I noticed that Trade recently started "strongly suggesting" (or really requiring at this point) that roasters they work with actually decrease the amount of coffee they're selling through Trade to 310 grams from 1lb (or about 454 grams). This was allegedly done to "help save on shipping costs". This was a relatively silent change on Trade's end, and ultimately end user did not see a change/decrease in price, but received less coffee. Roasters also had to either go order new bags with "310g" printed on them, or slap a sticker over the 1lb marking on their bags to comply with the new weight. For most roaster, if you order coffee directly from them, you will receive the traditional 1lb (~454g) of coffee instead of 310g for around the same (or sometimes less) price listed on Trade. I personally wasn't a huge fan of how silent this change seemed to be for the end user and how this kind of forced roasters to change their packaging and send less coffee, so I opted to cancel my subscription and just start ordering coffee from some of my favorite roasters; Many of which I actually did discover through Trade. I don't hate Trade, and as mentioned I did discover a lot of roasters whose coffees I really enjoy, but it always did seem a little weird ordering coffee from a roaster through them when I could just directly support the roaster instead.
I learned about Trade from another channel (a cooking channel actually) and it actually sparked my interest in coffee. Fast forward almost a year and now I have an espresso machine and a grinder. What I don't have is a subscription! From the very beginning, that sponsorship piece made me ask the question: "Why would I want to give money to a middle man?" The whole insert was a beautifully-shot interview with a roaster that got me really excited about their family business and not at all interested in subscribing to Trade. I only hope more coffee enthusiasts feel the same way!
Agreed! And I’m all for it if this is the trajectory people take! I know from a customer side Trade and others are fine, but I think we as consumers in 2022 should make an effort to ensure our money goes where we want it to.
Yeah, and if you think of the whole supply chain of coffee, from farmer to you, you'd see how many unnecessary chainrings are there. Just imagine how much better life would a farmer have, if there would not be anybody else between between him and the roastery. But yeah, not gonna happen
@@ClariMatt05 Likely is. I remember the interview with Alma Coffee. And they're great, I order direct from them all the time. My favorite coffee by far.
I've been a trade sub for ~ 2 years now. Before this I scoured the internet looking for coffee roasters and compiled a list in excel that I would refer back to every week to order new coffee. This got tiring and I ended up buying from the same place more often than trying new roasters. Trade allows me to get exposure to roasters I otherwise wouldn't have heard of and gives me a place to track what I liked/disliked about the coffee. I still buy coffee from local roasters and roasters I have had on trade, I usually pause my sub with trade while I go through this coffee. I appreciate the video, it gives us something to think about.
For sure, I know that subscriptions definitely have the market cornered on convenience, and a lot of us don’t have the time for excel spreadsheets. I mean that’s farther than I’ve ever gone haha. I just thought it may be worth bringing some of this up to the surface for those who maybe weren’t aware. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience!
@@iprevailedx I’ve been a subscriber of trade for over a year. The orders basically get shipped out from the roaster directly and the roast date is usually within 2-5 days of when it was shipped, so it’s always fresh. I say 2-5 days because it depends where the beans are coming from.
Maybe I’m spoiled for choice here in NYC, but going to a coffee shop and picking up a freshly roasted bag is one of my favorite activities. And unlike a subscription, you can sample the product - made by a professional - before you buy it!
That’s true, but definitely those of us who live in big cities we are spoiled. I grew up in Montana and even now I believe there is only one specialty shop in town. That does bring up an interesting point though, I wonder what cities and states have their highest rates of subscribers.
I almost never like the pours I get from "professionals." Generally taste more under-extracted, and that's even from the roasters themselves. I usually have to go off origin, process, and lastly tasting notes. However, I do like picking up a bag. I also like getting a bag in the mail. Probably same dopamine effect for me.
Sorry, totally off topic and not relevant to the conversation, but you said Luxembourg, Germany, which made it sound like Luxembourg was a city in Germany. Of course, JAB is a German company, with an HQ in Luxembourg, but Luxembourg is also a separate, sovereign country. *phew* there, pedantry over
Haha yeah someone already mentioned that. The articles I read definitely gave the impression it’s associated with Germany, confusingly worded + American education means I have no idea on that one haha.
Brilliant and helpful insight; Just last night I was looking in my area for specialty coffee AFTER having looked into coffee subscriptions. I'm in Seattle and have been buying the same coffee for years and like many my coffee passion was fanned when I discovered Mr. Hoffmann and other equally passionate 'Citizen Baristas' such as yourself. When Google and I went exploring last night all I was getting were cafes. You have educated me that I need to be looking for 'roasters'. That being said, you're on to something. I want a place where I can access coffee from all roasters and buy what I want from whom I want as long as I'm not giving my cash to a middleman!!
Actually, Trade no longer sells at the same price as the roaster. I considered using them recently (without the subscription) and they were much higher than purchasing straight to the roaster. I used them in the past and that helped me to do exactly what you mention: an understanding of which roaster and coffee profile that I liked. I dropped them because I started roasting myself.
@@cvandenhaute You sure it was the same size? Maybe a discount sale in the site? I checked before also and had the same prices in a few examples I saw.
Thanks for posting this: I've been alternating buying coffee from local roasters at their shops (I live in SF so there's an embarrassment of riches to choose from) and ordering direct from roasters elsewhere in the US. I had been considering a subscription model but this is firmly pushing me out of that decision. The Home Barista Coffee forum has been really useful for guiding me to interesting roasters in the US.
Of course! Thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts. And I’m with you, in San Diego we have an embarrassment of riches, plus I roast, plus I have roaster friends all over so I never have to think about where to get coffee. I hesitate to send people to forums often because they can be toxic (more than my comment section here anyway) But if there are good resources for finding coffee I’m sure home barista is solid. Honestly I would just tell people go to Trades list if you’re looking to try a new roaster and then just look them up and order directly. The costs seem more or less in line.
This is exactly how I've used subscriptions in the past, a quick and efficient way to expose myself to a lot of variety in flavors and roasters. If I recall correctly, many of these samples are quite small, and so there is an element of wasteful amounts of packaging as well when considering coffee subscriptions.
I think it’s really the best way to go about most subscriptions that offer a product that can be easily accessible outside of it. In trades favor they do ship full size bags in their “compostable” mailers, but that doesn’t offset actual shipping, or the fact you have to fully remove the shipping label before you compost it.
I agree with you Spromethius. Support your local Cafès! If you like specialty coffee, go experience local cafès and if you like something, try to buy it from them.
Absolutely, if you have local cafes and you like them, and can reasonably do so support them first. But in the case someone needs to order coffee, I always will push for going direct versus third party shippers.
+1 to using trade as an exploration of which roasters you love. I have a subscription right now and I’ve discovered roasters that I like through trade but I’m considering switching to a 2lb bag subscription from some roasters to save money and go straight to the roaster.
Small correction: Luxembourg city is the capital of the country of Luxemburg, which is located between Belgium, France and Germany. It is also notorious for low/lax taxes (as far as I remember).
Haha well that makes sense why they would base a massive business conglomerates there! Thanks for the heads up, the American education system fails me again.
I was gifted a Trade subscription for my birthday last year and I loved it for a while. However, after about 4 months the thought of Trade just being middlemen came to mind. Since then I’ve only bought direct. I actually got hired as a barista at one of the roasters I tried from Trade and I learned a little more about their side of things. Was eye opening.
I definitely can agree that it is better to buy directly from the roasters, especially those who can ethically source their coffee and pay fair wages and prices to everyone involved in the process, however, if a roaster is voluntarily taking a price cut for their product and continuously working with a middle man, there has to be a benefit that their gaining from that middle man. To your point, the benefit that I'm seeing from middle men like Trade would be not only nationwide recognition, but also increased sales volume. The question is, how much of an increase in sales volume are each of these roasters seeing and how much of a price cut are they taking to achieve this. The answers to these questions are going to be situational for each roasters and then ultimately the final question that each of these roasters have to answer is "is the increase in volume at the price cut worth it?". If each of these roasters were able to reach broader audiences and additional customers on their own, they would be selling their product for the same price at their normal margins and be able to grow their business significantly quicker, however, the only reason to work with middle men like Trade is because they can't reach those audiences on their own. In order to gain those additional sales, there has to be a price to pay as Trade is obviously able to bring those additional customers in. With that being said, that decision is made by each of these roasters who work with them and if they decided that they didn't want to take a price cut and they demanded a "fair price" for their product, then they wouldn't chose to work with Trade. I personally used Trade for 2 years and I loved the convenience and variety that I got from their service and I can also say that I'm almost certain that even for the same price, I would have never bought coffee from most, if not all, of the roasters I got coffee from for the sheer fact that I would have never discovered them. I recently stopped using Trade and started purchasing coffee with a subscription from a local coffee roaster in my town because I wanted to directly support them rather than a marketing budget from a large company, however, that was a decision I made when I knew how to go out and find local or ethical roasters to purchase coffee from, something I didn't know prior to using Trade. I think your content is great and the conversations you start are fantastic and should be brought to light more often because the more that people share their own experiences and opinions, the more everyone can learn!
I get the reasons you cited. Living in San Diego like yourself, we have access to some amazing coffee roasters. But I remember when the military sent me Jacksonville, NC and there was no good coffee or specialty roasters. I can see subscription services benefiting those who live in rural areas or lack coffee roasters near them and want to try multiple companies with an easier service
I had a Trade subscription for about a year starting at the end of 2019. I was turned onto it from a friend I was visiting around Christmas that year. I had the premium subscription and I had my Trade selected bags delivered every 5th week but, I was ordering from tons of roasters through Trade during that time. I would frequently visit the roaster's website before ordering through Trade. It was almost always cheaper to buy the same bag of specialty coffee using Trade instead of through the roaster. As I'm flipping through some of my receipt emails, I'm seeing a subscription discount that looks to be around 10% off per bag and that's coupled with "free" shipping. I would pay $18-22 total for a bag that would have cost around $25-30 total to order directly from the roaster. Anyway, after I spent like $1500 on coffee during the year I had the subscription, I canceled it. I still buy specialty bags on occasion from roasters, but the majority of the time I roast at home. If I'm traveling, I always make a point to try and find local roasters to visit. Edit: I only mention price because that was the primary reason I used them more than a month or two, and I don't see anyone else mentioning it. Although, you did hit on the shipping discount. I did also like how easy it was to find roasters I'd never heard of and try tons of different kinds of coffee with just a couple of clicks on the website. They do make it very easy. I would also be curious to see what those margins look like and where the corners are being cut.
