In fall 2011, Starbucks began selling Starbucks branded coffee K-Cup Portion Packs for the Keurig Single Cup Brewing system in its retail stores; the Keurig Brewer was produced and sold by Green Mountain Coffee Roaster. Starbucks entered into a strategic partnership with Green Mountain to manufacture the Starbucks branded portion packs and also to be responsible for marketing, distributing, and selling them to major supermarket chains, drugstore chains, mass merchandisers and wholesale clubs, department stores, and specialty retailers throughout the United States and Canada. The partnership made good economic sense for both companies. Green Mountain could manufacture the single cup portion packs in the same plants where it was producing its own brands of single cup packs and then use its own internal resources and capabilities to market, distribute, and sell Starbucks branded single cup packs alongside its own brands of single cup packs. It was far cheaper for Starbucks to pay Green Mountain to handle these functions than to build its own manufacturing plants and put its own in house resources in place to market, distribute, and sell Starbucks single cup coffee packs. Both partners expected their arrangement would help accelerate growth of the single cup serving segment of the coffee market. Initially, the Starbucks single cup packs were available in five blends of coffee and two blends of Tazo tea. Single cup coffee packs represented a $3 billion market and the premium single cup segment was the fastest growing part of the coffee market in the United States; globally, single cup coffee constituted 8 percent of total coffee revenue. Just two months after launch, shipments of Starbucks branded single cup portion packs had exceeded 100 million units and the packs were available in about 70 percent of the targeted retailers; company officials estimated that Starbucks had achieved an 11 percent dollar share of the market for single cup coffee packs in the United States.