Show HN: CaaS - Coffee as a Service | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: CaaS - Coffee as a Service

hotcoffeeclub.com

24 pointsguico49 comments

I am not a big coffee drinker, but I think people who are into their coffee might like to know where exactly your coffee is coming from, if it's fair trade etc. So this is some information you might want to put on your landing page.

Also, maybe make it a bit more obvious what countries are eligible for deliveries? Currently I can only see this information in the drop down when placing an order, but making it a bit more obvious might help. For example, I would not expect to be able to get this in Belgium, so would be inclined to think just after looking at the landing page "Meh, sounds good but I bet it's just for the US/UK", close tab.

Same thoughts as well.

Eligible geographical areas is one of the big thing missing here. When I initially looked at the landing page, and did not see any mentioned of your delivery areas, I immediately thinking "great, only local delivery to SF, NYC, London or Berlin."

But you deliver all over Europe. Let the whole of Europe know about this on your landing page.

That's definitely a recurring point, there are (at least) two things missing to the landing page, "what beans are these" and "where do you ship to".

Working on that!

Thanks for all the great feedback!

Didn't the fact the that the price shown (at least to me, as usual on the interwebs it's hard to be sure it's the same for everyone) was in Euros per cup provide a hint that this might be a European company?

Not really. Could be a cheap localization effort.

Although the weight is measured in kg, which speaks for a European company. But then again, the cheapest plan says "1kg every second month" instead of "500g per month" which is kinda weird.

That's because to minimize shipping costs you will get a package of 1kg every second month. Not 500 gram every month.

Thanks for the feedback

Ah thanks, that wasn't clear to me. I thought you just used 1kg as a baseline unit. Since pricing is monthly, I suggested that shipping would be too and thought it was just a weird way to describe 500g :)

using coffee which was roasted over a month ago is probably a deal breaker for a lot of people who would use a service like this. Good examples of coffee websites: www.hasbean.co.uk www.yorkcoffeeemporium.co.uk

That's exactly what I'm trying to test here, if there are people who don't care much about that as far as they get a lower price. Thanks

Another UK competitor is Square Mile coffee, whose subscriptions are separate monthly deliveries of 350g or 500g (http://shop.squaremilecoffee.com/collections/subscriptions).

Oh yeah, I've seen a few places around Shoreditch selling that, its pretty nice. I didn't realise they did subscriptions

The fact that they refer to the postal code as a "zip code" led me to believe the currency/weight conversion was involuntary on their part.

This is my startup just launching!

Apart from the kind of forced title, what I'm really trying to do here is to offer a steady/reliable source of good quality coffee always at a fair price. You pay a fixed monthly fee and can be sure you'll always have great coffee at a great price. It's not a club for coffee connaisseurs and we don't offer exclusive blends every month - it's simply good coffee for anyone who likes coffee.

The way I do that is by connecting local roasteries directly to end customers. No middle man, no storage costs, no retail costs. I'm starting with coffee but I believe it can also be done for other products (?).

Would really like to get your input on this... Would you buy this for yourself? Would you buy it for your startup?

Cheers

Congrats on the launch!

Just to be pedantic; aren't you the middle man? I mean, if the coffee companies tried to go direct to your customers after a couple months would you be upset?

Thanks!

Yeah, I'm getting that getting that question a lot :p Well, what I mean with no middle man was, as opposed to traditional retail partners selling at more than 250% the price the buy (and still with thin margins), we are charging a thin commission out of the final price set by the producer. Well.. maybe I'm still a middle man but not many will notice me!

I would be interested in this myself, but as a big coffee drinker, I am rather picky about where it comes from etc.

More information on the beans and even expanding the selection of different geographic regions, would probably hook me in.

Glad to hear you'd used it Devon. All our coffee comes from a sole partner roastery (located in Portugal). That info is on the website (/about) but we totally should make it more visible as well as providing some info about the blend itself.

Thanks for the feedback!

Care to share the name/location? My family lives about 10km from Porto so would be interested to check them out when I visit them.

I'm the CTO over at Rentify in London. I'd be happy to give this service a shot for a month. We drink pour-overs. Do you provide paper filters as well for ground coffee?

Hi buf. Glad to hear you're interested! For the moment we are not providing the filters but we do have plans to provide them as well as adapters for using our pods on any normal espresso maker. Let's get in touch guico@hotcoffeeclub.com

I run a coffee site in the US www.moustachecoffeeclub.com that also does a subscription based service. We offer a much more premium product, and I have to say my instinct is you should probably do too. A blend of 2/3 robusta really is just competing with Folgers(a really cheap and nasty brand over here). You would probably do better raising your quality level to at least 100% Arabica. At the end of the day when shipping and your business costs are included the cost difference of those beans will be minimal.

One thing though, and I know how complex it is, is you need to simplify your subscription page. Looking at it I have absolutely no idea what I'll be getting, how often I'll be getting it and for what price :)

This is my plans page, http://www.moustachecoffeeclub.com/show_plans and admittedly it's by no means perfect however I try to simplify the subscription down to the amount / time period :)

Good luck!