Hey Sam, thanks for watching and sharing your experience! Trade does offer discounts on shipping and the bags on subscriptions that are more than one bag when bought in advance. But I think we all know that free shipping and discounts all come from somewhere, so likely it’s coming out of the profits made by roasters. But that’s just my educated guess. They do make it painfully easy, so I definitely understand why people would like them and stick around.
One thing I like about trade is they have their own scale of roast level. I’m sure many have experienced a coffee that says it’s light roasted coffee but when you get it, it’s actually medium or something… Trade actually has their own measurement that is pretty dependable. That helps me choose a bag that I would actually like or maybe would have not looked at because I thought it was a light roast and I prefer mediums, but it is actually a medium-dark (that has happened many times). It certainly makes you feel more assured that what you’re getting is something you’d like. At the same time, if you want random beans, then you can still get that too. There’s definitely a space for these services, but I wouldn’t mind more transparent pricing and information about how they serve the roasters. That being said, I still go to many local shops or if I’m traveling will stop by and try out their latte and buy a bag too.
Spro' getting into some investigative journalism! Love it. Really enjoyed this video, cool to learn about the side of coffee business that is not exposed or understood by myself who accesses coffee as a consumer. Cheers mate P.S. love a bitta sass to finish off haha
I live in India (so not in Trade's market) and I have a subscription to Aramse. They're kind of the polar opposite of trade in that they're just two people and they have partnerships with a bunch of Indian roasters and they send good coffees that they've tasted out to their subscribers. For me, this has meant that I get good coffee from good people and I've ordered a ton of coffee from the roasters separately as well. Considering the number of roasters in the US, I don't know if this is a workable model there, but the "person with good taste running a subscription service" is not something I've seen a whole lot of. Maybe it's antithetical to the endless growth model that a lot of people have in mind? I don't know.
I love somewhere with a big shortage of fresh high quality coffee options. Trade allows me to have access to fresh great coffee and an affordable price. For example, I recently switched to the two pound bag and most recently I got a bag of Drink Coffee Do Stuff’s Party Wave, a coffee I have had before and I really like. Two pounds on trade cost me $35, shipping included, which is $1.09 an ounce. On their website they sell a 12oz bag with 10% subscription discount plus shipping for $21.13, $1.76 an ounce. The only other option they have is a five pound bag with free shipping that just beats trade by 4 cents an ounce. I would love to support the roaster directly but in my experience their prices don’t compare to Trade, Whole Foods, or even Target.
I've never actually heard of the Trade company... Maybe it's not a big thing in Canada, but I did see a site pop up that asked questions about what type of coffees and brew methods you like and would curate a selection of coffees for you, and send you a few from different roasters every month or something like that, which is kinda neat, (Looking at Trades site now, it actually may have been trade! Totally forgot what they were called) I do like to make my own choices usually and I don't get the sense that having a middle man is going to save you any money really. So I prefer to go direct and order from quality roasters.
Yeah, this is pretty much where I land. I like to know more about the traceability of the coffee and price transparency. And sure, I could get this by navigating directly to roaster’s website, but why not just order from them directly then? I’m also someone who tends to stick with a handful of roasters that produce coffee that I like, I’m not really interested yet in trying every roaster out there. I’m also much more likely to try out a new roaster that was recommended by a fellow coffee nerd via discord or the like versus an ad. Thanks for the video, man. I really enjoyed this one.
Thanks Jeff, and thanks for sharing your thoughts. I definitely think more so than ever coffee drinkers are becoming more and more aware of the issues these kinds of third party subscriptions pose, and I hope that trend will continue.
I recently canceled trade because they were doing shrinkflation without telling customers. I had started feeling like my coffee wasn’t lasting as long (I had a year of subscriptions) and then I started researching and yeah. It was a great start to my espresso journey, but their algorithm is always a bit off and I used to pick the queue. I think I’m at a point now where I can choose which roasters to purchase from, but I’m also going to stick to local roasters for quite sometime.
So I looked for some info on this and couldn’t find any solid evidence, but I was told that Trade is pushing their roasters to drop to a 10oz bag because that reduces shipping costs on their end, which means more profit. Seems possible as large stores like Wholefoods pushed for 12oz bags over 16oz and now most US roasters now consist 12oz the standard.
@@Sprometheus I get it, I’m not upset at the change just the lack of up front mentioning it. No transparency, just less coffee. Didn’t know that about Whole Foods but it’s funny because a local roaster here still does it by the pound and it’s a similar price to the 12oz bags. They’ve been in business for like 3 generations and are based out of NYC. I was curious why they were still 16oz but it makes sense knowing this now.
When I first heard of Trade I almost instantly knew I wouldn't like them. For context I'm a big music/audio guy and I'm a coffee enthusiast. I had a feeling that Trade would be bad just from the fact that it was one of those companies who did a massive internet advertising campaign. None of those sponsor-every-youtuber companies have ever made a good product, so naturally I assumed Trade didn't make a good product.
I have been using a trade subscription as a way to try many different coffees from a wide range of roasters. Many more than are available here in southwest Michigan. I still buy regularly from a couple of very good local roasters. For me this has allowed me to maximize my exposure to different coffee.
I live in Charlottesville, VA and we have five or six local roasters here. In combination they offer relatively affordable specialty coffee with a wide range of process and flavors. When I am about to run out of coffee I simply go to a local coffee shop, have a cup of espresso or pour over, and come out with a bag of beans. Sometimes, I'd pick a bag and ask if the coffee shop have the same beans on the menu for pour overs. If so I'd also order a cup of pour over and make a mental note of the taste and try to achieve that when brewing at home. I also order coffee from different roasters directly online. Overall, I don't like the subscription model, be it from Trade or directly from roasters, because the process feels much less organic. I also don't like the pressure of having to finish a bag before the next one arrives.
It’s so apropos that you post this video. I’m struggling through this dilemma in my coffee journey now. I’m not a beginner when it comes to coffee, maybe even past intermediate, but I’m no where close to expert. Trade has exposed me to a lot of different roasters but it’s always felt “icky”. Maybe it was the onslaught of ads two years ago did it for me. So I would like to unsubscribe but locally I have limited options. I wish you would make a follow up video to this about how to find your taste because now I just receive an order, make my coffee and either enjoy or I don’t. After I go through; blend or single origin, roast level, region, elevation, process and finally my dose/recipe at the taste I feel like I like the final product but I’m not really sure how or why I got there. Maybe the answer is I just need to try more coffee and keep paying attention. Thanks for changing my coffee game and thanks for this video. I know it took guts to post this. Your videos are great keep up the good work.
Hey Shaun, thanks for watching and sharing your experience. I would say that in your case as described Trade or another subscription is a perfect way to help you find your preferences, and then you need to ask yourself how much variation do you want? In the end some coffees will hit and others will miss, and that’s just the way goes for all of us. I do have a video on reading a coffee bag and explaining in general what things like elevation, processing and the like mean for the coffee itself. Anyway, thanks again for watching and the kind words!
Thank you for this video. I have few options for local roasters but, have come across some at my local Target store. Unfortunately the coffee tends to be already a month old. I have been considering a subscription service to get my coffee more fresh and give me access to a wider variety of roasters. But, I am concerned with how Trade does business. Clive Coffee and Whole Latte Love both have subscription services, I believe. Do you know how they compare to Trade? Does Trade or any of the others nickel and dime the roasters like Amazon does to the retailers/ manufacturers that sell through Amazon? I avoid purchasing through Amazon because I believe they use unfair practices. I have seen it first hand at a company I used to work for.
I've been very fortunate to have a local roaster with a subscription program. He rotates which beans/roast I'm shipped, which gives me the best of both worlds.
Thank you for making this video! I'm new to expresso and have received 2 batches from my subscription (middleman). The roaster who sent the 2nd batch smartly included their business card with a barcode for discount. It’s been sitting on my counter for a week. After watching your video, I ordered three bags from them, including some 4-oz single origin coffee I’ve been wondering about. The roaster is called Color.
As an Australian, I personally haven't seen any Trade adds but I do use a similar service from Three Thousand Thieves coffee, they curarate an espresso and filter from a selected roaster each month and privide a background on the roaster and to a lesser extent the origin and producer. Along with Brew recipe's for both espresso and filter. I personally love it. There is no way I would have every bought coffee from most of these roasters without this service. I am still pretty fresh on my coffee journey and don't think I've even scratched the surface of what's out there, so to be able to sample some of the best roasters in Australia is worth it for me.
Thanks Steve, I appreciate the support. I tend to consider myself the anti-establishment coffee creator, so you’ll likely find things not said on other channels here.
i currently have a subscription with a great roastery in milan and i buy straight from them. from farmer to roaster to my cup is a great balance for me, plus the price is even lower than trade with more clarity and accountability. FYI the roastery is Cafezal and their subscriprion is 22€-$/month plus shipping for two 250g bags or 40 for four, and all their coffees are in the 86-90 score range. it's the convenience of trade without the shady business practices. Chances are that in every major area there's a great roastery that offers this kind of service, so i strongly suggest everyone to look into that before yielding to big coffee.
The accounting/financial side is really interesting. I wonder if there is a point of economies of scale for smaller roasters. Yes, they don't make much from a bag, but they could go from selling 1000 bags to 10,000 bags. The profit margin may be slim (or non-existent) via trade, but it could push volume enough for the roaster to use it as a point to seek their own VC investment, or to buy more efficient equipment that will benefit all production and not just that destined for trade. Overall though I would love to see more transparency and thank you for raising this topic. I buy from roasters whenever I can and nothing beats that relationship you can build with small businesses.
I'm fairly new to the coffee scene, so when I graduated from instant to whole bean I felt I needed to utilize a service that would help expose me to a variety of roasters. I subscribed to Trade with the same intention that you suggested - to get some samples and then make a decision from those samples on who I'd like to buy from directly. This video reminded me that I believe my initial subscription introduction is finished so I should look into canceling and picking the roaster I enjoyed. I want to stay local where possible, so I'm going to go with one of the local roasters I sampled. That said, yes, I'm sure that the profit margin on those coffees isn't great, however, no one has twisted these roasters' arms and forced them into a partnership with Trade. I'm sure they weighed the pros and cons before agreeing to work with them. One of my gripes was shared by another commenter, however - they don't sell their coffees in 1lb bags. This made deciding on the frequency of my subscription a real pain, because I knew how quickly I'd go through a pound, but it was HARD to find the weight of the bags on Trade, so I had to guess.
I think Trade is a great tool to educate and introduce beginners to high quality coffee. They were really a driving force in my knowledge of tasting different regions, processes, varieties, roasters, etc. while I was learning about the craft from other sources, and now I am a coffee enthusiast a couple years later. Nowadays I go on and off with trade every few months, using them to try a variety of coffees from roasters I otherwise wouldn’t know about, then I pause my subscription and either buy from one of the roasters I had now heard about, local roasters, etc. I think if you’re into coffee and always want to try new things Trade can be a great tool to eventually facilitate consumer relationships with roasters you wouldn’t have had.
I didn't even bother signing up for Trade. I poked around their website, found some roasters, and ended up ordering directly. I still order from Alma, I love their coffee so much that I'm a regular customer. I do subscribe to Atlas, and their single origin stuff is nice. But admittedly I haven't really looked much into their actual business practices.
I have been using Trade as an alternative to the Hawaiian coffee roaster that I had been using for years because I was interested in being exposed to different coffees and roast levels and because my regular roaster often was running out of some of the single-origin beans that I preferred. So what's the best alternative to Trade. There really isn't a good specialty roaster close to where I live, so I'm stuck with mail order for now.
To be quiet incendiary; thank-you for having the integrity to call this shit out. It just strangles the supply chain and takes business from those whom need it most.
Sustainability is missed by maketing people same way in any other industry. True sustainability comes with transparency. There are many guidelines and tools available for different industries. for food, i would say fair trade is a good example, I know nothing is perfect but we as consumers need to educate ourself and remember that if you should pay everyone down the vaule chain a fair price. that is cost more but end of the day that coffee should taste much more satisfying. :) If I am not mistaken, Tim in Oslo has good collaborations with coffee producers so does Jacu from Ålesund. Love from Norway. PS: yes, on avg norwegians drink 1.5 ltr of coffee every day. :D
Fascinating discussion. As a roaster, I can attest to the amount of effort and work to get that coffee ready for purchase. The margins are thin making this kind of company difficult for small roasters. Yes, you may get exposure but if they are subscribed to Trade, then they likely aren't going to be"your" customer; they are Trades. Difficult Trade to make.... yes, pun intended 😜 thanks for covering this!
I've had a wonderful experience with my Atlas Coffee Club sub. Every bag of beans I have received has been delicious and I love the info they provide on where the beans are from and how they are grown etc. Perhaps I'm ignorant on their business background though.
I've just started a subscription from Notes coffee in the UK, I was recommended to try them when I was in London, really enjoyed the coffee they served. Went home and had been trying some of their coffees and decided that instead of hopelessly trying to decide which to order each month that I'd subscribe and be surprised each month and hopefully widen my knowledge and taste range.
I have a subscription from Counter Culture coffee and I wondered about this issue. I have heard many stories like this, about abused employees, and I want to support a good company. I couldn't find anything worthy of concern from their company but I'm always suspicious... thanks for making insightful videos like this. Being aware is the first step!
I used Trade in 2018 when I first got into this hobby because I had no idea where to start. After a couple deliveries I had to cancel because I was sent a dark roast, which I've never really enjoyed. Taking a gamble with a subscription service doesn't make sense for me anymore. Run the risk of getting something I don't like, or just do the legwork myself. I do find value in their list of roasters. Whenever I want to try something new, I just go to that list and order direct.
Great video, I'd cancelled Trade a long time ago, very interesting information. - I go direct to Noble Coffee and my local Backyard Beans roaster a short walk from my house.
Can you look at 'Trade' as a distributor, similar to a grocery store? e.g. Let's say Trade buys a bag at $20 and then on-sells it to the consumer at $21 - that's $1 worth of 'marketing/distribution' in order to get the bag into a consumer's hands. Perhaps you would get more customers just by being on the Trade platform - but I don't know. Thought provoking video! (even if I'm not based in the US & have no intention of ever interacting with a company similar to Trade).
It's funny you should mention that. The best local coffee shop in my area doesn't roast, but "distributes" from several more eminent places that are a bit further out. They're charging $22 for a bag that retails at the roaster for $18. Now suppose they're purchasing wholesale for $15 - ? That's a pretty decent profit.
I have recently chosen to end my Trade subscription after they started pushing for buying 2 bags of coffee at a time for free shipping. At that point, I could buy the same (if not more coffee as per the reduction of per bag amount of coffee mentioned in a comment below) amount of coffee with free shipping from any roaster so I went that route instead.
I don't think the 90% subscription retention means people are NOT necessarily also ordering from roasters. Not sure how Trade works exactly but If it's a good subscription service, like Monogram roasters one I've tried, you can pause or skip / delay a shipment if you have too much coffee already. If a coffee stands out it is possible someone would take notice and remember they liked that roaster or at least that coffee from them, and hopefully want to try something else from them too.
i actually switched off trade end of last year after using it for about a year and a half to try lots of good coffee. Tried some roasters that Trade didn't offer; then just about a month ago bought a 5lb directly from a roaster on trade i really liked; vacuum sealed into small bags and froze; so will be my go to coffee for quite awhile.
I think you do make a good point about looking at funding and pricing. Not so much about JAB and who they are, but if Trade recieved huge funding, they're going to try to make more profit to make up for it. And from the consumer side, it can be hard to tell when so many famous roasters deal with Trade, so it sounds totally fine to subscribe through them. I would say however that not all middlemen are bad? Of course it's a spectrum with nuances and ymmv. But in this case, by giving up a bit of profit to Trade, the roasters can also spend less time worrying about managing subscriptions, payments, chargebacks, claims and so on. If your plan as a roaster is to grow your volume and make economies of scale, then such subscription service can be worth it?
I’d love to be a direct customer of some of the rosters I’ve been introduced to by Trade, but I have yet to find a roaster (even with a subscription or a price lower than what Trade sells for) that doesn’t charge like 50% of the cost of the coffee for shipping. Spending an extra $10 to ship a $20 bag of coffee is not something I can justify.
Are there any coffee subscription services that are reasonably affordable? I am able to get a bag locally for 80 cents per ounce, which is about the most I am willing to spend. Nearly $2 per ounce is outrageous.
Haha well there are already two, and considering no one reads the comments before commenting there will likely be more. Shame that a geographical error will in some cases overshadow the broader point…
@@Sprometheus btw I've read the two that's why I'm not pointing out the mistake - it just occured to me that now you're going to have an avalanche of those :D good for RUclips algorithm, maybe haha. And, of course, I hope they do get past the mistake to get to the point of the vid after all
It’s drop shipping for coffee, and I wish I thought of it first. Have been a customer for about 3 years, and convenience plus variety makes it really easy to like. And hey at least their shipping bags are compostable which is pretty cool. $9m funding also sounds pretty small compared to what a lot of funding rounds look like in tech. I do wish they had an actual app to help record tasting notes. I never use their thumbs up or down ratings, lack of specificity. If it’s a poor ROI for roasters, why does it keep growing? Either it’s actually fine and pays for itself through “free” advertising and exposure or no one is doing the math. However the switch to smaller bags…that does not make me happy.
I think the blind tastings from Angels Cup are a very cool way to learn about coffee flavor, origins and varieties without preconceived notions. Do you have any thoughts on them?
I used to use trade and I feel they do an excellent business in many ways where customer service is concerned, but I use coffee at an extremely inconsistent rate in my house and the uniform subscription model was a pain in the ass after awhile. Trade partners with excellent roasters, but I think rather than pay below wholesale for the coffee they get from these roasters, most all of them at least both markup substantially when buying direct or through trade, and I say this because the roaster I found where I live sells very good fresh coffee but for significantly cheaper even when using higher grade specialty coffee. Ultimately I stopped using trade because I just didn't need them anymore. Their business model is convenient for newcomers to specialty coffee but I doubt it can keep its retention where it is at forever. I did find I really like Methodical though. Those guys know what the hell they're doing.
I’m a Trade subscriber. This is basic economics…quantity=discount. As you said…roasters wouldn’t participate if it wasn’t beneficial to their business.
This video is very 'roasters' focused and not 'consumers' focused. I think specialty coffee is one of the rare situations where consumers are so heavily focused on supporting their preferred brands. I think it's likely due to the niche nature of coffee as well as the artistic aspect of roasting high-quality coffee. Also, coffee roasters are typically not multi-billion dollar corporations. Having said all that -- I'm typically more focused on 'what best serves the most customers as opposed to the other way around (within reason). For that reason, I think Trade is a killer service.
do you have any thoughts on fellow drops? personally i like it, as i find it hard to make choices as to what coffee to get. i also enjoy the style of coffees they pick, and find them to be usually from good roasters.
Well said! In General, I try to buy any goods nearest to the producer. These middle men just take more and more from the guys actually doing the work. I buy direct, in person and my coffee is cheaper, I also know the roaster is getting a higher percentage of what I pay.
This was great. It's exactly where I'm at in my coffee journey. Starting to want to branch out from my main roaster and my occasional second roaster to sample exceptional and widely varied other coffees. I wish there was some info graphic or "map" or proposed flow chart to help know I've sampled main families of flavor to learn and develop my palate. I'm at the point where I feel the staff at a shop see I'm asking for a recommendation but either they tune out the actual question I'm asking, or in one case the guy told me has ADHD or such so he doesn't drink coffee even early in the day it makes him bounce off walls. They mostly don't seem to really know the different flavor profiles of the blends. Which admittedly has to be tricky. I wish there were a cafe event where you could go and they'd have a bunch of different beans you could choose between to sit, sample a few in one sitting. James Hoffmann did a world coffee tasting it was seriously expensive, prohibitively. But even so. They haven't done another since I've started sleeping so much less and sipping so much more. This was a really helpful video, helping me feel my overwhelm isn't just me. I've seen a couple of in-country mail order roasters I might try, but each has many options and I still am not always convinced I taste what I THINK I taste. Teriyaki, in Burundi. I'd asked for a bean with a lot of sweetness, whcih I guess teriyaki has. But it was really too umami for me. Those flavor wheels are a conspiracy to make newbies feel inadequate, when they can't identify any of the roaster's flavor notes. Spro do you ever dabble in Turkish coffee? Thanks again for your suggestion re: PicoPresso. Loving knocking out my relatively dry pucks and yes, barista tingles a bit. Thanks for recommending Wallace..
Which there was an equivalent in Canada since trade doesn't ship here. Love the idea of something different every month, especially as I'm just getting into the hobby and don't know any of the roasters as of yet.
Great video, I really got into coffee subscriptions during the pandemic after I tried all of my local roaster's coffee lineup. Personally I think Trade provides a lot of convenience and gives credibility to the roasters who are on the site. To me I think there's a lot on the margin where the roasters are better off selling coffee through trade and taking a hit to their slim margins compared to not selling the volume of coffee at all. Maybe there's a strategy where roasters will put their flagship beans on Trade to encourage consumers to look at their other exotics lineups. For example I tried Steady State and now will order their limited offerings from their website.
I can definitely see that maybe being the case for some roasters, but many of the roasters on Trade are pretty sizable. To keep up with Trade orders you need to have a pretty established roasting program, so I think most of them see it as a marketing cost, but would rather get you to come off trade and go direct with a sub from them.
I think for a subscription to exist it needs to add value, and being a middleman for something I can just buy myself isn’t it. However, I feel like certain subscriptions can be beneficial. For example, with Yonder’s coffee subscription, they buy a large order from an international roaster that would otherwise not be cost effective for an individual in the US to purchase from themselves, thereby reducing shipping costs and introducing customers to coffees they actually can’t get without the subscription.
I saw no need to enter coffee subscription. Firstly there's a coffee roaster that's very close to my home. Secondly I can buy it online, if I want to try a different arabica. Also coffee subscription is not a thing here in Indonesia.
well it's an obvious business modell. they buy the coffee the roaster could not sell(old) and more and more they buy in mass which lead in the same model as industrial coffee. At the end only some roasters with a big infrastructure will profit from this. the same as book editorials on amazon. I would say that random house does not have the same conditions as the small bookshop around the corner
My (almost) local Coffee Shop went with subscription and I went onboard with that. They buy coffee from the roasters they work with. It is not a big operation (at least for now), feels more like a community thing for the fans of this place and people running it. So in a way with this subscription I support my favourite place and roasters. At least I hope so.
Great video Spro. Totally agree here. But one has to wonder about you talking about roasters not getting paid a fair amount, is that why you haven't had any coffee available for a while? Because I'm sure I'm not alone here but if its a money issue id gladly pay more for your coffee! But then again I know you don't have a roaster etc... a lot more going into it than money. I'm just curious for selfish reasons lol. Pony boy needs more little giant
Thanks Jacob! And no they had nothing to do with lack of activity at little Giant. If you can believe it I’ve had a snafu with getting bags designed, and also dropping to 8oz bags and figuring out the current costs of roasting. There are a lot of moving parts and with summer here I’ve been so focused on touching grass every once in awhile I just haven’t prioritized getting it all in line. I was planning on common back this month, I may just do some super simple labels and move forward.
I have a subscription with driftaway. Would you take a look at them. They say they’re completely transparent about how their money is spent and they detail it. Does it look right to you? Does look like everyone’s getting a fair deal?
I wonder if perhaps it might make sense to think of Trade for roasters in comparision to opportunities like selling white-label coffee that will be sold under someone else's brand, I'd think in both cases there might be a hit to the margin but getting coffee sales that the roaster otherwise wouldn't, and low conversion to new customers buying direct.
Hi…. U mention that u got a coffee company and that u r a roaster. Can u tell me please what is the brand and it can be bought worldwide. 🙏🙏🙏🙏 i really love your content
Or just view the companies and directly go to them. It’s how I found panther coffee and I’m even local. I don’t use trade but they do highlight companies as well.
I like to support companies I believe in and owners/employees who I know and trust. It's a much more fulfilling experience for me and my business owning friends. 😌
This is a great video. Thanks for the honesty and transparency . I started a Trade subscription back in 2019, mostly for the "one-stop-shop" convenience and variety. I love finding new roasters and seeing what folks are doing in other parts of the country, but recently cancelled my subscription in favor of being more loyal to roasters that are more local to me. If we're talking about sustainability, I think staying local, and considering the ridiculous distances we're shipping a bag of coffee, should be a priority. I will save my excitement for finding new coffee until I actually travel to a place and get to experience it like in the old days when you actually felt like you discovered something.
I’ve been an Onyx Coffee subscription customer for a couple of years. I’ve always got excellent specialty coffees from them. Shipping is free for me since I was grandfathered in when they started charging for shipping. I’ve also visited their coffee shop when we traveled through Arkansas. I find they’re transparent with information on their website about the cost of the coffee from their coffee growers. Are they really owned by JAB?
Yeah I will always recommend getting on a direct sub from a roaster, and one like Onyx that also has a large variety of coffee makes it even better. And no, they aren’t owned by JAB, they joked about it on April fools a few years ago, but they do sell their coffee on trade with is JAB funded.
@TheRealSprometheus the more interesting take for me is their change in roast profile. Onyx has gone to a more developed profile and I would wonder how many of the trade coffees operate in and around that same more developed area.
I live in cornwall in the uk. The local coffee shop I use roasts their own beans.. Could you explain more about the tasting notes and info that comes with the coffee like area altitude and wash process. Perhaps more from the farmers and producers view point. Thanks
My city is relatively small, as cities go, but between coffee shops that roast their own and mom and pop shops who sell bags from roasters they like, I've never really felt the need for a sub. I'm sure there are many cool places I'm missing out on, but it's kinda like Netflix - you'll never consume it all.
While I totally agree that the portion Trade takes home from the roaster is possibly very sizable and would go much further had it gone to the roasters instead of Trade, I think Trade also helps these roaster capture and access a wider part of the market that they would have not gotten otherwise. On top of that, I also think one of the reasons Trade got their prices so low is that they secure orders in a bigger quantity. Just to be clear, I do not have any clear numbers on what analysis they do behind the scenes, but thinner margins across a bigger quantity can sometimes be more than bigger margins on smaller quantity (with a huge assumption that orders from Trade does not takeaway existing direct orders from the roasters). That being said, I totally agree that we all be better off by deleting the middle man and support the roasters directly!
Interesting take on Trade. I have local roasters i buy from but Trade is convenient and exposes me to a variety of roasters i would never have heard of otherwise. My view is they are good for the "coffee world" and i think the unsubstantiated shade you throwing at them is a little unnecessary. I think people should be able to enjoy coffee any way they choose without judgement. I'm sure roasters connected with trade can opt out if they choose to but would likely miss out on the exposure they get from being involved.
Not sure how but I was previously unfamiliar with Trade Coffee. Nice expose on them. 👍🏻 I shall avoid and instead support the coffee roasters direct. 😊
I have actually been annoyed that some coffee roasters do not provide a good or simple subscription service. The other problem I have is that I like the variety that subscribing from Trade Coffee provides. My interval with them is not spot on, so I fill in the voids with my locals Piexoto and Cartel.
A thing you didn't bring up that I'd like to add is just the unnecessary shipping/emissions that coffee subscriptions cause. I get that not everyone lives near good coffee, but I bet more people do than they think: in my experience the cheaper price of land/utilities in more remote areas allow for smaller and lower risk operations to pop up. Furthermore anyone in a city of any decent size in na/Europe is going to have good coffee nearby. Heck even if you like having it shipped to you, getting it directly from the roaster still cuts out an entire shipment of the roaster sending it to the middle man first. I've been pretty perplexed by these large international/national subscription services for a while, and I'm glad that you addressed it.
That’s true. I didn’t get into the sustainability practice. Like you mentioned, shipping definitely isn’t without its issues. And don’t get me started on international coffee subscriptions, I don’t know anyone can justify those.
Thanks…totally agree. I was gifted a Trade sub. Cool enough but when i needed customer service, the results were layered and slow. Ikve found a few roasters that work for me much better than that did. Direct is the way!
As a Portlander, I stopped going to Stumptown when I learnt that they are owned by JAB. With all the other local (or national) roasters available that are more in line with 3. wave coffee ethics, I am not looking back.
Think Risk vs Reward. I love my current roaster. I know what to expect and get a great cup. Every time I watch social media and think yea I need something new I go out buy an expensive bag and get highly disappointed or end up just saying meh. So for me trying the hottest newest thing every ten minutes is just not worth it.
Trade is dodgy AF. The way they handled their downsizing of their packaging was completely unethical IMO, so I cancelled them. The problem with having an absurdly-long drive to any roaster, is that, when you do the right thing and order direct, you get absolutely reamed 100% of the time, on shipping. These small outfits pay through the nose for shipping, and have to pass it on to the customer, and end up not being competitive. I have Atlas now, and it's kind of crap, and they're likely just as corrupt. I need a new plan.
Buy a roaster, you can get a handheld Hive and roast some super solid coffee in 125g batches or get something a little more expensive but can roast more. That’s definitely an option for those willing to take on a new hobby haha
I noticed that Trade recently started "strongly suggesting" (or really requiring at this point) that roasters they work with actually decrease the amount of coffee they're selling through Trade to 310 grams from 1lb (or about 454 grams). This was allegedly done to "help save on shipping costs". This was a relatively silent change on Trade's end, and ultimately end user did not see a change/decrease in price, but received less coffee. Roasters also had to either go order new bags with "310g" printed on them, or slap a sticker over the 1lb marking on their bags to comply with the new weight. For most roaster, if you order coffee directly from them, you will receive the traditional 1lb (~454g) of coffee instead of 310g for around the same (or sometimes less) price listed on Trade. I personally wasn't a huge fan of how silent this change seemed to be for the end user and how this kind of forced roasters to change their packaging and send less coffee, so I opted to cancel my subscription and just start ordering coffee from some of my favorite roasters; Many of which I actually did discover through Trade.
I don't hate Trade, and as mentioned I did discover a lot of roasters whose coffees I really enjoy, but it always did seem a little weird ordering coffee from a roaster through them when I could just directly support the roaster instead.
I don't think roasters send you 1 lbs of coffee. It is usually 12 OZ (340 grams).
I learned about Trade from another channel (a cooking channel actually) and it actually sparked my interest in coffee. Fast forward almost a year and now I have an espresso machine and a grinder. What I don't have is a subscription! From the very beginning, that sponsorship piece made me ask the question: "Why would I want to give money to a middle man?" The whole insert was a beautifully-shot interview with a roaster that got me really excited about their family business and not at all interested in subscribing to Trade. I only hope more coffee enthusiasts feel the same way!
