Roast #43: 2024 Year-end wrap up
stumbling, but finishing.
If you are reading this in email, please read in browser since the email will get cutoff.
It's been a while.
Past year wrap-ups
2023 year-end (an IG reel format)
2022 year-end wrap up (a month by month format)
I apologize if this post doesn't have our usual style or voice. I feel I've lost some of my style by not reading much this year.
Quick numbers:
We roasted about 612 pounds on the IR-5
We delivered 286 coffee club boxes (and 453 orders)
We sample roasted 181 different coffees (that we've tracked within our systems)
We offered 16 coffees this year
We finished with 50 coffee club subscribers
2024 Goals Look Back Reflection
1. Turn the coffee club into a subscription [done]
It took until July for us to do so. 🥲 It took so long because I wasn't confident in our processes to commit to delivering a recurring product.
But after making that jump, I'd call it a success. I'm humbled that people find enough value to consistently commit. It's hard enough to sell a single bag of coffee (I've been here before), so seeing people subscribe is just... wow. 🙇
On a more objective front, we are still far from covering all coffee club costs. We take in around $1956 from subscriptions, and our coffee club total costs hover around $3500. The goal is to have the subscription completely cover our coffee club costs so we remove any risk of losing money.
2. Get our coffee in 5+ cafes [miss]
This year, we had short stints at Paper Son Cafe, Villager, and Three Legged Cat! I'm super grateful that they took a chance on us.
We missed getting into more cafes because of our lack of packaging, processes, and effort.
We don’t understand how the wholesale game works. How do cafes plan their coffee calendar? How do they order? What do they look for when sampling/choosing?
Given our size and limited energy, I think it’s most productive for me to focus my efforts on building for you all (vs for cafes). My thinking is if you win the consumers, you'll win the cafes.
3. Better packaging [miss]
There were other more important priorities.
The coffee club was unstable for most of 2024, and my main priority in 2024 was stabilizing it. We had supply issues, we were delaying boxes, and we were still figuring out how to optimize our process to make putting the box together bearable.
4. Put some effort into the cafe idea [miss]
The signal to open a cafe wasn't strong enough this year. I'm still figuring out when it is time to make that jump. It’s risky to rush this decision.
5. Figure out how to continue building a presence outside of NYC [miss]
We were thinking about this wrong. We should focus on building a larger social presence. Having a larger presence would expand your audience as a side-effect.
Biggest Lessons Learned:
Relationships matter in green buying:
I thought coffee buying was simple where if you have supply and I have money, a deal could be made. But this isn't always the case.
If you have a lot of demand, you can choose who you sell to. I hit a case where I reached out to a farm, and was denied from buying as they had a priority list of existing customers to go through. Since I was a new customer, I had to be put on a waitlist and would have access to whatever supply was left.
Not all farms are run this way, but this experience opened my perspective that relationships matter in green buying.
Then on the exporter side, it makes things 10000x easier when your exporter has a good understanding of your palette. The samples they send over will more likely lead to a buy, and you don’t waste time evaluating (sample roasting, cupping, brewing, etc.) samples that won’t work out.
The worst is when they send over 10 samples, you spend close to 8 hours total evaluating it, and you don’t buy anything because none of the samples fit your target profile. This happens, and will continue to happen, but it stinks when it does.
Focus on building and maintaining trust:
I realized this as I was building out our subscription product. Not many of you are skipping boxes or canceling, so most of you trust our curation, and you trust that we'll deliver you a valuable product.
Maybe I'm just doing a long roundabout to say "I roast okay coffee", but I feel taking this perspective of building and maintaining trust helps ground my decision-making to follow something more than "roast okay coffee".
I can't do this myself:
I'm an idiot for not realizing this sooner. Things go so much smoother and are way more fun when working alongside others.
Goals/Changes for 2025:
Time for the fun stuff. I probably should have more concrete and actionable goals...
but nah.
Better implementation of design throughout the brand.
From packaging to social media to web design, I'd like to be more thoughtful here. When I compare myself with some of the brands I look up to, the biggest difference between us is the level of packaging they have. I've kicked off this process, and will get something out in 2025.
Be more strict Logistically and Financially
Things are still done pretty ad-hoc. We are working to improve this. Some of our behind-the-scenes tasks are improving (green buying and sample roasting), but we need to shore up the more front-scenes tasks (marketing releases, roasting, communications, etc.).
