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Maker
Building on the lessons of my previous company (Tonx Coffee), we're aiming to build better on-ramps for coffee lovers to get their fix without too much fuss. Avoiding the fundraising hamster wheels and focusing our energies on our customers and the culinary and creative sides of the business—wherever that may take us.
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Hunter
Excited to see what Tony's up to next after his time at Tonx and then Blue Bottle Coffee!
Can you please explain a little more about the "democratizing" of coffee? It seems to still be priced comparable to most "specialty roasters". Blue Bottle charges $15 + $5 shipping for a 12oz bag (obviously they're not exactly a small shop, and have plenty of resources to drop prices but they're highly regarded). I'm just curious about the message and your mission.
Maker
@claudesutterlin Yep. I think if you subtract out the shipping price from our product (our target price of $15 includes shipping) it starts to price us in the same ballpark as the not-very-fresh brand name stuff you’d find sitting on the grocery shelf. There’s always going to be cheaper options in the broader coffee category, but at this top their of sourcing and roasting you’ll find most of the vanguard companies save their margin breaks for their big wholesale partners and not for their home customers. We’re hoping we can drop our price lower than $15, which might happen if it looks like we’ve got the momentum to do really significant volume early on.
On my I-know-it-can-seem-I’m-laying-it-on-a-bit-thick “democratization” rhetoric, here’s kind of how I see it… In the two decades I've played in the coffee world I've watched the best product that we as an industry produce get further and further positioned as a kind of unobtanium - a don't-try-this-at-home, high-wire culinary act. The implicit message being that if you don't have a $700 top end burr grinder and if you can't break down the flavors into a long parade of purple prose descriptors you're not really worthy and who needs you.
Meanwhile in a different but slightly analogous arena, the Craft Beer people took a very different tack and were able to bring their customers/enthusiasts/aficionados/etc. along for the ride. Craft beer maintains a blue collar sensibility while still getting beer-heads to happily pay premiums far beyond what we can charge for a cup of coffee in spite of beer’s much lower cost of goods. They enjoy decent culinary street cred, less baggage, and don’t require the same degree of skilled labor or playing dress-up to sell and serve it up.
I could go on (and on and on), but this is already a bit rambling. I laid some of this out in more depth in a Medium post last year if you feel like a fuller manifesto - https://medium.com/@tonx/anthony...
@tonx thank you for the thoughtful reply. I think that totally makes sense. It’s something that I sense actually swinging back in the direction of sanity regarding the holier-than-thou snobby coffee attitude. The most successful shops in my area are the friendly approachable ones who are able to demonstrate quality without being dicks about it.
I think I made the mistake of equating democratizing with price, and I’ll be excited to see how you guys bring your level headed approach to the market in terms of message and branding. I didn’t necessarily pick it up directly from the existing content out there but I might be a bit slow. I’ll read up on your blog post right now for some more info!
Maker
@claudesutterlin thanks... it's a good exercise for me to discuss this as people are going to be approaching us with a lot of different context. This is helpful feedback!
