There’s a chance we may be headed towards a nationwide shutdown of bars, restaurants, and yes, coffee shops in response to Coronavirus, an action that has already been instituted in certain US states to help flatten the curve and save lives.
Until that happens you need to tip, dammit, and buy gift cards, and watch for companies in your community converting to take-out, drive-thru, and delivery (follow us on Twitter for updates). But another very wonderful thing you can do to support the coffee industry right now is to buy coffee online.
You need coffee now, but you’ll need it again in a week, or a month, which is why coffee subscriptions are so hot right now. With this in mind we’ve put together a nice big list of coffee subscriptions we know to be excellent. Some are in America, others are not. All are operated by humans. This list includes a few of our sponsors, whose support makes our daily publishing work at Sprudge possible, as well as many other indie roasters we admire.
This is just a start—comments to this post are open and we’d love to hear from you on more of your favorite subscription options. Share this post with your family and friends—we’ve been sure to include a broad range of roast profiles and price points for every coffee drinker you love—and watch for more stories like this from us in the coming hours.
Amavida Coffee — Santa Rosa, Florida
The folks at Amavida offer not one, not two, but three distinct coffee subscription options: the Trekker, Espresso, and Reserve. Each one ships monthly and serves Amavida’s Certified B Corp mission of “empowering coffee-growing communities around the globe.”
Belleville Brulerie — Paris, France
One of the best damn roasters in France is also home to a charming monthly subscription option! Choose from 1, 2, or 3 “sachets” of coffee (tres chic) alongside discovery cards and brewing tips. These subscriptions can even be given as gifts, which is a very nice thing to consider doing in these strange times. Please note this subscription is only available for EU readers.
Counter Culture Coffee — United States of America
Counter Culture helped build the third wave, and are found behind the bar at fine coffee shops, restaurants and bars all across the country, roasted in the Bay Area and Durham, North Carolina. You can get that goodness delivered to your door in subscription form, with a range of options including blends, decaf, and an ever-changing single origin offering. This is one of the most customizable subscriptions we’ve come across in terms of cadence and selection—perfect for a big family with lots of coffee needs.
Dark Arts Coffee — London, United Kingdom
I’m supposed to be in London right now. Oh, it was to be glorious—a little bit of leisure time with an away message on the ol’ email before hopping back in to work at the London Coffee Festival. I was going to eat funny sounding British food and Paul Hollywood-esque pastries, and walk around a lot. Obviously this was not to be, but one can capture a bit of London in the form of a recurring subscription from Dark Arts Coffee, who are happy to ship to the UK, the EU, or “everywhere else on this here flat earth.” Check out their subscription here, their coffee is very good.
Dogwood Coffee — Minneapolis, Minnesota
Dogwood is the best, basically. Not only do they offer some of our favorite cafe experiences in the country, and really one of the industry’s best approaches to deeply felt graphic design and merch, they also have a smart set of subscription options including blends, single origins, and a bulk pay buy—prepay $150 for a 6 month set-up, including shipping.
Go Get Em Tiger — Los Angeles, California
Get a single origin! Get an espresso blend! Get a single origin but have it roasted, you know, a little longer! Customize your subscription monthly, fortnightly, or up to four bags a week, in case you want to pig out on coffee, you little coffee pig. While they aren’t currently shipping the cheeseburger nationwide they are shipping coffee, and that’s pretty good.
Intelligentsia — Chicago, Illinois and nationwide
The team at Intelligentsia more or less invented the “Direct Trade” approach to coffee buying, developing long term and oftentimes exclusive relationships with coffee producers around the world, with ongoing projects in places like Mexico, Nicaragua, and Ethiopia. Coffees like the brand’s iconic Black Cat espresso and Borealis house blend are better known, but Intelli’s single origin Direct Trade coffees (like this Peru COE Special Selection or the Rwanda Zirikana) are capable of scaling flavor and quality heights.
Intelli’s subscription offering can be narrowed down by flavor preference or individual offerings; you can select whole bean (always recommended) or choose from a range of pre-grind specifications; you can choose which day of the week you’d like the subscription to ship, how many bags, and how often. You can even opt for a tea subscription alongside coffee, from Intelli’s in-house Kilogram Tea sub-label. Use this as an excuse to poke around Intelligentsia’s website and read more about the people who grew, harvested, and expertly processed these remarkable coffees, and sign up for their newsletter to receive discount offers.