Agreed! And I’m all for it if this is the trajectory people take! I know from a customer side Trade and others are fine, but I think we as consumers in 2022 should make an effort to ensure our money goes where we want it to.
Yeah, and if you think of the whole supply chain of coffee, from farmer to you, you'd see how many unnecessary chainrings are there. Just imagine how much better life would a farmer have, if there would not be anybody else between between him and the roastery. But yeah, not gonna happen
Was it...Adam Ragusea?
@@TheBoardGarage I came here to ask this as well! It’s gotta be.
@@ClariMatt05 Likely is. I remember the interview with Alma Coffee. And they're great, I order direct from them all the time. My favorite coffee by far.
I've been a trade sub for ~ 2 years now. Before this I scoured the internet looking for coffee roasters and compiled a list in excel that I would refer back to every week to order new coffee. This got tiring and I ended up buying from the same place more often than trying new roasters. Trade allows me to get exposure to roasters I otherwise wouldn't have heard of and gives me a place to track what I liked/disliked about the coffee.
I still buy coffee from local roasters and roasters I have had on trade, I usually pause my sub with trade while I go through this coffee.
I appreciate the video, it gives us something to think about.
For sure, I know that subscriptions definitely have the market cornered on convenience, and a lot of us don’t have the time for excel spreadsheets. I mean that’s farther than I’ve ever gone haha.
I just thought it may be worth bringing some of this up to the surface for those who maybe weren’t aware.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience!
curious since youve been a subscriber for 2 years now. how old are the bags once it gets to your place?
@@iprevailedx I’ve been a subscriber of trade for over a year. The orders basically get shipped out from the roaster directly and the roast date is usually within 2-5 days of when it was shipped, so it’s always fresh. I say 2-5 days because it depends where the beans are coming from.
Maybe I’m spoiled for choice here in NYC, but going to a coffee shop and picking up a freshly roasted bag is one of my favorite activities.
And unlike a subscription, you can sample the product - made by a professional - before you buy it!
That’s true, but definitely those of us who live in big cities we are spoiled. I grew up in Montana and even now I believe there is only one specialty shop in town.
That does bring up an interesting point though, I wonder what cities and states have their highest rates of subscribers.
Many suburban folk have zero close coffee roasters.
Affirmed, as a suburbanite, you're spoiled. Don't take it for granted! 😢
I almost never like the pours I get from "professionals." Generally taste more under-extracted, and that's even from the roasters themselves. I usually have to go off origin, process, and lastly tasting notes. However, I do like picking up a bag. I also like getting a bag in the mail. Probably same dopamine effect for me.
Holy cow! A roaster/cafe opened up in my town YESTERDAY!!! Less than 5 miles from my house!
Sorry, totally off topic and not relevant to the conversation, but you said Luxembourg, Germany, which made it sound like Luxembourg was a city in Germany. Of course, JAB is a German company, with an HQ in Luxembourg, but Luxembourg is also a separate, sovereign country. *phew* there, pedantry over
Haha yeah someone already mentioned that. The articles I read definitely gave the impression it’s associated with Germany, confusingly worded + American education means I have no idea on that one haha.
That’s right - Luxembourg is an independent country, it is the closest thing the EU has to a tax haven. Inherently more sus.
Yes and where's your apology man
Brilliant and helpful insight; Just last night I was looking in my area for specialty coffee AFTER having looked into coffee subscriptions. I'm in Seattle and have been buying the same coffee for years and like many my coffee passion was fanned when I discovered Mr. Hoffmann and other equally passionate 'Citizen Baristas' such as yourself. When Google and I went exploring last night all I was getting were cafes. You have educated me that I need to be looking for 'roasters'. That being said, you're on to something. I want a place where I can access coffee from all roasters and buy what I want from whom I want as long as I'm not giving my cash to a middleman!!
Actually, Trade no longer sells at the same price as the roaster. I considered using them recently (without the subscription) and they were much higher than purchasing straight to the roaster. I used them in the past and that helped me to do exactly what you mention: an understanding of which roaster and coffee profile that I liked. I dropped them because I started roasting myself.
The example I showed in the video was the exact same price and was taken from both sites less than a week ago.
@@Sprometheus I did try without subscription, in my case it was with Temple
@@cvandenhaute You sure it was the same size? Maybe a discount sale in the site? I checked before also and had the same prices in a few examples I saw.
Thanks for posting this: I've been alternating buying coffee from local roasters at their shops (I live in SF so there's an embarrassment of riches to choose from) and ordering direct from roasters elsewhere in the US. I had been considering a subscription model but this is firmly pushing me out of that decision.
The Home Barista Coffee forum has been really useful for guiding me to interesting roasters in the US.
Of course! Thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts. And I’m with you, in San Diego we have an embarrassment of riches, plus I roast, plus I have roaster friends all over so I never have to think about where to get coffee.
I hesitate to send people to forums often because they can be toxic (more than my comment section here anyway) But if there are good resources for finding coffee I’m sure home barista is solid. Honestly I would just tell people go to Trades list if you’re looking to try a new roaster and then just look them up and order directly. The costs seem more or less in line.
@@Sprometheus wait, you're in San Diego? Where can I buy your coffee?!
This is exactly how I've used subscriptions in the past, a quick and efficient way to expose myself to a lot of variety in flavors and roasters. If I recall correctly, many of these samples are quite small, and so there is an element of wasteful amounts of packaging as well when considering coffee subscriptions.
I think it’s really the best way to go about most subscriptions that offer a product that can be easily accessible outside of it. In trades favor they do ship full size bags in their “compostable” mailers, but that doesn’t offset actual shipping, or the fact you have to fully remove the shipping label before you compost it.
meh worse is the waste you do dialing in
I agree with you Spromethius. Support your local Cafès! If you like specialty coffee, go experience local cafès and if you like something, try to buy it from them.
Absolutely, if you have local cafes and you like them, and can reasonably do so support them first. But in the case someone needs to order coffee, I always will push for going direct versus third party shippers.
+1 to using trade as an exploration of which roasters you love. I have a subscription right now and I’ve discovered roasters that I like through trade but I’m considering switching to a 2lb bag subscription from some roasters to save money and go straight to the roaster.
Small correction: Luxembourg city is the capital of the country of Luxemburg, which is located between Belgium, France and Germany.
It is also notorious for low/lax taxes (as far as I remember).
Haha well that makes sense why they would base a massive business conglomerates there! Thanks for the heads up, the American education system fails me again.
This is a brilliant video that takes on conglomerates. I am glad that there are folks like you who still have "independent" thinking!
I was gifted a Trade subscription for my birthday last year and I loved it for a while. However, after about 4 months the thought of Trade just being middlemen came to mind. Since then I’ve only bought direct. I actually got hired as a barista at one of the roasters I tried from Trade and I learned a little more about their side of things. Was eye opening.
Oh yeah so you got the full view! Thanks for sharing your experience and for watching. Cheers!
I definitely can agree that it is better to buy directly from the roasters, especially those who can ethically source their coffee and pay fair wages and prices to everyone involved in the process, however, if a roaster is voluntarily taking a price cut for their product and continuously working with a middle man, there has to be a benefit that their gaining from that middle man. To your point, the benefit that I'm seeing from middle men like Trade would be not only nationwide recognition, but also increased sales volume. The question is, how much of an increase in sales volume are each of these roasters seeing and how much of a price cut are they taking to achieve this. The answers to these questions are going to be situational for each roasters and then ultimately the final question that each of these roasters have to answer is "is the increase in volume at the price cut worth it?". If each of these roasters were able to reach broader audiences and additional customers on their own, they would be selling their product for the same price at their normal margins and be able to grow their business significantly quicker, however, the only reason to work with middle men like Trade is because they can't reach those audiences on their own. In order to gain those additional sales, there has to be a price to pay as Trade is obviously able to bring those additional customers in. With that being said, that decision is made by each of these roasters who work with them and if they decided that they didn't want to take a price cut and they demanded a "fair price" for their product, then they wouldn't chose to work with Trade. I personally used Trade for 2 years and I loved the convenience and variety that I got from their service and I can also say that I'm almost certain that even for the same price, I would have never bought coffee from most, if not all, of the roasters I got coffee from for the sheer fact that I would have never discovered them. I recently stopped using Trade and started purchasing coffee with a subscription from a local coffee roaster in my town because I wanted to directly support them rather than a marketing budget from a large company, however, that was a decision I made when I knew how to go out and find local or ethical roasters to purchase coffee from, something I didn't know prior to using Trade. I think your content is great and the conversations you start are fantastic and should be brought to light more often because the more that people share their own experiences and opinions, the more everyone can learn!
I get the reasons you cited. Living in San Diego like yourself, we have access to some amazing coffee roasters. But I remember when the military sent me Jacksonville, NC and there was no good coffee or specialty roasters. I can see subscription services benefiting those who live in rural areas or lack coffee roasters near them and want to try multiple companies with an easier service
Which SD roaster is your favorite?
I had a Trade subscription for about a year starting at the end of 2019. I was turned onto it from a friend I was visiting around Christmas that year. I had the premium subscription and I had my Trade selected bags delivered every 5th week but, I was ordering from tons of roasters through Trade during that time. I would frequently visit the roaster's website before ordering through Trade. It was almost always cheaper to buy the same bag of specialty coffee using Trade instead of through the roaster. As I'm flipping through some of my receipt emails, I'm seeing a subscription discount that looks to be around 10% off per bag and that's coupled with "free" shipping. I would pay $18-22 total for a bag that would have cost around $25-30 total to order directly from the roaster. Anyway, after I spent like $1500 on coffee during the year I had the subscription, I canceled it. I still buy specialty bags on occasion from roasters, but the majority of the time I roast at home. If I'm traveling, I always make a point to try and find local roasters to visit.
Edit: I only mention price because that was the primary reason I used them more than a month or two, and I don't see anyone else mentioning it. Although, you did hit on the shipping discount. I did also like how easy it was to find roasters I'd never heard of and try tons of different kinds of coffee with just a couple of clicks on the website. They do make it very easy. I would also be curious to see what those margins look like and where the corners are being cut.
Hey Sam, thanks for watching and sharing your experience!
Trade does offer discounts on shipping and the bags on subscriptions that are more than one bag when bought in advance. But I think we all know that free shipping and discounts all come from somewhere, so likely it’s coming out of the profits made by roasters. But that’s just my educated guess.
