Skip to the bottom for some behind the scene clips.
Hello friends!
I wanted to reflect and give you all a glimpse of what I think were some of the successes and pitfalls of this whole process.
Things that went well:
We were able to generate enough interest to exceed supply. We sold out within two days of sending the email for blog post #5. I sent the email at 9:51 am, and by 2 pm, all orders were allocated. Albeit there weren't that many (10), I didn't think I'd be able to sell out just from the email. I thought I'd have to post on Reddit to fill up the orders.
It was fun to meet and talk coffee with some of you! From the in-person pickups, I learned a bit about coffee in London, received a cold brew in exchange, and realized I need to explore the world of espresso (I think most of you all use the beans for espresso).
It was also nice to get follow-up texts about how the cold brew was. :)
Things that didn't go as planned:
Given this is the first release, I expected there to be more bumps than smooth parts. I'll highlight only the major ones here.
Time estimation
Some tasks took way longer than I anticipated.
Future roast profiles must be tuned for a batch size of at least 1 pound (453 grams). The roast profile I was using for the Ethiopian Guji was 175g. The total quantity of Ethiopian Guji I needed for this release was 1200g. I needed to run at least seven roasts (7 * 175g = 1225g) to fulfill the required quantity. Each roast would take about 25 minutes, with 10 minutes roasting, 5 minutes cooling, and another 10 minutes recalibrating the roaster to initial charge settings.
So the total time to just roast one of the three types of beans was close to 3 hours. Had I built my roast profile for a larger batch size, I could've reduced the number of roasts needed and saved a lot more time.
Writing the labels for each bag also took much longer than I expected. Each bag took maybe 2 minutes to write. I needed to write 45 bags (15 * 3), so I spent around 1.5 hours just writing. I think I had to take a 5-minute break after every 10 minutes of non-stop writing. From this experience, I think I'll invest in building a sticker template with all or most of the primary texts printed out, so I can do less writing.
Supply planning
The second item I plan to optimize is better supply planning. During the execution, I hit supply shortages a couple of times, and because of them, I had to adjust the experience.
I didn't buy enough green beans. This effect resulted in less supply and missed opportunities to share with those interested.
I didn't buy enough coffee bags. This resulted in different types of coffee bags in each box.
I almost ran out of ice cubes for cold brew. The effect of this would have been that I wouldn't have been able to serve cold brew to some of you all.
Pickup experience
The pickup experience is a hard one and is one I'm not sure I can fully fix by the next release.
Most pickups happened on the first day, and the remaining two days were pretty underutilized. Instead of having three days, I might reduce pickup to two days.
I felt that some of you might've been interested in sticking around to chit-chat and hang out. I didn't consider this. Maybe having a formal event at a local coffee shop would make this possible. I'll think through this a bit more but won't likely be able to change the pickup structure until V3/V4.
My hunch on this could be wrong, so please help confirm this in the feedback form that will be sent out. If you didn't get one, ping me, and I'll send it over to you!
Thank you
Thank you all for participating in the first release. I had a lot of fun figuring out the logistics, building out the experience, and executing the delivery. The entire thing couldn't have happened without everyone's support.
And a special thank you to my girlfriend Jasmin for helping with some last-minute logistics and designing the coffee cards.
V2 Release
If you are interested in hearing more about V2, please fill out this form. If you filled out the old google form version, then you are already signed up for the coffee club e-mail list.
I'd expect the experience to be the same, but the background logistics (on my end) will change.
I'll be doing a pre-release ($20) and a regular release ($25). The additional costs will go towards:
making the process more efficient (bag labels, profiling with larger batch sizes)
payment for my time
let me go upstream a bit in terms of coffee quality
The reason I’m offering a pre-release (cheaper) price is so I can better estimate how much coffee I’ll need to buy. If you know you want to be part of V2 and want to escape getting in before supply runs out:
E-mail me at thoughtfulcoffeenyc@gmail.com expressing interest
I’ll collect payment and put you on the list for V2
Deliver once I roast the coffees for both pre-release/regular release.
I’m aiming for V2 to be ready towards the end of September.
If, after payment, you want to back out, e-mail me and I’ll just send the money back.
I'm currently in the works of getting samples for V2. If the samples look good, then I'll likely make a purchase. As a teaser, one of the samples is an ice fermented coffee. 👀
Behind the scene clips
Now here are some clips for some behind-the-scene look at how everything was put together: