Roast #36: V5 Survey Results
writing after a day my 9-5 job just hits different.
Winner of the V5 feedback survey:
Here we go. Got a lot to cover.
Question: Favorite Bean? And why did you like it?
The results from this question were super interesting. This time, the answers were well-rounded, with no single bean taking more than 45% of the votes.
In the past, one bean usually won the contest (V4: Y-05 Lychee 52.9% / V3: Honey Pink Bourbon with Orange Peels Co-ferment 65.4%).
My gut wants to say that this balance in favorites means I'm doing a good job with curation, but I don't think that's how I should interpret the data. If, in V6, everyone likes Bean A, does that mean I did a bad job? I don't think so. I think it just means everyone had similar preferences and really enjoyed Bean A.
So what's I’m going to take away from this is how widespread my audience is 🥲.
Another thing I wanted to note was that there was a clear divide on the Peach coferment. People either liked or hated it.
Peach. Clear notes and juicy. Not overly fermented. Definitely best coffee of the year so far.
The peach was mind-blowing!
the orange bourbon was excellent, the catimor was interesting and worthwhile, and I wasn't a big fan of the coferment
Not Peach - really too strong a peach candy scent on it. It was a lot.
I love the feedback here, but I don’t think I’m going to make any changes to sourcing here. I think coferments have a place in coffee, and are a lot of fun every now and then.
I’m not going to exclude them, nor will I go coferment crazy and always source them. At the moment, V6 and V7 won't have a coferment. V8 likely will have one.
But no 🍌, 🥥, or lemongrass coferments. I don't like those. :|
Question: Anything you'd suggest that I can improve/start doing?
There were only a few consistent threads to take away from the responses here. Most suggestions reiterated feedback items mentioned in the past, which I have some updates for!
1. Shipping:
Shipping was expensive. I think I paid $10 ship to Texas. I don't mind paying it, but when I order from other coffee roasters, it is usually at most $5.
I've also recommended your beans to some non-local friends who were put off by the shipping cost, not sure if there's any way you can bring that down at all.
If you could find a way to bring shipping down a little bit that would be awesome.
I tried and will continue to try. I asked about this on Reddit and got a ton of good feedback from other roasters.
Some common suggestions were:
Price some of the shipping costs into the product to make shipping seem cheaper.
Not something I'm open to doing.
Use bubble mailers
I don't like the idea of 3 coffee bags bumping around during transit. Plus, a bag doesn’t feel tidy to me.
Look into setting up custom accounts with carriers.
I tried with FedEx, but it got confusing to set up. Price-wise, it did not end up being cheaper, likely because my volume is still small to them. Plus, having a separate shipping platform adds too much complexity to my workflow.
Explore flat-rate shipping options
Maybe. 👀
The only suggestion that I might try is the flat-rate shipping option. I think it's USPS who usually offers these. The reason why I've disabled USPS for most orders is because I've had bad experiences with their home pickup service, and the USPS physical office is pretty far from me (~20 minutes). Plus, having like — 20 packages in the mailroom doesn’t feel like something I should have my neighbors deal with.
But since moving to Multimodal, they help manage shipping carrier pickups, so I'd just need to put the item on their shipping racks for it to be shipped. This makes shipping with USPS more manageable, and I'm hoping shipping with USPS will reduce shipping costs. I still need to test the rates out, so fingers crossed.
2. Communications:
Only thing was after v4 I didn't receive an email about v5, so maybe automatically subscribing purchasers to the email list?
Maybe double checking emails before they get sent out so you don't scare Shopify purchasers 😂
I will work on this. I've discovered that Shopify has automations.
Did a little bit of playing around with it… but it seems that I can only send emails to users who are email subscribed, and that’s not the case with everyone.
It’s unlikely I can use it… but we’ll see.
I’d love to relieve myself of the constant anxiety of accidentally copying/pasting everyone's email into CC instead of BCC. 🥲
3. Packaging:
The coffee bags are my biggest complaint when I'm trying to dose coffee. But that's only cause I'm either traveling or too lazy to put it into those coffee tubes.
It's a tiny thing: the bags are a little bit of a weird shape which makes it hard to pour beans out easily
I thought the packaging was really cute, and I loved that there are brew instructions for each cup.
Packaging and information cards, in addition to the brew guides and the sample grind sizes are amazing!
I like the packaging, zip bags, and the info cards
I know you're working on it but packaging :p specifically would be nice to have more of the info about the coffee thats on the included cards to be on the bags of beans themselves!