They do make it painfully easy, so I definitely understand why people would like them and stick around.
One thing I like about trade is they have their own scale of roast level. I’m sure many have experienced a coffee that says it’s light roasted coffee but when you get it, it’s actually medium or something… Trade actually has their own measurement that is pretty dependable. That helps me choose a bag that I would actually like or maybe would have not looked at because I thought it was a light roast and I prefer mediums, but it is actually a medium-dark (that has happened many times). It certainly makes you feel more assured that what you’re getting is something you’d like. At the same time, if you want random beans, then you can still get that too. There’s definitely a space for these services, but I wouldn’t mind more transparent pricing and information about how they serve the roasters. That being said, I still go to many local shops or if I’m traveling will stop by and try out their latte and buy a bag too.
Spro' getting into some investigative journalism! Love it.
Really enjoyed this video, cool to learn about the side of coffee business that is not exposed or understood by myself who accesses coffee as a consumer.
Cheers mate
P.S. love a bitta sass to finish off haha
I live in India (so not in Trade's market) and I have a subscription to Aramse. They're kind of the polar opposite of trade in that they're just two people and they have partnerships with a bunch of Indian roasters and they send good coffees that they've tasted out to their subscribers. For me, this has meant that I get good coffee from good people and I've ordered a ton of coffee from the roasters separately as well. Considering the number of roasters in the US, I don't know if this is a workable model there, but the "person with good taste running a subscription service" is not something I've seen a whole lot of. Maybe it's antithetical to the endless growth model that a lot of people have in mind? I don't know.
Are these the same Aramse that have the RUclips channel? Love that channel.
@@Andrew-wp1bz The very same. All of their stuff is great.
I love somewhere with a big shortage of fresh high quality coffee options. Trade allows me to have access to fresh great coffee and an affordable price. For example, I recently switched to the two pound bag and most recently I got a bag of Drink Coffee Do Stuff’s Party Wave, a coffee I have had before and I really like. Two pounds on trade cost me $35, shipping included, which is $1.09 an ounce. On their website they sell a 12oz bag with 10% subscription discount plus shipping for $21.13, $1.76 an ounce. The only other option they have is a five pound bag with free shipping that just beats trade by 4 cents an ounce. I would love to support the roaster directly but in my experience their prices don’t compare to Trade, Whole Foods, or even Target.
I've never actually heard of the Trade company... Maybe it's not a big thing in Canada, but I did see a site pop up that asked questions about what type of coffees and brew methods you like and would curate a selection of coffees for you, and send you a few from different roasters every month or something like that, which is kinda neat, (Looking at Trades site now, it actually may have been trade! Totally forgot what they were called) I do like to make my own choices usually and I don't get the sense that having a middle man is going to save you any money really. So I prefer to go direct and order from quality roasters.
Yeah, this is pretty much where I land. I like to know more about the traceability of the coffee and price transparency. And sure, I could get this by navigating directly to roaster’s website, but why not just order from them directly then? I’m also someone who tends to stick with a handful of roasters that produce coffee that I like, I’m not really interested yet in trying every roaster out there. I’m also much more likely to try out a new roaster that was recommended by a fellow coffee nerd via discord or the like versus an ad.
Thanks for the video, man. I really enjoyed this one.
Thanks Jeff, and thanks for sharing your thoughts. I definitely think more so than ever coffee drinkers are becoming more and more aware of the issues these kinds of third party subscriptions pose, and I hope that trend will continue.
I recently canceled trade because they were doing shrinkflation without telling customers. I had started feeling like my coffee wasn’t lasting as long (I had a year of subscriptions) and then I started researching and yeah.
It was a great start to my espresso journey, but their algorithm is always a bit off and I used to pick the queue.
I think I’m at a point now where I can choose which roasters to purchase from, but I’m also going to stick to local roasters for quite sometime.
So I looked for some info on this and couldn’t find any solid evidence, but I was told that Trade is pushing their roasters to drop to a 10oz bag because that reduces shipping costs on their end, which means more profit. Seems possible as large stores like Wholefoods pushed for 12oz bags over 16oz and now most US roasters now consist 12oz the standard.
@@Sprometheus I get it, I’m not upset at the change just the lack of up front mentioning it. No transparency, just less coffee.
Didn’t know that about Whole Foods but it’s funny because a local roaster here still does it by the pound and it’s a similar price to the 12oz bags. They’ve been in business for like 3 generations and are based out of NYC. I was curious why they were still 16oz but it makes sense knowing this now.
When I first heard of Trade I almost instantly knew I wouldn't like them. For context I'm a big music/audio guy and I'm a coffee enthusiast. I had a feeling that Trade would be bad just from the fact that it was one of those companies who did a massive internet advertising campaign. None of those sponsor-every-youtuber companies have ever made a good product, so naturally I assumed Trade didn't make a good product.
I have been using a trade subscription as a way to try many different coffees from a wide range of roasters. Many more than are available here in southwest Michigan. I still buy regularly from a couple of very good local roasters. For me this has allowed me to maximize my exposure to different coffee.
I live in Charlottesville, VA and we have five or six local roasters here. In combination they offer relatively affordable specialty coffee with a wide range of process and flavors. When I am about to run out of coffee I simply go to a local coffee shop, have a cup of espresso or pour over, and come out with a bag of beans. Sometimes, I'd pick a bag and ask if the coffee shop have the same beans on the menu for pour overs. If so I'd also order a cup of pour over and make a mental note of the taste and try to achieve that when brewing at home. I also order coffee from different roasters directly online. Overall, I don't like the subscription model, be it from Trade or directly from roasters, because the process feels much less organic. I also don't like the pressure of having to finish a bag before the next one arrives.
It’s so apropos that you post this video. I’m struggling through this dilemma in my coffee journey now. I’m not a beginner when it comes to coffee, maybe even past intermediate, but I’m no where close to expert. Trade has exposed me to a lot of different roasters but it’s always felt “icky”. Maybe it was the onslaught of ads two years ago did it for me. So I would like to unsubscribe but locally I have limited options. I wish you would make a follow up video to this about how to find your taste because now I just receive an order, make my coffee and either enjoy or I don’t. After I go through; blend or single origin, roast level, region, elevation, process and finally my dose/recipe at the taste I feel like I like the final product but I’m not really sure how or why I got there. Maybe the answer is I just need to try more coffee and keep paying attention. Thanks for changing my coffee game and thanks for this video. I know it took guts to post this. Your videos are great keep up the good work.
Hey Shaun, thanks for watching and sharing your experience.
I would say that in your case as described Trade or another subscription is a perfect way to help you find your preferences, and then you need to ask yourself how much variation do you want? In the end some coffees will hit and others will miss, and that’s just the way goes for all of us.
I do have a video on reading a coffee bag and explaining in general what things like elevation, processing and the like mean for the coffee itself.
Anyway, thanks again for watching and the kind words!
Thank you for this video. I have few options for local roasters but, have come across some at my local Target store. Unfortunately the coffee tends to be already a month old. I have been considering a subscription service to get my coffee more fresh and give me access to a wider variety of roasters. But, I am concerned with how Trade does business. Clive Coffee and Whole Latte Love both have subscription services, I believe. Do you know how they compare to Trade? Does Trade or any of the others nickel and dime the roasters like Amazon does to the retailers/ manufacturers that sell through Amazon? I avoid purchasing through Amazon because I believe they use unfair practices. I have seen it first hand at a company I used to work for.
I've been very fortunate to have a local roaster with a subscription program. He rotates which beans/roast I'm shipped, which gives me the best of both worlds.
Thank you for making this video! I'm new to expresso and have received 2 batches from my subscription (middleman). The roaster who sent the 2nd batch smartly included their business card with a barcode for discount. It’s been sitting on my counter for a week. After watching your video, I ordered three bags from them, including some 4-oz single origin coffee I’ve been wondering about. The roaster is called Color.
As an Australian, I personally haven't seen any Trade adds but I do use a similar service from Three Thousand Thieves coffee, they curarate an espresso and filter from a selected roaster each month and privide a background on the roaster and to a lesser extent the origin and producer. Along with Brew recipe's for both espresso and filter. I personally love it.
There is no way I would have every bought coffee from most of these roasters without this service. I am still pretty fresh on my coffee journey and don't think I've even scratched the surface of what's out there, so to be able to sample some of the best roasters in Australia is worth it for me.
This, sir, is exactly what I'm here for. Upending corporate shit is my jam. I'm gonna hang around for a while. Thanks and 🖖🏻
Thanks Steve, I appreciate the support. I tend to consider myself the anti-establishment coffee creator, so you’ll likely find things not said on other channels here.
i currently have a subscription with a great roastery in milan and i buy straight from them. from farmer to roaster to my cup is a great balance for me, plus the price is even lower than trade with more clarity and accountability. FYI the roastery is Cafezal and their subscriprion is 22€-$/month plus shipping for two 250g bags or 40 for four, and all their coffees are in the 86-90 score range. it's the convenience of trade without the shady business practices. Chances are that in every major area there's a great roastery that offers this kind of service, so i strongly suggest everyone to look into that before yielding to big coffee.
Good input. I like buying from local roasters but also I’m researching subscriptions to explore what’s out there since I’m new to specialty coffee.
The accounting/financial side is really interesting. I wonder if there is a point of economies of scale for smaller roasters. Yes, they don't make much from a bag, but they could go from selling 1000 bags to 10,000 bags. The profit margin may be slim (or non-existent) via trade, but it could push volume enough for the roaster to use it as a point to seek their own VC investment, or to buy more efficient equipment that will benefit all production and not just that destined for trade.
Overall though I would love to see more transparency and thank you for raising this topic. I buy from roasters whenever I can and nothing beats that relationship you can build with small businesses.
I'm fairly new to the coffee scene, so when I graduated from instant to whole bean I felt I needed to utilize a service that would help expose me to a variety of roasters. I subscribed to Trade with the same intention that you suggested - to get some samples and then make a decision from those samples on who I'd like to buy from directly. This video reminded me that I believe my initial subscription introduction is finished so I should look into canceling and picking the roaster I enjoyed. I want to stay local where possible, so I'm going to go with one of the local roasters I sampled.
That said, yes, I'm sure that the profit margin on those coffees isn't great, however, no one has twisted these roasters' arms and forced them into a partnership with Trade. I'm sure they weighed the pros and cons before agreeing to work with them.
