While the majority of roasters move on from the festive season, some are already looking for ways to entice customers during the next holiday period.
Luxury advent calendars have exploded in popularity, including beer, wine, tea, and even cheese – which sold over 11,000 boxes after its launch. Coffee advent calendars have become incredibly popular, with brands including just enough coffee to brew one cup per day.
Multi-roaster coffee advent calendars can include several offerings, such as instant coffee, coffee capsules, grounds and whole beans. These can be sourced from one roaster or can from multiple roasteries in order to offer customers more variety.
Needless to say, there is something about having a different, hand-selected, specialty coffee to enjoy each morning in the lead-up to Christmas that has got the market hooked.
Offering multi-roaster coffee advent calendars can be quite a challenge, especially when you consider how you will source the coffees, package them appropriately, and market the product.
To learn more about offering multi-roaster coffee advent calendars, I spoke with Josh Brown, who set up Coffee Advent in the UK in 2020.
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How Coffee Advent helped support local roasters
In essence, Coffee Advent sends 25 unique and individually packed coffees directly to consumers’ doors.
The calendar aims to highlight and promote independent specialty coffee roasters.
“The original idea was two-fold,” explains Josh, who is currently the interim head of coffee at GAIL’s Bakery in London. “First, I wanted to introduce a wider audience to local coffee roasters and promote them at a time when the majority had lost wholesale business because of the pandemic.”
Second, Josh says he wanted to expand on a game known as Mystery Brew: where a customer is presented with a coffee and has to guess the origin, processing methods, and flavour notes.
Therefore, when the packed coffees arrived, Josh reveals they were simply labelled with a number, and the contents remained a secret until its numbered day.
“Each day, customers have the choice to brew that day’s coffee ‘blind’,” Josh explains. “Or they can check our social media pages to find out more about that coffee and who roasted it.”
When Advent Coffee launched in 2020, it featured just 10 Kentish roasters who broadly fell into one of four groups.
“I looked at roasters who, in my opinion, were doing an amazing job with coffee, such as Plot Roasting and Saint Espresso,” he says.
He also featured offerings from local Kentish roasters, such as Bloss Coffee and Curve Coffee Roasters.
“I also wanted to highlight roasters with an environmental or social responsibility focus, such as Redemption Roasters and SEND Coffee,” Josh adds. “As well as small or independent roasters who are relatively unknown or just starting out, like Coffee by Tate, or Rockhopper Roasters.”
Josh explains he allows the roasters to select the coffees, as the aim is to feature and promote, rather than force a particular coffee.
“Over the course of 25 days, we’re able to accommodate a wide variety of origins,” he says. “Sometimes we’ve had the same coffee processed two different ways, or coffees selected just for Coffee Advent.”
Organising a multi-roaster coffee advent calendar
When Coffee Advent launched on Kickstarter, it had 120 backers.
“That first year, I did everything in-house,” Josh explains. “It was literally in my house because I didn’t have premises. So, the challenge was weighing, labelling, and packing over 3000 tiny individual bags of coffee.”
While the original idea was to make Coffee Advent local to Kent and feature only Kentish specialty roasters, the concept swiftly gathered backers from around the world.
“That’s when we decided to branch out and expand the roasters involved for the following years,” Josh explains. “After that, we also used a specific coffee packing line to enable growth.”
He admits a yearly challenge the team faces is receiving the coffee, packaging it, and getting it out in the shortest time possible.
“We have to make sure the coffees are fresh and everyone gets their delivery by December 31st,” Josh says.
Packaging design for multi-roaster coffee advent calendars
Josh reveals a key finding the brand took away after the launch in 2020 was that customers wanted sustainable packaging.
As a result, all the packaging materials used in Advent Calendars are either home recyclable or home compostable.
Currently, the 25 coffee offerings are packaged individually in unassuming white sachets that only feature a number. These sachets are then placed in a recycled cardboard coffee mailer box before being shipped to customers.
The Advent Coffee box also contains a sheet of instructions: this includes custom-print QR codes that direct customers to the brand’s website. This is where they will be able to learn more about the coffee they have brewed that day.
“I’d like to work on the calendar itself, and make it look a bit more festive right out of the box!” Josh admits. “We’re also keen to start partnering with others in the coffee industry, including different roasters, retailers, and coffee subscriptions.”
Custom-print coffee boxes can be one of the most effective ways of boosting a brand and increasing customer loyalty.
With the market of advent calendars continuing to rise, roasters will need to offer customers a creative and unique advent calendar in 2023.
At MTPak Coffee, we give our clients complete control over the customisation and specifications of their coffee packaging.
We offer a range of 100% recyclable coffee packaging options made from renewable materials such as kraft paper, rice paper, or multilayer LDPE packaging with an environmentally friendly PLA lining.
From custom coffee mailer boxes to drip coffee bags and coffee pouches as small as 10g, our design team is able to perfectly replicate your branding on a range of packaging sizes and shapes.
Our coffee packaging range can be embossed, debossed, or fully customised with interior and exterior branding, transparent windows, and sustainable accessories such as resealable zippers or degassing valves.
More so, MTPak Coffee’s sustainable multilayer coffee packaging solutions ensure coffee stays as fresh as when it was roasted, giving our clients the freedom to roast and package in advance, guaranteeing the highest quality of coffee.
Using innovative digital printing technology, we are able to help you with a quick turnaround time of 40-hours and 24-hour shipping time.
MTPak Coffee also offers low minimum order quantities (MOQs) to micro-roasters who are looking to remain agile while showcasing brand identity and a commitment to the environment.