US equivalent is Tonx https://tonx.org/ but it's not hot, the idea is that they deliver right after roasting, so you consistently get something freshly roasted.

Pact Coffee (http://www.pactcoffee.com) in the UK offers fresh roasted coffee delivered too, but with more flexibility in your schedule.

Hi!

Thanks for the tip. I know about Pact Coffee and similar services and they seem to serve their customers very well.

In any case, I believe it's worth pointing out that we're offering something quite different. We're not targeting connaiseurs, coffee geeks or in general people willing to spend time looking for their favorite blend, roast or origin. Instead, we're offering a single great blend carefully selected by us, aimed at all those who like great coffee and want to have it automagically. It's just great coffee always there when you want it.

That's also why we are able to offer our single product at about 1/4 the price those other services can. Our beans are not hand roasted, they are prepared by experienced professionals in a fully equiped and scalable modern roastery.

Cheers!

Fair play - sounds like you've got a great business there.

Good luck with it all! :D

I was quite interested but when it asked me for my personal details such as name, address etc, the page when you clicked "buy ground" was not protected by SSL.

Sorry but in my opinion, info like that should be protected with SSL and not sent in the clear. But thats just me.

Edited to add: You can goto the PayPal payment page without entering any details like a shipping address. You might want to fix this.

Well, first sorry for that.

It's on our roadmap to move away from paypal asap. The reason we started with it was purely out of easiness.. I don't know if you're based in Europe but around here setting up a merchant account with a company like PayMill or Braintree can take up to 2 months before you can process any payment.

Again, sorry for that, it will be fixed as soon as we move away from paypal which I hope will happen in the next couple of weeks.

Hi the problem isn't with using PayPal. That's fine in my opinion for startin up. Its your asking for people to enter sensitive information on an unencrypted page but also, they can click through to the next screen without entering any details like name, address. Surely this is required info and there should be checks in place to make sure all required fields are entered before heading to payment page.

Don't mean to be hard on you, just want to save you some problems down the road.

Peace.

Yes, I got understood that. Just mentioned paypal to explain that the checkout flow will be fixed when we move away from them.

No worries, it's a very valid point!

Is it just me, or was anyone else hoping for an API that lets you order coffee? :P

Ahah. I'll write that one down ;)

UK coffee lovers should check out https://www.pactcoffee.com/

No information on coffee varieties, degree of roast, country of origin of beans. Arabica? Robusta? Blended? How dark roast or can I choose? For now I'll prefer to ground my beans at the supermarket, as I know what I'll get.

Edit: I think that this would be important information for anyone who cares a little bit more about their coffee.

The site acts like there is only "a coffee". This is definitely something a consumer that would order coffee over Internet wants to know. Or even better wants to choose.

Exactly... it is like a service providing just "Clothes." - I don't want just "Clothes" even though I do need clothes.

Hey!

Thanks for the feedback, that has been a recurring complain.

Working on that now!

This reminds me of the coffee shop example in the book REST in Practice. http://www.amazon.com/review/RAL4KK80FQVGE/ref=cm_cr_pr_view...

Congratulations on launching and good luck with your startup! While I am not a huge fan of Aaas (Anything as a Service) your prices seem pretty low compared to what I could find on Amazon so I would say that when I will need coffee I will definitely try this!

Great to hear that! What we're trying to do is really "Good coffee for everyone who likes good coffee", meaning that we're not targeting coffee connaiseurs and experts but just anyone who likes good coffee always. So I really believe competitive price should be on our focus.

In Belgium this exists for a while now, where you get 210 grams of beans (zip locked in a breathable bag) put in a regular envelope by mail every week - http://www.specialtycoffee.be/

Hi. Do you use it?

Nope. They're located within walking distance of my house. Talking about f.e. the roast of the week with the people there and letting them advise about what roast for what brewing is best this week is nice and let's me choose :) If I didn't have the time or lived further away I would definitely use it: love their coffee selections.

Question about your roasting/shipping: so the beans get roasted in Portugal and then shipped directly to the customer? Where does Eindhoven come in then? How come operations is located in The Netherlands but you don't ship to it? ( http://www.hotcoffeeclub.com/terms#shipping )

Hi, we do ship do the Netherlands, that was a mistake (already fixed).

Our roastery is in Porto, Portugal, but we (development, sales and customer support) are based in Eindhoven, NL.

Thanks for the info

You know you could offer a lot more to your service with a proper subscription billing service.

Disclosure: I know I'm with ChargeBee, not a pitch just an observation.

What should we be looking for here? All I can see is a website selling coffee (albeit rather slickly).

What kind of pods are these? I think you should specify which coffee machine do they work with :)

They work in any traditional espresso maker and replaces the normal "pressed" ground coffee.

Thanks for the feedback, we really should make that more clear.

PS: This is what I mean by traditional espresso maker http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/sol/shop/appliances/small_kitche...

OK, that how pretty much we all brew coffee in southern Europe, cool!

guico I am so interested in bringing this to Spain.

Would you contact me? Contact details in my profile =)

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