For the most part, packaging will stay the same. I know the bags aren't perfect, but they are cheap-ish and functional (degas valve + zipper to help with post-bag open freshness, etc., holds my target amounts). My perspective on packaging is to skew towards functionality and cost-savings.
I can explore having cards that contain more information about the coffee in V7 (next month will be super busy). Since the amount of text will be much more than it is now, I might have to look for a professional printer. If it gets too pricey (e.g., $3+ per box), then I'm going to skip it for now.
5. Community
Also! Since this is a coffee club, it would be really fun to have some kind of in person meet-up for people to drink the coffees together and talk about them OR (even better IMO) a slack channel or a circle on the Circle app for coffee club members as a place to talk about the box and tasting notes and brew methods and whatnot
I love this idea.
An in-person/invite type of thing has been something that's been swirling in my head. I'm warming up to the idea of opening my apartment as a weekend cafe (ie withbrandon + my neighbor max's coffee club).
But apart from that, the big roadblock might be finding a venue that would let me hold a private event for free. I don't know — my brain is a bit dead at the moment (1:01 a.m.), but there's something here.
As for a more digital medium (slack/discord/circle), I think setting something up for coffee club members is a fantastic idea. My main hesitation is that I'm unsure if I have the time to run it right. I think once I get big enough of an audience, there'll be less pressure on me to foster conversations and engagement; instead, those things will naturally occur due to the size of the community.
I will shelf this idea for now and noodle on it a bit.
Question: Anything you'd want me to keep for the next coffee box?
Find us 3 new ones lol
I really like your choice for the funky and in general like the choice of fruity, funky, and tea like.
I like that this box feels like a collection of more 'cutting-edge' coffees so to speak (in terms of whats trending and novel flavors). In that spirit I personally enjoy trying totally new things with each box!
Not a lot to analyze here. I intend to keep the same about brewing instructions, grind samples, and sourcing. :)
Question: How did you hear about this coffee box?
I found your blog after seeing a link on your profile after you responded to a post on Reddit pour over. I was a little hesitant after reading about your prior roast done in your apartment, but your attention to detail and open thoughts were very reassuring. I think finding your coffee was one of the best surprise finds of my life.
Reddit sometime around V2
I think I first found you from Reddit... then I subscribed to your newsletter. Then I finally decided to pre-order V5.
Reddit seems to be a big source of where most of my customers are coming from. There's some risk with relying on Reddit since, at any point in time, the mods could have decide to ban self-promotional posts.
I'll continue posting there for now, hoping that posting every two months isn't seen as abusive to the subreddits.
But in general, marketing and selling aren't my strong suits, and I think I'm okay with that. I think my worries about this topic come from comparing myself to other coffee roasters who are selling out faster/more.
I will continue to stick with the "build something good, and people will come" perspective. I'll leave you all to help me do my marketing (pls, pls, pls) so I can focus on sourcing/roasting the coffees.
But honestly, to those of you who take the time to mention my project to your friends and share the coffee box as an Instagram story, thank you so, so much. Every little bit of social presence helps.
Question: What do you think is a fair value for the 120g box option?
Tbh I'll pay whatever you think is fair, I'm a novelty junky and your brand are good
At $30-39 it's a special treat that I'll splurge on occasionally without thinking twice, so I'm price insensitive in that range. $40+ might make me think twice
whatever you think helps to keep you going
So, pricing is going to stay the same. The average of all (quantifiable) responses was $36.16. I'll keep pricing how I am now, as the intent isn't to make money but to increase growth.
I know I'm undercharging on a flat grams/dollar basis compared to other specialty roasters. This project isn't my livelihood (yet).
I know this pricing isn't sustainable. Once this project grows to the point where it has to support the livelihood of others, I'll be more aggressive in putting our price closer to the market rate. That's when you'll see a jump in pricing.
It might be embarrassing to show how little money I'm making…, but I think I should be comfortable sharing numbers. It helps me keep myself honest.
Question: From 1-10 how would you rate this box?
I'm going to remove this question. This question is flawed. I'm not looking for a performance score; I'm looking for feedback on how to improve or specific details on what you enjoyed/didn't enjoy, and this answer doesn't really help with either of those categories.
But the average of everything came out to be 8.53. So yay! I got a B!
(I used to watch a lot of mychonny when I was younger, and the “B'“ reminded me of this video [source])
And that's all — forward and onward to V6.
Thank You's
This one is for you all. Thank you for letting me continue to pursue this dream. #keepdreaming #neverwakeup #ohgodiamtired
the peach was mindblowingly fruit-forward i told all my friends that it tasted like straight up juice. loved it so much