This spring marked 1 year since we soft launched Kea.
It's pretty crazy to look back at all that's happened in that short time, but one thing that's been constant is that noting has been constant.
Running a small business can be rewarding in a lot of ways, but it's also challenging, exciting, unpredictable and sometimes surprising.
Today, we're announcing some exciting changes to our roasting schedules (one of which you might have already seen in action), all aimed at better aligning our coffees and our efforts as a company, with what's important to all of you.
Introducing More Roast Date Options
By default, all of our coffees are roasted to order.
That's how we've always worked, and that isn't changing.
But, since we roast on the lighter side of things, most of our coffees do benefit from a couple of weeks of "rest" to really open up and taste at their best.
One frustration that we always had prior to starting Kea, was in waiting for the coffees we were excited about to be ready.
Or worse still, forgetting to order far enough out.
Sure, if you're organized and order your next bags a bit in advance, all good. But how often does that really work out?
So... earlier this summer, we launched new options for part-rested bags.
You might have see some of these options pop in and out of stock on a lot of our coffees if you've been browsing the lineup over the recent months as we've begun trying this out.
We've had some great feedback on this, and we've decided to keep it as a permanent option.
There wont always be part rested options for all of our coffees, but we will be trying to keep some small quantities available where we can.
Roast Days And Cut Offs
Up until this point, we've been roasting all orders as and when they come in.
That system was great while we were smaller and just getting started, but as we're slowly and steadily growing, that setup is starting to show some floors.
Some days it means we're firing up the roaster, doing all the roast prep, warming up the machine for an hour, then all the cool down and cleaning, for just two or three small roasts.
On other days, we might be rescheduling other work and projects that we had planned for the day because of a flurry of orders to fulfil.
So, moving forward, we'll be roasting every Monday and Thursday.
Cut off for being on the production run will be 5pm Vancouver time the day before.
So if you order before 5pm on Sunday, your order will be roasted on the next Monday. If you order any time after 5pm on Sunday, you'll be on the Thursday roast.
By consolidating some of the smaller roast days into two larger production focused days, we're hoping to have more time to work on all of the other cool projects that have been sitting on our to-do lists for far too long.
We've got a ton of stuff we want to do to help you better enjoy the coffees you buy from us - loads of enhancements to the website, more detailed brewing guides, more indepth farm info and sourcing transparency, more ways to interact and easier purchasing options. But all of that takes time to implement properly.
Hopefully, this consolidation will give us the time to finally get some of these dream items off the to-do list and into life, so we can keep on making your morning brews that little bit better.
Questions?
Please, please, please ... hit us up.
If you're unclear about anything at all, shoot us a message or email roastery@keacoffee.com and we'll get back to you ASAP.
Cheers!
