away because they were on the counter," he said. "I realized that Circle K was buying 3_ lids for every cup that they purchased. That's just money they're throwing out the door."
What started for Bouie as a casual observation quickly turned into his own business, coined "Halo Cups," in reference to his Christian background.
Bouie said the company is set to open its doors to a rapidly growing list of clients, including Major League Baseball, Wal-Mart, Pepsi, Coke and Anheuser-Busch.
"We literally have huge, huge customers that are saying 'send me a sample,'" he said.
In eliminating the need for a lid dispenser, Bouie said his all-in-one cup is more sanitary due to the fact that many people do not wash their hands appropriately before reaching for a cup and lid.
"Now with the avian flu, with E. Coli, it's a huge issue," he said.
Denise Link, director of ASU Health Services, said that while she could not attest specifically to cup lids transmitting diseases, hand-hygiene concerns are widespread.
"It is a well established fact that people do not wash their hands," Link said. "That's how infections and food poisoning are passed."
Bouie and his team boosted Halo Cups off the ground in 2005 through The Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative, which was then in its inaugural year.
The business proposal was one of 16 ventures selected from a pool of 99 applicants.
Bouie, then in the second year of his Masters of Business Administration, received $10,000 from the Edson Initiative for the project, which he used to develop early prototypes.
"They had a product that the consumer can relate to," said Patrick Duran, a program manager at the Edson Initiative. "And they were able to clearly communicate the value proposition for both the retailer and the consumer."
Halo Cups currently has a disposable cup, souvenir cup and an insulated cup ready to market. While all of its current cups are plastic, Bouie said he has plans for paper cups, holographic covers, a cup dispenser and an environment-friendly plastic that is completely biodegradable.
Bouie added he has a few other tricks up his sleeve, but he's not revealing any secrets.
"They're confidential," he said. "I've talked to my design engineer about it. They seem to be good ideas with a place in the market."
Bouie said he prefers to tackle simple and often overlooked concepts.
"The things I think of are not high tech," he said. "They're things that you look at and you say, 'That's so simple,' but nobody in the world has ever thought about it."
Reach the reporter at:steven.bohner@asu.edu.
