It’s no secret that the speciality coffee market in the UK is at an all-time high. There are more roasters than ever before, consumers love their flat whites while being conscious of the origins of their brew and more people than ever have prosumer equipment and are making great coffee at home.
So that begs the question - with the market being so saturated, who are we to jump in and what do we have to offer?
It’s probably a good idea to take a step back to review the market. The way we see it, the main players in the consumer game are:
- Coffee Roasters - the artisans who source and select green coffee beans and roast them to perfection for us to enjoy at home. Coffee roasters have their own online shops and often sell to retail customers in their shops.
- Coffee “Boxes” or “Subscription Boxes” - These services went bananas during the pandemic. These companies create a package for you to enjoy at home, mostly coffee only but sometimes with other coffee-related goods.
- Coffee Retailers - These are often curated services trying to make recommendations and/or simplify the buying process. This is where we see ourselves!
In terms of who we believe our competitors to be, we think it’s coffee boxes/subscriptions and coffee retailers. Let’s dive into a few and see what’s up.
COFFEE BOXES/SUBSCRIPTIONS
DOG AND HAT
Dog and Hat was founded in 2017 and their goal is to provide consumers with an exceptionally varied selection of subscription offers with the highest quality coffees from the UK and beyond.
RISE COFFEE BOX
Rise was founded in 2020 during the pandemic and they offer a monthly subscription box containing 2 coffees from the UK and some other goodies. Their mission is to help coffee lovers continuously discover independent speciality coffee roasters through their coffee subscription and delivery services. The beans are generally medium to medium/dark in roast colour
GUSTATORY
GUSTATORY is a comprehensive speciality coffee subscription service that features coffee from the UK, USA and European speciality coffee roasters. Coffee is curated and there’s a focus on quality, ethics and sustainability.
JUST BRU
Just Brew is a subscription service that aims to simplify access to speciality coffee. Their service aims to remove a lot of the noise surrounding speciality coffee and put it in one easy package. They offer 3 simple options: espresso, filter and decaf!
BEANS COFFEE CLUB
Beans Coffee Club has a quiz to help you find your perfect subscription as well as having their own blends and a vast directory of coffee to choose from which they re-pack into their own packaging.
BATCH COFFEE CLUB
Batch Coffee Club is all about celebrating coffee roasters based in the UK. The founders have lots of experience in the coffee industry and they hand-pick 2 different coffees per box. Another pandemic venture! Coffee is also re-packaged.
WHAT WE LIKE ABOUT COFFEE BOXES/SUBSCRIPTIONS
Dave and I love variety so it’s easy to see the attraction toward having lots of new things to try every month. Also having deliveries on autopilot for some people is a nice way to automate life!
WHAT WE DON'T LIKE ABOUT COFFEE BOXES/SUBSCRIPTIONS
There are a few things we personally don’t like about these services (in general, not specific to any company or brand):
1 You don’t know what you’re going to get. Hold on a sec… Didn’t you just say you like variety? Yes, true. I guess what we don’t like is surprises. We’ve found most people have a certain tendency toward flavour profiles so being surprised with something you might not like isn’t attractive to us.
2 We’re kinda cheap (hence free shipping on 1KGs for everyone!) and sometimes you get the feeling when there are multiple bags in a box it isn’t the best value for money. The markups can be quite high and, well, we’re cheap!
3 Personally, fixed delivery dates can stress me out. I’ve found that there’s rarely a month where I use the right amount of coffee vs past subscriptions. Either I grab a bag when I’m out and about leading to too much, or we are away or in the worst case - we use too much and we run out! I know a lot of people really like automating their coffee deliveries and this one might be niche, but this is our blog post so 🤷
COFFEE RETAILERS
ALL THINGS COFFEE
All things coffee describe themselves as the original speciality coffee marketplace. As such, they have a vast variety of coffee to buy as well as a subscription. They mention that they were founded to tell the story of the coffee world, through the skilled roasters based in the UK.
LIMITED COFFEE co
Limited Coffee Co was founded in 2023 and our mission is to simplify the discovery of incredible speciality coffee roasted in the UK. We aim to take the guesswork out of buying coffee by presenting literally 5 options. A natural, a washed, something fancy, something for espresso and a decaf. That’s it! Your coffee is always shipped freshly roasted and always free shipping on 1KG bags!
WHAT WE LIKE ABOUT COFFEE RETAILERS
Obviously, we are biased here but we prefer the “opt-in” choice-based approach of retail vs subscriptions. Again, it’s a personal choice but we love picking out the best of the best so that we have the best chance of enjoying every single bean at home.
WHY WE THINK LIMITED COFFEE Co IS AWESOME
Obviously, we are really biased here but we think there’s definitely space in the market for us. We like to think we are doing things a bit differently and we aim to keep things extremely simple. So far we have a high return rate for customers which is really encouraging and we will continue to build trust over time. We really just want you to have incredible coffee, without the stress of searching for it, every time, banger after banger.
The reality is that everyone listed here (and the countless others that are not) all have good intentions. We all want to showcase great speciality coffee and provide services to coffee lovers. Each company has their reason to exist and each has a different take on what they do. Competition keeps the market interesting and it’s great for consumers.
