Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/139019
A rtisan roasting is now a norm. Small, flavor-focused companies have sprouted up in cities large and small across America, significantly elevating consumer appreciation of concepts like freshness, origin and taste diversity. The question now is: How will the independent, qualityroasting world evolve? It's a topic that could take us in dozens of directions, but one intriguing possibility is rapidly being explored by a number of small, Web-based coffee subscription services that have hit the scene over the last two years. Brands like Craft Coffee, MistoBox, Tonx and others are increasingly grabbing the attention of American consumers who care about what's in their cup and are accustomed to shopping online. They're using design and tech expertise as well as innovative business thinking to get coffee from quality roasters into the hand of folks who may never have heard of those roasters previously. They're also helping to extend the reach of specialty coffee as a whole—and they're growing quickly. These companies are, in fact, showing the industry one possible path toward expansion and effective distribution in the digital age. "More and more people are being exposed to hyper quality and all these micro-roasteries have popped up," says Adam Foster, co-owner and creative director of Regular Coffee, an eight-monthold roasting brand built entirely on the online subscription model. "And people are used to buying things through Amazon and oneclick shopping. It was only a matter of time before the two coalesced and became an industry." FRESH APPROACH Online coffee subscriptions themselves are nothing new. Since the early days of the Web, many individual roasters whose business models were primarily based in the brick-and-mortar world have included coffee-of-themonth programs on their sites. Consumers could sign up and start getting their favorite roasts automatically sent to them on a regular basis. While that idea worked for some consumers, few roasting companies had the time or Web expertise to optimize the format. On many roaster sites, the coffee subscription programs currently sit in forgotten corners, hooked up to clunky shopping cart tools that often leave modern e-consumers with security doubts. The latest wave of subscription coffee companies aims to completely revitalize that coffee Web-shopping experience, and simplicity is goal number one. The segment can be divided into two separate groups. On one side are companies like Craft and MistoBox that act as curators, delivering offerings from different quality-oriented roasters to their subscriber bases each month or every few weeks. The other group is made up of companies that actually roast coffee but rely on the Web-based subscription model for the entirety of their distribution. All are aiming to break down the barriers that have limited exposure for small roasters in the past. "Despite online access to many roasters, the market for exceptional coffees remains quite local," says Scott Witham, co-owner of Bend, Ore.-based Lone Pine Coffee Roasters, which has had its roasts featured by both Craft Coffee and MistoBox. "This reality is set against a growing appetite in the market for new flavors and experiences similar to those that are readily available in the beer, wine and artisan food worlds. The subscription service bridges this gap." THE PLAYERS In the coffee-curator crowd, Craft Coffee and MistoBox are the two companies that have gained the most traction. Craft Coffee is based in New York City, and since 2011 it has been sending monthly selections from small roasters out to a subscriber base that now includes customers in every U.S. state and 25 countries. Customers receive four ounces of coffee from three separate roasters each month, and Craft founder Mike Horn says a team of experienced coffee professionals uses blind taste tests to choose which roasters get featured each month. "Since we went with the blind format, we've seen some really cool results," says Horn. "We've discovered some roasters no one has heard of, not even the coffee professionals that work for us. If a roaster can make it through our process, suddenly that company gets exposed to thousands of people around the world." MistoBox launched a similar model in June 2012, offering its customers either 1.7 ounces or 3.4 ounces of coffee from four different roasters in each mailing. Subscribers can choose to get boxes sent out every month or every two weeks. The brand got a major publicity boost in early May when company founders and recent University of Arizona grads Samantha Meis and Connor continued on page 34 freshcup.com July 2013 33