One of my gripes was shared by another commenter, however - they don't sell their coffees in 1lb bags. This made deciding on the frequency of my subscription a real pain, because I knew how quickly I'd go through a pound, but it was HARD to find the weight of the bags on Trade, so I had to guess.
I think Trade is a great tool to educate and introduce beginners to high quality coffee. They were really a driving force in my knowledge of tasting different regions, processes, varieties, roasters, etc. while I was learning about the craft from other sources, and now I am a coffee enthusiast a couple years later. Nowadays I go on and off with trade every few months, using them to try a variety of coffees from roasters I otherwise wouldn’t know about, then I pause my subscription and either buy from one of the roasters I had now heard about, local roasters, etc. I think if you’re into coffee and always want to try new things Trade can be a great tool to eventually facilitate consumer relationships with roasters you wouldn’t have had.
I didn't even bother signing up for Trade. I poked around their website, found some roasters, and ended up ordering directly. I still order from Alma, I love their coffee so much that I'm a regular customer.
I do subscribe to Atlas, and their single origin stuff is nice. But admittedly I haven't really looked much into their actual business practices.
I have been using Trade as an alternative to the Hawaiian coffee roaster that I had been using for years because I was interested in being exposed to different coffees and roast levels and because my regular roaster often was running out of some of the single-origin beans that I preferred. So what's the best alternative to Trade. There really isn't a good specialty roaster close to where I live, so I'm stuck with mail order for now.
To be quiet incendiary; thank-you for having the integrity to call this shit out. It just strangles the supply chain and takes business from those whom need it most.
Sustainability is missed by maketing people same way in any other industry.
True sustainability comes with transparency. There are many guidelines and tools available for different industries. for food, i would say fair trade is a good example, I know nothing is perfect but we as consumers need to educate ourself and remember that if you should pay everyone down the vaule chain a fair price. that is cost more but end of the day that coffee should taste much more satisfying. :)
If I am not mistaken, Tim in Oslo has good collaborations with coffee producers so does Jacu from Ålesund.
Love from Norway.
PS: yes, on avg norwegians drink 1.5 ltr of coffee every day. :D
Fascinating discussion. As a roaster, I can attest to the amount of effort and work to get that coffee ready for purchase. The margins are thin making this kind of company difficult for small roasters. Yes, you may get exposure but if they are subscribed to Trade, then they likely aren't going to be"your" customer; they are Trades. Difficult Trade to make.... yes, pun intended 😜 thanks for covering this!
I've had a wonderful experience with my Atlas Coffee Club sub. Every bag of beans I have received has been delicious and I love the info they provide on where the beans are from and how they are grown etc. Perhaps I'm ignorant on their business background though.
I've just started a subscription from Notes coffee in the UK, I was recommended to try them when I was in London, really enjoyed the coffee they served. Went home and had been trying some of their coffees and decided that instead of hopelessly trying to decide which to order each month that I'd subscribe and be surprised each month and hopefully widen my knowledge and taste range.
I get it. Which of your coffees should I try? I like a good pour over and my wife does espresso milk drinks.
I have a subscription from Counter Culture coffee and I wondered about this issue. I have heard many stories like this, about abused employees, and I want to support a good company. I couldn't find anything worthy of concern from their company but I'm always suspicious... thanks for making insightful videos like this. Being aware is the first step!
I used Trade in 2018 when I first got into this hobby because I had no idea where to start. After a couple deliveries I had to cancel because I was sent a dark roast, which I've never really enjoyed. Taking a gamble with a subscription service doesn't make sense for me anymore. Run the risk of getting something I don't like, or just do the legwork myself. I do find value in their list of roasters. Whenever I want to try something new, I just go to that list and order direct.
Great video, I'd cancelled Trade a long time ago, very interesting information. - I go direct to Noble Coffee and my local Backyard Beans roaster a short walk from my house.
Valiant effort here, mate.
Can you look at 'Trade' as a distributor, similar to a grocery store? e.g. Let's say Trade buys a bag at $20 and then on-sells it to the consumer at $21 - that's $1 worth of 'marketing/distribution' in order to get the bag into a consumer's hands. Perhaps you would get more customers just by being on the Trade platform - but I don't know. Thought provoking video! (even if I'm not based in the US & have no intention of ever interacting with a company similar to Trade).
It's funny you should mention that. The best local coffee shop in my area doesn't roast, but "distributes" from several more eminent places that are a bit further out. They're charging $22 for a bag that retails at the roaster for $18. Now suppose they're purchasing wholesale for $15 - ? That's a pretty decent profit.
I have recently chosen to end my Trade subscription after they started pushing for buying 2 bags of coffee at a time for free shipping. At that point, I could buy the same (if not more coffee as per the reduction of per bag amount of coffee mentioned in a comment below) amount of coffee with free shipping from any roaster so I went that route instead.
I don't think the 90% subscription retention means people are NOT necessarily also ordering from roasters. Not sure how Trade works exactly but If it's a good subscription service, like Monogram roasters one I've tried, you can pause or skip / delay a shipment if you have too much coffee already.
If a coffee stands out it is possible someone would take notice and remember they liked that roaster or at least that coffee from them, and hopefully want to try something else from them too.
i actually switched off trade end of last year after using it for about a year and a half to try lots of good coffee. Tried some roasters that Trade didn't offer; then just about a month ago bought a 5lb directly from a roaster on trade i really liked; vacuum sealed into small bags and froze; so will be my go to coffee for quite awhile.
I think you do make a good point about looking at funding and pricing. Not so much about JAB and who they are, but if Trade recieved huge funding, they're going to try to make more profit to make up for it. And from the consumer side, it can be hard to tell when so many famous roasters deal with Trade, so it sounds totally fine to subscribe through them.
I would say however that not all middlemen are bad?
Of course it's a spectrum with nuances and ymmv. But in this case, by giving up a bit of profit to Trade, the roasters can also spend less time worrying about managing subscriptions, payments, chargebacks, claims and so on. If your plan as a roaster is to grow your volume and make economies of scale, then such subscription service can be worth it?
I’d love to be a direct customer of some of the rosters I’ve been introduced to by Trade, but I have yet to find a roaster (even with a subscription or a price lower than what Trade sells for) that doesn’t charge like 50% of the cost of the coffee for shipping. Spending an extra $10 to ship a $20 bag of coffee is not something I can justify.
Are there any coffee subscription services that are reasonably affordable? I am able to get a bag locally for 80 cents per ounce, which is about the most I am willing to spend. Nearly $2 per ounce is outrageous.
As a European I can already smell the upcoming Luxembourg/Germany comments.
Haha well there are already two, and considering no one reads the comments before commenting there will likely be more. Shame that a geographical error will in some cases overshadow the broader point…
@@Sprometheus btw I've read the two that's why I'm not pointing out the mistake - it just occured to me that now you're going to have an avalanche of those :D good for RUclips algorithm, maybe haha. And, of course, I hope they do get past the mistake to get to the point of the vid after all
It’s drop shipping for coffee, and I wish I thought of it first. Have been a customer for about 3 years, and convenience plus variety makes it really easy to like. And hey at least their shipping bags are compostable which is pretty cool. $9m funding also sounds pretty small compared to what a lot of funding rounds look like in tech. I do wish they had an actual app to help record tasting notes. I never use their thumbs up or down ratings, lack of specificity.
If it’s a poor ROI for roasters, why does it keep growing? Either it’s actually fine and pays for itself through “free” advertising and exposure or no one is doing the math.
However the switch to smaller bags…that does not make me happy.
I think the blind tastings from Angels Cup are a very cool way to learn about coffee flavor, origins and varieties without preconceived notions. Do you have any thoughts on them?
I used to use trade and I feel they do an excellent business in many ways where customer service is concerned, but I use coffee at an extremely inconsistent rate in my house and the uniform subscription model was a pain in the ass after awhile. Trade partners with excellent roasters, but I think rather than pay below wholesale for the coffee they get from these roasters, most all of them at least both markup substantially when buying direct or through trade, and I say this because the roaster I found where I live sells very good fresh coffee but for significantly cheaper even when using higher grade specialty coffee.
Ultimately I stopped using trade because I just didn't need them anymore. Their business model is convenient for newcomers to specialty coffee but I doubt it can keep its retention where it is at forever.
I did find I really like Methodical though. Those guys know what the hell they're doing.
I’m a Trade subscriber. This is basic economics…quantity=discount. As you said…roasters wouldn’t participate if it wasn’t beneficial to their business.
This video is very 'roasters' focused and not 'consumers' focused.
I think specialty coffee is one of the rare situations where consumers are so heavily focused on supporting their preferred brands. I think it's likely due to the niche nature of coffee as well as the artistic aspect of roasting high-quality coffee. Also, coffee roasters are typically not multi-billion dollar corporations.
Having said all that -- I'm typically more focused on 'what best serves the most customers as opposed to the other way around (within reason). For that reason, I think Trade is a killer service.
do you have any thoughts on fellow drops? personally i like it, as i find it hard to make choices as to what coffee to get. i also enjoy the style of coffees they pick, and find them to be usually from good roasters.
Thank you for this video, got me and hopefully many others thinking about something important. You’re awesome!
Well said! In General, I try to buy any goods nearest to the producer. These middle men just take more and more from the guys actually doing the work. I buy direct, in person and my coffee is cheaper, I also know the roaster is getting a higher percentage of what I pay.
This was great. It's exactly where I'm at in my coffee journey. Starting to want to branch out from my main roaster and my occasional second roaster to sample exceptional and widely varied other coffees.
I wish there was some info graphic or "map" or proposed flow chart to help know I've sampled main families of flavor to learn and develop my palate. I'm at the point where I feel the staff at a shop see I'm asking for a recommendation but either they tune out the actual question I'm asking, or in one case the guy told me has ADHD or such so he doesn't drink coffee even early in the day it makes him bounce off walls. They mostly don't seem to really know the different flavor profiles of the blends. Which admittedly has to be tricky.
I wish there were a cafe event where you could go and they'd have a bunch of different beans you could choose between to sit, sample a few in one sitting. James Hoffmann did a world coffee tasting it was seriously expensive, prohibitively. But even so. They haven't done another since I've started sleeping so much less and sipping so much more.