Joe Coffee — New York City
It’s so important that we support New York right now, a city whose unique urban density and global nature makes it especially impacted by Coronavirus. Supporting Joe Coffee is a vote for supporting the city, so deeply coupled are their identities. Joe is offering 20% your first 3 subscription shipments using code HOMEBREW through March 31st, which means a nice savings on espresso blend, house blend, and single origin subscription packages. While I cannot currently visit the UWS Joe for an iced latte and take it for a stroll through the nice quiet part of Central Park, I can daydream of doing so, which I will as soon as this article is done, and I can support them by drinking their coffee at home.
KaffeBox — Norway
America’s obsession with Scandinavian minimalist design and magazines that look like Kinfolk may finally at last be waning, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater—Scandinavia is still home to some incredible indie coffee roasters. Each month the team at KaffeBox assembles a subscription delivery featuring a different Nordic roaster, shipped direct to you anywhere in the world. If you’re someone like me who hedonistically loves drinking lots of different roasters all the time, this is like the dream subscription. I’m not planning to fly to Oslo anytime soon but KaffeBox brought Supreme Roastworks to me this month, and their coffee is lovely. Other recently featured roasters like The Coffee Collective, Per Nordby, and Jacobsen og Svart are no slouch either. There’s even now an optional chocolate pairing, which sounds great today, I’m not going to lie.
Never again do I desire to sit in another minimal nü-Nordic dining room for a dinner of lingonberry foam riffs and reindeer sweetmeats, thanks, but I’m still super here for good indie Scandinavian roasters like the ones amplified and shipped globally by KaffeBox. Highly recommended.
Manzanita Roasting — San Diego, California
The tagline says it all: “Yay for not running out of good coffee!” Manzanita Roasting of San Diego offers three different options for their coffee subscription plans, including two distinct blends and a “Manzanita Choice” subscription with ever-changing single origin options. Use code Freeshippingforall (case sensitive) for free shipping through March 31st, and consider doubling up your order with the 1+1 subscription option.
Partners Coffee — New York City
Our friends at Partners, those charming New York City & Brooklyn purveyors of tasty coffee and mellow vibes, offer a whole bunch of different subscription opportunities, including blends, decaf, and single origin. But the one I like the most is called the Roaster’s Choice, which features the tagline “A Coffee Journey Around The World”. Doesn’t that sound lovely? All travel is off at the moment but you can travel from the safety of your home, in the confines of your favorite coffee mug, with this subscription from Partners.
Onyx Coffee Lab — Northwest Arkansas
You have by now most assuredly heard of Onyx Coffee, the all-world-everything Arkansas coffee roaster helping define coffee’s next wave, building stunning cafes and winning coffee championships. Right now is the perfect time to get acquainted with them in your home coffee routine, in the form of a recurring subscription service. Give it as a gift, or hook yourself up. Select cadence, size and coffee style, including a half a dozen or so excellent blends or a single origin option of note. When your spouse is like “Onyx, what’s that?” you can be like—”It’s this good coffee from Arkansas, and we get it every week now.”
Verve Coffee — Santa Cruz, California
Customize your order, set up a recurring payment, ship on your schedule—bing, bang, boom, you’ve got coffee from California shipped straight to your door. Verve’s subscriptions can be gifted or set up personally, which is a nice touch, and you get to choose from a range of options from around the world, allowing you to focus on coffees from Africa or Latin America, if that’s your jam. Whole bean is always recommended but you can get it pre-ground if so desired, and order anywhere from 12 ounces to a kilo at a time delivered. Say you went with Streetlevel, Verve’s classic blend (not to be confused with Farmlevel, their sweet zine)—that would run a cool $16 per shipment, including shipping, for a weekly 12 ounce bag. You love to see it.
Yes Plz — Los Angeles, California
Beans & Zines is the tagline here for Yes Plz, a weekly coffee subscription service now with a monthly magazine. Every week a different blend arrives—sometimes it’s a “seven bean blend banger”, other times a subtle melange of, say, El Eden from Peru and El Tundo from Ecuador. The next cadence ships March 23rd and is available starting at just $17 shipped.
Some (but not all) of the roasters in this feature are advertising partners on the Sprudge Media Network. For a complete list of partners please consult the right hand side of this and every Sprudge feature.
Jordan Michelman (@suitcasewine) is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network.
Original art by Zachary Carlsen.
