The first is that, now, two of the most important things to coffee consumers are taste and country of origin. Over the last 20 years, the coffee-drinking public’s attitude and expectation toward coffee has shifted dramatically. It’s no longer an unexciting commodity that people slug down in the morning out of habit. It’s an artisanal experience that can be appreciated on multiple levels.
The second is how regularly the U.S. consumes coffee. Americans drink about 400 million cups of coffee per day. There are, at present, 328 million people in the country. Anything consumed with that much frequency is begging to have its purchasing and acquisition automated.
And the third is the nature of buying stuff today. It’s all online. 80% of people in the U.S. made online purchases in the last month. If you’re not up and running with a reliable ecommerce solution, you’re behind the curve. But if you fully embrace ecommerce, you’re stepping up and delivering on customer expectations.
Starting A Coffee Subscription Box
Starting a coffee bag subscription checks all these boxes. It provides coffee enthusiasts with a rotating variety of high-quality coffee. It does so regularly, and it does so with minimal effort online. It’s perfect for the 21st century American. That's why it's vital to know how to start a subscription box business to offer coffee to your customers.
So here are the fundamentals of starting an online coffee subscription commerce business. We’re going to cover the basics, which apply to everyone, then we’ll get into some considerations for existing business types. First roasters and distributors, then retailers, and finally individuals.
So what is a coffee subscription box or a coffee of the month club? It’s a lot like it sounds. A customer signs up online with a coffee retailer or roaster to have coffee delivered to their door every month. Or at whatever interval they prefer. One lucrative trend, per coffee statistics, is for the coffee delivery subscription to cover a niche—a trade coffee subscription or a coffee bean subscription for hikers and campers.
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Virtually anyone can start a coffee subscription business, whether you’re a roaster or distributor, retailer, or individual entrepreneur. Existing coffee businesses have an advantage, of course, because of their existing infrastructure and operations.
First, we’ll look at the structure of your online coffee subscription. Then we’ll cover packaging and technological infrastructure. Everyone will need these, so it’s a good place to start.
The way your monthly coffee subscription boxes are structured is the most important aspect of your coffee subscription program. Here are the important pieces.
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The type of coffee subscriptions you offer presents different coffee philosophies to customers. Some of which will resonate with them. It’s where you offer your customers a chance to be a part of that philosophy and get excited about your products and company.
For example, you can offer a single-origin subscription. Every bag comes from a single growing region and emphasizes the community and geography behind the coffee. This speaks to coffee drinkers that value the terroir of growing regions and the human stories behind coffee.
You can also offer a coffee subscription for blends. Each blend will have a list of tasting notes and will be expertly constructed to strike just the right flavor profile. This excites those coffee drinkers who value the taste of coffee, first and foremost. Those who sip it and mull over the sensory experience like a sommelier over a glass of wine.
How To Create A Compelling Coffee Subscription Experience
We use single-origin and taste as examples because, according to national coffee data, those are the two most important factors for today’s coffee drinkers. But types of coffee and subscription themes don’t stop there. Subscriptions can focus on roast level, beans from farming co-ops, local roasters, and more.
Coffee drinkers enjoy coffee for a multitude of reasons, and certain types of coffee will excite some drinkers and not others. Give yourself the best chance to succeed by strategically choosing the types of coffee your subscriptions are based on.
Once you decide on the type(s) of coffee you’ll offer, next up is an easy one. Will you grind them, sell the beans whole, or both?
Café Rebelde — Coffee Subscriptions
All coffee is roasted while the beans are whole. And roasters tend to ship out their beans to retailers and coffee shops whole. It best preserves the freshness of both the bean and the roast. Properly sealed, fresh whole bean roasts can last up to a month in the bag.
Ground coffee, on the other hand, is more convenient for the average coffee drinker who may not have a burr grinder on hand. But, properly sealed, ground coffee stays at optimal quality for only about 1–2 weeks.