This was a really helpful video, helping me feel my overwhelm isn't just me. I've seen a couple of in-country mail order roasters I might try, but each has many options and I still am not always convinced I taste what I THINK I taste. Teriyaki, in Burundi. I'd asked for a bean with a lot of sweetness, whcih I guess teriyaki has. But it was really too umami for me.
Those flavor wheels are a conspiracy to make newbies feel inadequate, when they can't identify any of the roaster's flavor notes.
Spro do you ever dabble in Turkish coffee?
Thanks again for your suggestion re: PicoPresso. Loving knocking out my relatively dry pucks and yes, barista tingles a bit.
Thanks for recommending Wallace..
Which there was an equivalent in Canada since trade doesn't ship here. Love the idea of something different every month, especially as I'm just getting into the hobby and don't know any of the roasters as of yet.
Great video, I really got into coffee subscriptions during the pandemic after I tried all of my local roaster's coffee lineup. Personally I think Trade provides a lot of convenience and gives credibility to the roasters who are on the site. To me I think there's a lot on the margin where the roasters are better off selling coffee through trade and taking a hit to their slim margins compared to not selling the volume of coffee at all. Maybe there's a strategy where roasters will put their flagship beans on Trade to encourage consumers to look at their other exotics lineups. For example I tried Steady State and now will order their limited offerings from their website.
I can definitely see that maybe being the case for some roasters, but many of the roasters on Trade are pretty sizable. To keep up with Trade orders you need to have a pretty established roasting program, so I think most of them see it as a marketing cost, but would rather get you to come off trade and go direct with a sub from them.
@@Sprometheus any recommended subscriptions for coffee?
Luxembourg, Germany ? Seriously, Luxembourg is their own country ... and not part of Germany.
I think for a subscription to exist it needs to add value, and being a middleman for something I can just buy myself isn’t it.
However, I feel like certain subscriptions can be beneficial. For example, with Yonder’s coffee subscription, they buy a large order from an international roaster that would otherwise not be cost effective for an individual in the US to purchase from themselves, thereby reducing shipping costs and introducing customers to coffees they actually can’t get without the subscription.
I saw no need to enter coffee subscription. Firstly there's a coffee roaster that's very close to my home. Secondly I can buy it online, if I want to try a different arabica.
Also coffee subscription is not a thing here in Indonesia.
well it's an obvious business modell. they buy the coffee the roaster could not sell(old) and more and more they buy in mass which lead in the same model as industrial coffee. At the end only some roasters with a big infrastructure will profit from this. the same as book editorials on amazon. I would say that random house does not have the same conditions as the small bookshop around the corner
My (almost) local Coffee Shop went with subscription and I went onboard with that. They buy coffee from the roasters they work with. It is not a big operation (at least for now), feels more like a community thing for the fans of this place and people running it. So in a way with this subscription I support my favourite place and roasters. At least I hope so.
Great video Spro. Totally agree here. But one has to wonder about you talking about roasters not getting paid a fair amount, is that why you haven't had any coffee available for a while? Because I'm sure I'm not alone here but if its a money issue id gladly pay more for your coffee! But then again I know you don't have a roaster etc... a lot more going into it than money. I'm just curious for selfish reasons lol. Pony boy needs more little giant
Thanks Jacob! And no they had nothing to do with lack of activity at little Giant. If you can believe it I’ve had a snafu with getting bags designed, and also dropping to 8oz bags and figuring out the current costs of roasting. There are a lot of moving parts and with summer here I’ve been so focused on touching grass every once in awhile I just haven’t prioritized getting it all in line. I was planning on common back this month, I may just do some super simple labels and move forward.
@@Sprometheus sorry to hear about the problems you’re facing but that makes me so happy. Hell yeah Spro I was worried!!
There's a beer app similar to the one you've been talking about. Look it up and see if someone can build it
I have a subscription with driftaway. Would you take a look at them. They say they’re completely transparent about how their money is spent and they detail it. Does it look right to you? Does look like everyone’s getting a fair deal?
I wonder if perhaps it might make sense to think of Trade for roasters in comparision to opportunities like selling white-label coffee that will be sold under someone else's brand, I'd think in both cases there might be a hit to the margin but getting coffee sales that the roaster otherwise wouldn't, and low conversion to new customers buying direct.
Hi…. U mention that u got a coffee company and that u r a roaster.
Can u tell me please what is the brand and it can be bought worldwide.
🙏🙏🙏🙏 i really love your content
Or just view the companies and directly go to them. It’s how I found panther coffee and I’m even local. I don’t use trade but they do highlight companies as well.
I like to support companies I believe in and owners/employees who I know and trust. It's a much more fulfilling experience for me and my business owning friends. 😌
Excellent points all around. If I ever do one, I'll be sure to get direct
This is a great video. Thanks for the honesty and transparency . I started a Trade subscription back in 2019, mostly for the "one-stop-shop" convenience and variety. I love finding new roasters and seeing what folks are doing in other parts of the country, but recently cancelled my subscription in favor of being more loyal to roasters that are more local to me. If we're talking about sustainability, I think staying local, and considering the ridiculous distances we're shipping a bag of coffee, should be a priority. I will save my excitement for finding new coffee until I actually travel to a place and get to experience it like in the old days when you actually felt like you discovered something.
Thanks Joshua, and I’m 100% with you. And absolutely on the excitement of traveling and finding new coffee.
I actually looked into trade a few weeks ago and didn't see a point. If the price was less sure but it wasnt
I’ve been an Onyx Coffee subscription customer for a couple of years. I’ve always got excellent specialty coffees from them. Shipping is free for me since I was grandfathered in when they started charging for shipping. I’ve also visited their coffee shop when we traveled through Arkansas. I find they’re transparent with information on their website about the cost of the coffee from their coffee growers.
Are they really owned by JAB?
Yeah I will always recommend getting on a direct sub from a roaster, and one like Onyx that also has a large variety of coffee makes it even better.
And no, they aren’t owned by JAB, they joked about it on April fools a few years ago, but they do sell their coffee on trade with is JAB funded.
@TheRealSprometheus the more interesting take for me is their change in roast profile. Onyx has gone to a more developed profile and I would wonder how many of the trade coffees operate in and around that same more developed area.
I live in cornwall in the uk. The local coffee shop I use roasts their own beans.. Could you explain more about the tasting notes and info that comes with the coffee like area altitude and wash process. Perhaps more from the farmers and producers view point. Thanks
My city is relatively small, as cities go, but between coffee shops that roast their own and mom and pop shops who sell bags from roasters they like, I've never really felt the need for a sub. I'm sure there are many cool places I'm missing out on, but it's kinda like Netflix - you'll never consume it all.
While I totally agree that the portion Trade takes home from the roaster is possibly very sizable and would go much further had it gone to the roasters instead of Trade, I think Trade also helps these roaster capture and access a wider part of the market that they would have not gotten otherwise.
On top of that, I also think one of the reasons Trade got their prices so low is that they secure orders in a bigger quantity. Just to be clear, I do not have any clear numbers on what analysis they do behind the scenes, but thinner margins across a bigger quantity can sometimes be more than bigger margins on smaller quantity (with a huge assumption that orders from Trade does not takeaway existing direct orders from the roasters).
That being said, I totally agree that we all be better off by deleting the middle man and support the roasters directly!
Interesting take on Trade. I have local roasters i buy from but Trade is convenient and exposes me to a variety of roasters i would never have heard of otherwise. My view is they are good for the "coffee world" and i think the unsubstantiated shade you throwing at them is a little unnecessary. I think people should be able to enjoy coffee any way they choose without judgement. I'm sure roasters connected with trade can opt out if they choose to but would likely miss out on the exposure they get from being involved.
I have subscriptions to roasters. Totally makes sense as you explain.
That’s definitely the way to go once you find some roasters you like!
Not sure how but I was previously unfamiliar with Trade Coffee. Nice expose on them. 👍🏻
I shall avoid and instead support the coffee roasters direct. 😊
Haha well consider yourself lucky! While I did research for this video I’ve been inundated with their ads since I’ve searched them a few times online.
I have actually been annoyed that some coffee roasters do not provide a good or simple subscription service.
The other problem I have is that I like the variety that subscribing from Trade Coffee provides.
My interval with them is not spot on, so I fill in the voids with my locals Piexoto and Cartel.
A thing you didn't bring up that I'd like to add is just the unnecessary shipping/emissions that coffee subscriptions cause. I get that not everyone lives near good coffee, but I bet more people do than they think: in my experience the cheaper price of land/utilities in more remote areas allow for smaller and lower risk operations to pop up. Furthermore anyone in a city of any decent size in na/Europe is going to have good coffee nearby. Heck even if you like having it shipped to you, getting it directly from the roaster still cuts out an entire shipment of the roaster sending it to the middle man first.
I've been pretty perplexed by these large international/national subscription services for a while, and I'm glad that you addressed it.
That’s true. I didn’t get into the sustainability practice. Like you mentioned, shipping definitely isn’t without its issues.
And don’t get me started on international coffee subscriptions, I don’t know anyone can justify those.
Thanks…totally agree. I was gifted a Trade sub. Cool enough but when i needed customer service, the results were layered and slow. Ikve found a few roasters that work for me much better than that did. Direct is the way!
As a Portlander, I stopped going to Stumptown when I learnt that they are owned by JAB. With all the other local (or national) roasters available that are more in line with 3. wave coffee ethics, I am not looking back.
Well, buying something from small business owners is always preferable than buying something from corporation.
Think Risk vs Reward. I love my current roaster. I know what to expect and get a great cup. Every time I watch social media and think yea I need something new I go out buy an expensive bag and get highly disappointed or end up just saying meh. So for me trying the hottest newest thing every ten minutes is just not worth it.
Can you provide the link to Wallis Coffee site you mentioned? Thanks
instagram.com/wallacecoffee?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Trade is dodgy AF. The way they handled their downsizing of their packaging was completely unethical IMO, so I cancelled them.
The problem with having an absurdly-long drive to any roaster, is that, when you do the right thing and order direct, you get absolutely reamed 100% of the time, on shipping. These small outfits pay through the nose for shipping, and have to pass it on to the customer, and end up not being competitive.
I have Atlas now, and it's kind of crap, and they're likely just as corrupt. I need a new plan.
Buy a roaster, you can get a handheld Hive and roast some super solid coffee in 125g batches or get something a little more expensive but can roast more. That’s definitely an option for those willing to take on a new hobby haha
@@Sprometheus I've been considering it!