Coffee Monday – The Roasters Pack
Every once and a while I get an email about a new product or event or whatever that really resonates with me. It’s one of those things that if I stumbled upon it myself, I’d be excited about and would start telling my friends. The Roasters Pack is one of those things.
The Roasters Pack is a subscription based coffee delivery service. The goal is to introduce you to a variety of coffees from around the world, with a rotating roster of roasters (say that three times quickly) based out of Canada and the USA. This month, all were Canadian. Two were from Ontario – Diesel House Coffee Roasters out of Bracebridge and Carvalho Coffee from Oakville, and one was from far far away: Bean North Coffee from Whitehorse, in the Yukon.
Founded by Suneal Pabari and Adam Frank, this business started out of a love of coffee, and sure, so far, it’s just one box, and just the first edition of their coffee box, but you can see the love and attention they pay to talking about the coffee, the roasters, and the product. They try a whole bunch of coffee and then pick the ones that stand out and add them to the service.
Suneal and Adam are calling the subscriptions “issues.” Like a magazine or a newspaper, because each participating roaster and coffee is accompanied by a story, a discount, a video, and/or some other interesting coffee/roaster discussion. Here is one of these videos from this month where we get to meet Gabriel de Carvalho Dias, a coffee farm owner & head roaster at Carvalho Coffee in Oakville, ON:
I’ll admit, I haven’t tried any of the coffees yet (we’ve got a super-automatic espresso machine that is still full of my usual Chocosol beans) but it’s almost not about the coffee. And as much as I love stumbling upon things that I like by happenstance, I like curated surprises. I love being introduced to things that are completely new to me, so in that sense The Roasters Pack is perfect.
I also like that they plan to donate a percentage of their profits to Coffee Kids, a coffee farming community focused organization that works with other organizations throughout Latin America to create projects related to education, health care, economic diversification, food security and capacity building. You can find out more about them on the Coffee Kids Website.
Pricing follows a one-time order or a subscription based model. You can either order one box, for one month for $29.95, or the following subscriptions:
When subscribing, you can sign up for 1-12 months, and also select either whole beans or one of four different grinds (course, medium, fine, and extra fine)
We did the math on this a bit. So I’m going to give you an example of what JC & were thinking. One 1lb bag of Chocosol coffee costs me $12 from the Sorauren Farmer’s Market every other Monday. We drink about 2 bags worth a month, so this membership would not cover our coffee usage for the month.
For me, the real value in the Roasters Pack is more than just the bags of coffee beans, it is the opportunity to try coffees I might never come across in our usual cafe exploration. The additional videos and tasting notes add an extra dimension to the coffee experience. I like “meeting” the people behind the roast.
While I’m really into it, I am wondering what other people think of this concept. What do you think of a curated coffee subscription? Would you sign up for something like this?
Disclosure: The Roasters Pack sent me an email about this a few weeks ago, and offered me free delivery of their inaugural March 2014 “issue”, which I received. Free coffee hasn’t influenced my review, but the email did help me find out about them.
Second disclosure: I’m drinking my first espresso made from Medium Dark roast Carvalho Coffee right this second, and, out of curiosity, I have a cold brew of the same in the works (because I’m that guy.) But I’ll talk about that more some other Monday.
Connect with The Roasters Pack: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube