Roast #18: Coffee Club V3 will be.........
the suspense -- it kills doesn't it.
Can you tell that I’m unemployed by how often I’ve been posting? 🥲 But don’t worry, I’ll be posting less starting next week as I start my barista gig!
Thank you to everyone who took the survey! I've read all the answers, and the majority have it — the coffee club shall continue to stay.
I'll run the raffle next week and directly e-mail the winner.
Here are the breakouts for the survey responses:
1. Would you rather have three different types of coffee at once or be able to buy them individually once they are ready?
I did not expect this, and honestly, I was hoping fewer people chose the "3 different coffees all at once" response. 🥲.
2. How many people are the coffee box usually for?
This one also looked evenly split. I asked this more just out of curiosity about my audience.
3. Final thoughts/opinions of the coffee club box
A few answers that really stood out to me in this section were:
I personally still like the "ceremony" of the all at once with the box. My normal coffee buying is more routine, so your boxes have been more like a special occasion thing and it's fun to try everything out, decide on an order I want to try them.
I am super touched that my coffee club box is treated as a special occasion. 🤭
I enjoy the 3 at a time because I like the variety and reading your opinions/methods for each. I enjoy brewing one in the morning/one later and then trying to compare between.
I’m glad someone found the different brewing methods helpful! I’ll make sure to write up another one for the next box.
I like the unique model of providing a spectrum of tastes, leading to the possibility of making clear that your curation of the set is part of the value -- i.e. could lead to interesting possibilities like similar coffees processed different ways, or three very different coffees, etc., something I don't see a lot of roasters doing that could really be fun and valuable for consumers.
I totally agree! I considered having this box be a “Pink Bourbon” box to showcase how different processing could affect a single varietal. But yeah — the coffee club box does offer additional curation on my part.
Decisions from the survey
From this survey, I'm going to…………………… keep coffee club V3 going!
What I will change is instead of waiting to make the available coffees until the coffee club box is ready, I'll put them in my shop once I have a roast profile for them. If you go to the site now, you’ll see one of the coffees, Honey Pink Bourbon w/Tartaric Acid + Orange, listed and available.
This way, those of you who want to buy my coffee in a more ad-hoc fashion can do so, while those who like it in an all-at-once style will still get the opportunity to do so too.
Another change is that I'll be upping the quantity to 120g for each coffee as that fills the bags better.
Lastly, I will try and change from a "sign-up" process to a "purchase" process through Shopify. It got hectic last time managing all the individual communication threads I had with everyone.
I'll still have to send out e-mails regarding pickup since I don't think I can do that easily through Shopify. :|
Pre-Survey Thoughts
Before sending out the survey, I was about 90% set on killing the coffee club. But my gut told me I should probably confirm with my users that they'd be indifferent about me killing the coffee club away, which I’m glad I did.
I arrived at my 90% decision by thinking through reasons to keep it and stop it.
Main reasons to stop it:
I originally had a lot more, but I've since thought up solutions to them, so I've omitted them here.
It's starting to get pricey:
The reason why the coffee club is getting pricier is because of my choice of coffee greens. I seek out coffee with weird processing methods, is grown by farmers I admire, and has flavor profiles I find tasty. Unfortunately, my criteria can result in pricier coffee greens.
For large roasters, green coffee price is more manageable since they can command discounts at volume (and also have tons of money). For one exporter, their price sheets showed discounts at 9+ bags where the bag quantity was 35kg/70kg.
I'm a teeny tiny small-time buyer, so I don't command any purchasing power or discounts.
The 3-5 days before pickup are exhausting:
Instead of having 1-3 days of intense execution, the work could be more spread out if we had the coffee listed and available for purchase whenever it's ready. If everything were only made available through the online store, order flow would be steady, and there wouldn't be any large order spikes.
No more staying until 3 am to roast/write/pack 15 bags.
Reasons to keep it:
Loss of uniqueness without it?
The feedback I've gotten about the coffee club idea is that it's unique and cool. Taking this away could be removing why people continue to follow my project.
Lose the people-to-people touch:
Even though I probably seemed socially uncomfortable in 95% of all the pickups, I did enjoy and look forward to talking to you all one-on-one — I'm just an awkward dude.
Seeing you all come by with interest and excitement was always touching. Those experiences reminded me that I was making something people liked and that I should continue at it. Moments like them motivate me.
And unfortunately, it's harder to get the above-stated experiences at pop-up events or other in-person events since I lose the intimacy of one-on-one time with you all.
Thank yous
Okay, enough sappy talk. Onto some thank yous as there's a lot for me to thank.
Thank you @_.haav for the blue bottle referral and barista tips!
Thank you @jac for thinking of me for a SWE role at your company! It’s super nice of you to reach out to a stranger (me) about a potential job.
Thank you @mxktz for being a cool and supportive neighbor. Fun fact, Max knew about thoughtfulcoffee before becoming my neighbor.
Thank you @johnaaronfrank for lending me your EK43 puller. I promise to return it soon. 🤙
Thank you @plcorb always for the kind words. I promise you my coffee is at best average. 🥲.