Roast #41: V7 reflection + survey results
Will trade coffee for fantasy football advice
It finally happened. We dipped in growth. 😐
Some quick numbers:
Final V7 count: 63 boxes (including test roasts) // (25% decrease)
Delivered 83lbs (just from coffee club boxes) // (31% decrease)
52 return buyers // (8.77% decrease)
[coffee club versions] x [lbs of coffee]
The dip here could be for a multitude of reasons. My thoughts on why are are:
1. The removal of the presale option. Even though the old presale option was priced the same as the subscription price, people didn't want to give up the presale option's ad-hoc (non-recurring) flexibility.
2. Summer travels. I know a lot of people traveled around July and August. I've heard other roasters had slumps during these months as well.
3. The lack of marketing. For my other boxes (V6 and before), I posted about their coffees on IG. I didn't do that this time around.
We can kinda see the lack of promotion really hit here. Fortunately, I think returning customers somewhat held. But we need to figure out how to bring in new customers somehow.
V7 Financials:
We still aren’t considering our time along with taxes and other fees, so this number likely should be a bit lower.
We'll update our pricing model moving forward to include our excluded costs. Any existing subscribers should not be affected by the price increase.
Survey Results:
I expected a larger landslide (ie 80%+) of votes to skew towards the favorite bean. 👀
My favorite was (very slightly) the Washed Pink Bourbon. I really loved the “pink lemonade” vibes from it. The other two were amazing too though!
Washed Pink Bourbon - it had a super unique and delicious flavor. It also felt forgiving just in case I wasn't dialed in perfectly. Seemed to get better and better.
White honey gesha. So complex but drinkable. This was was an absolute pleasure to make a pour over with every morning
Rwanda Humure Abishyizahame Low Oxygen Natural was my number one pick from V7 Box and it was a true wowza. It was funky but pleasantly very different from what I had expected. Heavy watermelon notes with spiced notes and a touch of florality. The recommended brew with the switch was spot on.
Things that went well:
Subscription Release:
We are off to a great start. Though the cancelled ones have been due to payment failures, so maybe they aren’t real cancellations… To be honest, I’m extremely blessed by these numbers. 🙏 🙏
41 of you are saying: “I trust you enough that I’m willing to buy whatever you put out”. Maybe not whatever as you can still cancel, but still. This is just super humbling. Thank you. <3
With V7, we moved our "presale" discount over to a subscription. You can read here about why we did this.
Knowing that I have customers lined up for each coffee club box has been extremely nice and relieves a tooooon of "selling" pressure and has provided more confidence in buying greens.
We have around 400lbs+ of new coffees coming in, and I can't wait to share them with you all. We have profiles of cherry, florality, peach, juicy, watermelon — it’s going to be a fun time.
This also means we currently have a good chunk of money locked up in inventory. We have to figure out this marketing problem.
Stickers:
I loved the sticker! I think it's so fun.
Love the light roasts and stickers!
I'm glad you like them! Credit goes to one of you for bringing up the idea. :)
Gian (@apassageforms) was the designer for these, and he did an amazing job. :) Give him a follow and reach out to him if you ever need design work.
I can't promise I'll have a sticker for every box, but I’ll definitely do my best.
Labels:
Another step to a handwriting-less future. 🥲 It's silly how long it took me to make this change.
This upgrade has saved me time from handwriting labels and from taping shipping labels. I can now print all my shipping labels at once and get them all taped at once—no more printing, then cutting, and taping labels.
New QR code on the label is really nice and efficient
Loved the new printed labels with brewing instructions on them
I like the labels (also didn't mind the cards, though) and appreciate the amount of coffee—I like trying so many different coffees that getting the 120g size is perfect for me.
I'm going to stick with this label iteration for a bit. My design priority is still packaging/labels for single bags.
Things that did not go well:
Packing:
I arrived at the roastery at around 12 p.m., hoping to have an easy packing session. About an hour in, I realized I was not close to finishing, and had to rush.
My packing to-do list was:
Stamp brown bags
Put sticker labels onto the brown bags
Put together the white boxes
Stamp the white boxes
Pack each bean into the brown bags
Heat seal all the bags
Grab one of each bean, sticker, grind size baggies and put them into the white box.
We ended up not finishing packing within the planned 3 hours. I had to pack all the bags/boxes/packing supplies back home to finish packing.
Packing these coffee clubs is starting to be too much for one person. If you're interested in lending a hand with packing for V8, follow my IG as I'll likely ask for volunteers to help for V8.
I'm hoping V8 will be the one when all boxes will be shipped from the roastery.
Better communications:
Better shipping notifications and more precision on estimated shipping dates.
This is on me. This feedback has been shared in the past. I haven't found a good framework to manage this. I think it's because I've been too soft and flexible with my timelines. I'll keep an eye on this and try to be better. I'm hoping communications will get smoother once the logistics side gets smoother.
Additional thoughts:
More themed boxes:
This might be more feasible moving forward as I now have more supply to work with. Below is a screenshot of an offering list. Usually, I just pick 1 coffee. But with a known and recurring demand, I might just pick up 3 at once and curate that coffee club box as “coffees from XXX farm” box.
Some immediate themes are:
A coffee box with only pink bourbons
A coffee box highlighting processing
A coffee box with uncommon varietals (pacamara, papayo, kona, etc.)
A coffee box with coffees all from one farm/producer
The main issue here would be pricing. The pricing of these coffees can be a l over the place, and there could be an instance where all three coffees are on the more expensive side, and a 120g box becomes $50. I just need to make sure that I don't take a huge loss on the subscription side since the amount I take in there is fixed.
Coffee club boxes in cafes:
This has been something I've been noodling on. I originally had the position to have this exclusive to us (no wholesale), but I don’t think that’s the right way to go about it. With the subscription, the thinking here is to hope that coffee club box sales at cafes could be an avenue to drive customers to sign up for the subscription.
I think this might be enticing for cafes since this'd be a larger purchase order ($35-$40+), so they’ll be taking in more with each sale (vs a regular bag). Also, this would be a unique offering compared to their other wholesale offering.
My gut tells me this could work. If you are a cafe and are interested, reach out to me over at @thoughtfulcoffeenyc.
Final words:
Just a thank you to everyone who has continued sticking it out with me.
I know things aren’t perfect, and this process is still all over the place. Just know that I’m working to make it better, and that I really appreciate you all for sticking with me through this. 🙇
With each coffee club, thoughtfulcoffee grows up a little bit more. Slowly but surely, we'll get there.
Thank you, thank you, and thank you.
See you all for V8.
— Brian