A new perspective on Coffee and Tea: “Building” Coffee Match | Hacker News Reader

A new perspective on Coffee and Tea: “Building” Coffee Match

coffeematchdotcom.wordpress.com

25 pointssyerram219 comments

Hey Xntrk, I'm Sumant, one of the founders of Coffee Match.

The $15 is just a baseline for our Indiegogo campaign. Unlike Tonx/Toby's estate - with Coffee Match, your getting great Coffee or Tea from the a unique destination along with a ton of interesting content about the region, the people, the Coffee, & much more.

With more orders & relationships, we will continue to work on keeps cost down.

Sorry, maybe I missed it, but will you be doing the roasting or will the supplier?

Why not work with small roasters instead of direct?

We will be importing the beans directly to the US & then working with small roasters in certain geographic locations to roast the beans before we ship it out.

Sounds like the smartest way to do it. Good luck! I hope you can carve out a decent niche for highly specialized varietals (something that an independent roaster might not feel like he can clear 60kg of). If you do it right, you and roasters can both benefit from the relationship (less margin for them, but less inventory risk... less margin for you, but less work to develop sales channels).

Why? Before I roasted my own beans, I was pretty much interested in the output of a specific local roaster. They source the beans, choose a specific roasting profile, are there to answer questions and guide my choices, take feedback (the Costa Rican was under/over roasted for my taste, and so on). That is the kind of relationship and connection I want, if I want one at all.

That is all being replaced with some content on a website, roasted by some person you select, with beans that you select? Sorry, I doubt you are as good at bean selection as the roaster you are bring the beans to. I could be wrong about that, but I'm trying to give input as a huge coffee nerd, and a potential customer. I just don't care about a blog and pictures about where my beans came from. And then I think about the economics of it. You are acting as a middle man, meaning you need to get paid. I surely don't want to pay you to do selection that my own local roaster already does very well. I don't see any value in what you are offering.

That probably seems very negative and "snipe"y, but I think you are going to dump a ton of time and money into something that really isn't going to be successful.

Edit: as I said, I now roast my own coffee. I buy from Sweet Marias. If, for some reason, I hunger for knowledge about the source of my beans (and, I stress that I don't), I can just go to their website and read about it for free. For example: http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee/full-description/bolivia

Hi Sumant, Thanks for the reply.

How many oz of coffee would you be sending out for the $15 indigogo?

Hey! 10 oz of Coffee with the $15 Indiegogo contribution.

I guess I'm a philistine, but I am happy with my $12/lb local roast & my $8/can Folgers, and I really don't feel an emotional connection to the far-flung places my food is grown... nor am I pursuing one. I am happy to have both cheap and good coffee & tea and am content there.

So I don't think this business is going to get my dollars, and I feel that most people are in my boat.

Best of luck finding the niche of people that will want what is being sold!

I really don't feel an emotional connection to the far-flung places my food is grown

If you believe some folk, coffee's flavor is directly proportional to the distance it has traveled to reach your doorstep!

I liked Jerry Seinfeld's quotes from his recent NPR review:

"I don't give a damn. That's the beauty of it. It doesn't matter. That's the nearest place. I'll meet you there. And you know what? Coffee's all good. It's all good. As long as it's fresh, it's good. And it's always fresh in New York. ... I think we're a more productive society as a result."

and

"I have that at my mother's in Florida at her condo. When she says, 'Do you want coffee?' And she had a — I think it was a Cuban packet — and I started rolling my eyes. 'Oh my God that's the coffee you have?' And she boils the water and opens the packet and puts it in there and you know what? It was pretty good."

I'm not saying that all coffees are the same, but in general if my choices are "bad" coffee and no coffee, I'll take the bad coffee.

Heh, i'm sipping my

    overly roasted (and cheap) Kirkland Columbian Coffee from Costco

right now, it's not bad. But i do appreciate high-end "private label" coffee too. I was talking to somebody this week whose sibling runs a little roaster, and almost got squeezed out of business when world supplies get squeezed by a weak harvest somewhere, and Starbuck and Nestle start buying like crazy. Exciting business!

It doesn't say in oz or grams how much coffee you are actually getting. From some rough math I would have to guess it is about 6oz. For $15 that seems really expensive even when compared to craft coffee (tonx/toby's estate) which is around $19 (shipping included) for 12oz bag.

Ya, Moustache Coffee Club will ship 12oz of Intelligentsia or Handsome coffee to to you for 16.99. They are regarded by a lot of people as some of the best roasters in the world. Why would I pay $15 for a 6oz bag?

coffeebeandirect will sell you Indian Monsooned Malabar for $39.75 for five pounds of whole beans. I've bought this; it's tasty. At 7.95/lb, it's about the same price as random Colombian at the supermarket.

It is about creating an amazing experience around enjoying your Indian Monsooned Malabar Coffee everyday - learning something new about that region. We agree, cost is something that we are focused on bringing down - with scale & time - this is definitely possible.

5 pounds of coffee, when was it roasted? And will you be drinking it within 7 days of then? This relationship is at least as important as the quality of the original bean.

Yeah I just contributed to the indiegogo but before hand I send them an email on price here is the response I got to paraphrase.

"It is 15 dollars including shipping and in terms of quantity it is 10 oz" Pretty good deal considering that they are doing interesting things with content that directly connect you to the farm and culture...

How are you "directly connected to the farm and culture"? If you are like most people, you brew your coffee and go on with your morning.

Hey - we send you very small snippets of content everyday through email/app about that Coffee. So as you enjoy your cup everyday - you get a learn a little bit about what made all of it possible.

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