Then, financially, we need to start running it more seriously. We need to start generating (and saving) some profits if we want this thing to be real. We need to be better at modeling out our costs. Our costs are still naive. We aren't modeling in our time, our software tool subscriptions, or our misc equipment-related purchases (storage utilities, brewing equipment, etc.).
Put out more social media content
This is our most efficient/economic chance of moving thoughtfulcoffee from an "NYC" thing to a "more-than-NYC" thing. I always hear the story of a brand having one clip go viral, and that kickstarts everything. To have something go viral, you need content in the first place.
Figure out how to bring in new customers
The last two quarters of 2024 have seen a big drop in new customers. We are retaining some of the new customers we serve, but we are not doing a good job getting new ones. Point 3 should help with this, but we’ll also look to collaborations and other ways to try and get more people to try our coffees.
Start a home cafe series [lowest priority]
Lowest priority, but this is the one I'm most excited about. I want to open my home on certain off weekends to serve fancy coffees, collaborate with other small brands (pastries, ceramics, etc), and have an avenue to connect with my customers. I also wanted an excuse to purchase a Linea Mini (I know I’m probably a decent b0i, but I’m a sucker for how the mini looks).
The vision here is to run something slow paced and focused on the coffee. I’m hoping to use this as a way to serve rarer coffees (no need to split) and do some experimentation at a later point (mini blends, different brew styles, etc.).
You come in, we share a bit about each coffee, and we have a conversation on what you might want. Think something similar to cafe culture in Tokyo.
Once the mini comes in and we are comfortable with it, we’ll try to weave in espresso and milk-based drinks. The fancy stuff will likely stay as pourover.
The first feature will be an ultra extended fermentation natural gesha by mikava coffee. This coffee has some spice vibes (think black honey sidra) to it with a pleasant accent of fruit. Not what you’d expect from something that’s undergone “ultra extended fermentation”.
More to come about this idea.
Thank you's:
So many to thank here. This list grows longer and longer every year.
Thank you to:
those who've helped at our popups and events (Aki, Maria, Wendy, Brandon, Eugene, Seean, Matthew, Jake, Shaka). It’s humbling to have people willing to give up time on their weekends for this. I really appreciate it, and it honestly means a ton.
cafes who were open to us showcasing our coffees (Ben from Villager, Adelaide + Leeor from The Three Legged Cat, Alex from Paper Son Coffee). Thank you for taking a chance on us and making room on your shelves for our coffee.
our exporters who've been amazing to work with (Michael, Brian, Rachel, Catrina, Frank, Ben). Without your coffees, this wouldn’t exist. thank you for the amazing work that you do.
to Gian for always being so down to design stuff for us. From our menus, to stickers, to t-shirts you work has been stellar. I can't wait to continue collaborating with you.
people who’ve already made it and are helpful in providing advice (Anu and Suyog from Driftaway, Paolo and Ethan from Regalia, Ben from Villager). From growth questions, to green buying and customs issues, to packaging, you all have been willing to provide advice and help. I look up to you all and hope to one day make it like you all have.
And the biggest thank you’s to goes to all of you. we literally would not be here without you all.
Truly. I’m not really doing any a ton of marketing (whatever I do put out sucks ass anyways 🥲) or advertising, so you all are the ones bringing us new customers. Then when it gets tough or when I feel like I want to quit, you send me little messages and compliments that help me realize we should keep going. This project is still alive because of all your support.
Colin texting me random thoughtfulcoffee improvements/opportunities (shipping, potential cafe wholesale opportunities).
Ivan coming to our popups, buying our bags, and sharing them with other cafes.
Alex choosing us for Meta’s coffee club, Taylor / Bobbi for including us for in their advent calendars, Ziah for partnering us with his brewtopia popup, Matthew for including us in his home cafe event, + more. Thank you for choosing us.
Gabriella + Faki taking the time to film a video feature of us, and Cory + Mandi offering to too, it’s touching that you all are willing to help spotlight us.
Tyler taking the time to suggest marketing growth ideas to help us grow
Many of you sharing our coffees with your friends (Tracey, Alex, Josh, John G, Gary this list can honestly go on forever so...). I love it when a customer says “I found you through a friend…”.
and there’s probably many more who I forgot to include (sorry :(( ).
Thank you, thank you, and thank you.
To 2025 we go.