When we sent our first delivery back in January 2015, we couldn’t have imagined that we’d get to offer the range of exceptional coffees and flexibility we have today. It’s been an incredible journey and we feel grateful to everyone who’s joined us along the way.
I’m sure you won’t be shocked when I say that our production costs have changed a lot in those 8 years.
Rent, energy, salaries, postage, green coffee… The latter changed significantly during the 2021/22 inflation, with the cost of green coffee rising by around 50% and postage up over 30%. This pushed us to increase our cafe and retail coffee prices in June 2022, and now, 8 years after starting our online subscription (and setting our initial prices), it’s time for an update.
Announcing a price increase is never pleasant or easy, especially in a super competitive industry with endless roasters and options. But it is necessary to keep sending you delicious coffee, produced with the highest ethical and quality standards. And sharing that coffee is the reason we started Sample Coffee in the first place.
The prices you see in our updated coffee subscriptions page reflect our updated price structure. It’s around a 5% increase, though it varies depending on the coffee and packaging.
Our mission is to deliver a consistently exceptional coffee experience while acting responsibly with the people and lands involved in its journey—and beyond. So with that in mind, we’re also committing to checking and–when needed–adjusting our pricing more regularly than every 8 years, so we can keep sending you coffee we love for many more years to come.
Talking transparently: how our costs have changed
I want to be clear about how and where our input costs have increased, so you can see where the subscription price increase is going, and that we’ve done all we can to reduce costs before raising prices.
Green coffee
This is what we care most deeply about, and the one cost we won’t compromise on. Since we started subscriptions in 2015, the green coffee we import and roast has increased by 40% for single origins.
The coffees we source for our blends increased by more than that last year alone. You can read more in our dedicated journal post from May 2022.
Postage
As we’ve grown since our first delivery in 2015 we’ve been able to optimise our shipping and packaging costs, but even with that our per-delivery costs have increased around 30% – and Australia Post’s recent variable ‘fuel surcharge’ is now adding a further 9-11% to that.
Reducing our environmental footprint
Reducing our environmental footprint is important to us.
We’ve invested in a new, more efficient roaster and moved to compostable bags for 250g and 1kg deliveries, and soon also 420g, once we finish our existing stock of soft plastic bags. Moving into oil-free packaging is a big step for us, however, the new bean bags cost us around 65% more than the former soft plastic bags.
And as always, our deliveries are carbon neutral through Australia Post.
Giving back
We’re also taking this opportunity to bring the 20¢ Sample Coffee Fund donation to our subscription range – a fundraising system that has been running in our cafes and online retail sales since early 2019! At the end of each Financial Year, we share the total between a social and environmental organisation. Our most recent donation went to Carbon Positive Australia and FoodLab Sydney’s Kitchen for Refugees & Migrants project.
Never stand still
We’ve been busy the last few months, making some small but hopefully useful improvements across our online experience and final product.. Keep track of them over time with our release notes.