Whole bean is better for the most enthusiastic coffee enthusiasts who grind their beans at home or if your shipping takes more than a few days. Ground is better if you’ve got an airtight, quick shipping solution. Or your customer base isn’t as worried about drinking coffee that’s not at 100%-freshness.
How To Launch Your Coffee Subscription
You’ll have to choose how often your shipments go out. Most subscription operations start with monthly coffee subscription plans. Then they fold in one-week or biweekly options as their business increases, their operations tighten up, and their shipping becomes more reliable.
One tip we heard that’s helpful for growing mail order coffee subscription businesses is to group renewals and shipments together for each frequency. If one person signs up on the 15th and another on the 20th, they’ll both get their coffee on the 1st of the next month. That simplifies things and helps you focus your energy on more growth-oriented businesses tasks.
There’s a spirited discussion in the coffee shipping world: 12-ounce bags or 16-ounce bags? Green coffee is sold on the open market by the pound or kilogram, so don’t 16-ounce bags make more sense? Not necessarily.
Lb. Monthly Coffee Subscription
First, let’s think about ounces in terms of cups of coffee. There are roughly 41 cups of coffee in an 8-ounce bag, 62 in a 12-ounce bag, and 82 in a 16-ounce bag. Now think about your customer and the best-by date of what you’re sending them. Does it make sense to target casual coffee drinkers with 16-ounce bags of ground coffee? Probably not. On the flip side, if your typical customer is drinking five or more cups of coffee per day and grinds at home, a 16-ounce bag of whole beans may be just what they’re after.
Another aspect to consider is price point. The price of a pound of quality coffee can be shocking. The modern price of coffee fluctuates around $1 to $1.20 per pound. Fair Trade coffees must be purchased at a minimum of $1.40 per pound, and organic Fair Trade at a minimum of $1.90 per pound.
Many of the best coffee roasters and best coffee subscription go way above and beyond those minimums in an effort to support growing communities—sometimes dropping as much as $6 per pound. Now consider that there’s an 18% shrinkage during roasting. That means it takes $1.22 of green coffee beans to get $1 of roasted coffee.
Things You Need To Know To Start A Coffee Subscription Business
Coupled with establishing and maintaining a supply chain, the overhead of roasting in general, marketing, and shipping costs, prices can get pretty high pretty quick. For most coffee drinkers, there isn’t a huge difference between a 12-ounce and a 16-ounce bag. And a 12-ounce bag eases the sticker shock a bit.
Packaging gets our vote as the second most important aspect of your coffee subscription plan, behind the types of coffee you offer. Your coffee subscription packaging is the most impactful touchpoint your customer will have with your business. It has the ability to delight them, but you’ve gotta choose the right boxes, measurements, design, and printing methods. Let’s look into each.
Think for a moment about the phenomenon of unboxing videos. If you’re not familiar, someone opens up a box in front of a camera while narrating their actions and sharing information about the product about to be unveiled. It’s an entire industry on YouTube that leverages the excitement of opening gifts and the uniqueness of the product being unboxed. 90, 000 people type “unboxing” into the YouTube search bar every month. It’s a thing.
How To Write A Coffee Subscription Landing Page
But aiming for your coffee subscription box ends up in viral unboxing videos, while not unrealistic, isn’t the point. Unboxing videos prove that packages have a built-in ability to surprise and delight
The clarity and ease-of-use of both your customer-facing and business-to-business tech assets are paramount. One of the reasons DTC food subscription-based businesses are proliferating is that the barrier to entry isn’t that high. The first is a crisp, clear, and easy-to-follow user flow for the coffee subscription part of your website. The second is a reliable ecommerce platform or online marketplace. Those are pretty much the two moving parts from a technological standpoint.
If you’re a supplier or a retailer, you already have a website. What you don’t have is a series of steps that introduce customers to your subscription service and get them to sign up. Taken together, those steps are called the user flow. Let’s do a quick case study of what makes a great user flow from a coffee subscription program that’s already knocking it out of the park, Blue
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