Hacker News Reader

Comment by alphagrep12345 | Hacker News Reader

Few of questions

1. People always make weekend grocery trips. Why can't they just add a packet of coffee powder? Why do they have to use you? 2. Amazon just discontinued their dash buttons. There should be a strong reason for it. Do you know what it is? How are you planning to avoid it? 3. The issue with diapers and toilet papers is huge. They take up a lot of volume and have very little weight. Does the scale approach work for them? I'm not sure.

It'd be interesting to see how you guys evolve going forward. Best of luck :)

View on HN

I'll answer some of your questions:

1. You asked about "adding a packet of coffee powder". If you're asking about coffee "powder" (i.e. either preground or instant), then you are not the target market. For coffee aficionados, there is a very short window of peak freshness, about 1-2 weeks post roast. This model works great for these coffee folks who care about this freshness. Note supermarket coffee is usually hopelessly stale by the time it is sold. 2. While the physical dash buttons may have been discontinued, the virtual ones (through your phone, the web, Alexa, etc.) are still heavily in use. My guess if they discontinued them is that they figured they can get just as much play from the virtual ones, especially through all the "smart home" devices they are pushing.

As soon as I saw this I had the thought... This is really not about coffee

The physical buttons did not display the price.

Thanks for the questions.

1. I always forget to get one or two things when I go to the store. This removes having to remember coffee stock levels. Also, the coffee in the store isn't fresh because the distribution chain is too long. We ship straight from roaster to customer, so the coffee is really fresh.

2. Dash doesn't work because it's a new habit and people have to remember to find and press the button before running out. We're a Dash button that automatically presses itself and is fully passive.

3. For toilet paper and diapers it may not be a scale but some other sort of passive monitoring system. We definitely plan to address these eventually.

I think this is very clever and I wish you success but I do not buy the coffee “more than a week old is not fresh” line. Coffee is fermented - stored well it lasts a hell of a lot longer than two weeks.

We stock up on our family’s favorite coffee from Colombia three or four times a year, where relatives travel long distances to collect it for us from a non-exporting roaster.

Many months is a normal shelf life.

When you stock up on coffee from Colombia, is it already roasted?

I think somewhere between 5-15 days is pretty generally accepted as the "fresh" period after roasting (caveat: except for espresso). Some people even freeze their beans if they don't think they'll start the bag soon enough after getting it, or if they get large bags.

You definitely _can_ make coffee with weeks-old beans (or months-old beans), but there's a distinct difference in taste when consuming shortly after roasting (after the degas but before it goes stale). According to [1] (random source among tons for a google search for "how long are coffee beans good after roasting"), beans aren't considered "stale" until around 30 days, but are definitely still usable; stale bread and flat sodas are edible too, but a lot of people prefer the better taste.

[1] https://making-nice-coffee.com/how-long-does-coffee-stay-fre...

I used to keep my beans on the shelf for months. I also have a friend who owns a coffee roasting business. Let me tell you, fresh-roasted coffee tastes WAY better.

I getting my coffee. If I buy one too many bags I can tell the difference between coffee used week 0 and say week 3 or 4. My palette isn't the best so I can't really tell the difference but I can see it. There is much less CO2 in the older coffee. You see this in the smaller "bloom".

This is counter to everything I've ever read on coffee freshness. Perhaps you are right! Do you have any links?

The experts in the field are wary to put a definitive time frame on 'freshness' because there are many variables at play (and a lot of product to sell). Here is a good overview: https://www.seattlecoffeegear.com/blog/2016/06/26/long-coffe...

I will grant that not very long ago, the fear of coffee going bad pretty quick was probably valid. But today packaging systems available to even the home roaster allow you to flush oxygen, displace C02, and/or vacuum seal.

I am not trying to argue that flavor stays the same for several months. But I call marketing BS on the warning that you have a week from when your beans were roasted to either enjoy them or to suffer the consequences.

Actually a scale still works for 3 if it's large enough. Counting scales exist which can weigh increments less than a gram but can measure trends of kilos without damage.

You're right, and we'll probably just keep doing scales.

Some people have a mental block with the word "scale" in this context, so we like to remind them it could be other stuff :).

I think the target audience aren't the sort of people that buy a packet of coffee powder from the grocery store.

Another question is what is stopping Amazon/Instacart/etc from copying this model?

Presumably Amazon Go shops have this capability and it could be modified to suit end consumers in their homes?

This question gets asked for every company. The way it works is that Amazon and Instacart. may copy. But walmart and target will be slow to respond. At some point, Amazon will be ahead in the game and Walmart is in a hurry to bring something similar to buy. Then they will acquire Bottomless

Another way, even if Amazon introduces it, they have to make $x billion from it to be viable. If Bottomless makes $100M per year from this funtionality, they are a good business. Meanwhile they can also rake up a few patents thus making forcing Amazon to pay some fees

Big Cos don't have to copy. Startup can validate and they can swallow them if they care.

Why does Amazon need to make $x billion to make it viable?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com