Beans Coffee Club 2023: Discover the UKs Best Roasters and Explore Hundreds of Coffee All In One Place!

Welcome to the world of unparalleled coffee experiences, where each sip tells a story and every cup is an exploration of exquisite flavors. I'm Fiona Jones, the Co-Founder at Beans Coffee Club, and I invite you to embark on a journey with us, where exclusive blends and the finest roasters in the UK converge in a single, aromatic haven. Say hello to a curated selection of the nation's best coffee, where diversity meets quality, and every coffee lover finds a home for their taste buds. Join Delivery Rank as we unravel the rich tapestry of coffee, sip by sip, and redefine your morning ritual with Beans Coffee Club.

In the competitive world of coffee subscriptions, what inspired you to start Beans Coffee Club, and how do you differentiate your brand from others in the market?

Beans Coffee Club was founded by myself and Richard 2019 with one clear mission, to make specificality coffee accessible to all. To remove the pretentiousness and unnecessary complexity. To break-down the myths and mystery and open up the world of freshly roasted, artisan coffee to everyone.  

Since 2019 we have matched over 150,000 coffees, so we know our Beans!!

At the time of launch, there were not really any multi-roaster subscriptions that offered the flexibility of discovering coffees that you might like that had been matched to your taste and brewing method.  In addition, the only other subscriptions were single roaster subscriptions whereby you could receive the same coffee at a regular frequency, so you had to kind of know what you liked and where to get it from.

We are currently developing our business in terms of our look and feel (please do see our website beanscoffeeclub.com), our packaging and our proposition as a whole.  

We are now going beyond being a coffee subscription and are aiming to be The No1 Speciality Coffee Marketplace; introducing a new way to explore and purchase specialty coffee. Providing the freshness, convenience and flexibility previously only found when buying direct from a roaster, but with access to hundreds of coffees from the UK's best roasters.  We will have the largest selection of specialty coffees and we have made it super easy for people to discover hundreds of coffee all in one place either as a (multi-roaster or single product) subscription or via a single purchase.   

We have also launched our own ranges in collaboration with some amazing people; for example, we have worked with De’Longhi (coffee machine manufacturer) to create a range perfect for an espresso machine and we now have our Masters Collection; a range of exceptional speciality coffees that have been created in collaboration with our roasting partners. 

There is so much more to tell you about, but I think that I am probably getting carried away and over-excited about all the new things that we have been up to! 

As the co-founder of the UK's leading speciality coffee provider, what trends do you foresee in the world of coffee, both in terms of consumer preferences and the industry's sustainability efforts?

Ummmmm…..trends in the world of coffee - that’s a big question!  

With regard to consumer preferences, there really is no one size fits all (hence the popularity of our matching process, I guess), we see that preferences change depending on the brewing method, hence our work with De’Longhi and we also understand that certain consumer personas enjoy a specific 'taste', which is why we worked with professional GB cyclist Luke Rowe to create a blend tailored to cyclists.   

Increasingly people are being more experimental - both with flavours (we have seen a huge interest in our truffle coffee and our rum coffee!) and with how they are brewing (we see more people brewing with multiple methods at home).

Another interesting shift is that more people care more about the coffee that they are drinking which is why we have recently seen speciality coffee roasters entering our supermarket - people really are expecting more from the cup of Joe and understand the quality that comes from smaller batch roasting.  I think the next step will be how do we get (and manage) freshly roasted coffee into the supermarkets, as freshness really is key to a good end cup.

With regards to sustainability efforts - this question is as broad as it is wide,  with some areas of the category being quite simply shocking (in my opinion).  That said, to save my rant and to focus my response I will only refer to my area of expertise - freshly roasted, speciality coffee….  

We only work with roasters who are environmentally conscious and who ethically source their beans, ensuring that everybody in the supply chain is paid and treated fairly and with the respect that they deserve for their craftsmanship.  The term speciality coffee is not solely down to the grading of the coffee but supporting the coffee producers is incredibly important within speciality coffee; ensuring a fair price is paid and protecting the producers' livelihoods is critical to the supply chain and protects the quality of the final product.

On top of this, we only ever roast to order and deliver directly from the Roastery, this reduces any potential waste of unwanted product and ensures the transition is as short as possible.

Building a successful brand requires a deep understanding of your customers. How has Beans Coffee Club adapted to changing consumer preferences, and how do you stay connected with your customer base to ensure continued satisfaction?

Our Brand vision is to make speciality coffee accessible to all. To remove the pretentiousness and unnecessary complexity. To break down the myths and mystery and open up the world of freshly roasted, artisan coffee to everyone.  It is this vision that resulted in us creating a club (not just a subscription); we are a community of coffee lovers and we always encourage two-way conversation with our members.  Our members feedback to us regularly on things that they would like and equally on anything that they don’t like, and we listen. We then take the insight and work hard to find opportunities and ways to improve and grow the club for them.  For example, we know that people love to hear all about the teams who roast their coffee, over and the altitude of the farm where the coffee is grown and so it gives us great pleasure to introduce people to some of the best roasters we have here in the UK.  

We get some great feedback from our members which means we can act fast to pivot the business when we need to.  For example, not everybody wants to commit to a variety subscription and so we now have single coffee subscriptions and other ways to purchase via our store.  And what’s more, we reward our (account holders) members for their loyalty - we are starting to see people using Beans Coffee Club as their go-to marketplace for coffee.

Being flexible and fast to reevaluate and then pivot when needed, is something that we are super proud of and we enjoy doing as consumer preferences change and we identify new opportunities.

As a co-founder, what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to enter the specialty coffee market or start their own subscription-based business?

It is tough and if you are going into business with somebody else, make sure that it is somebody who you 100% trust and respect and they have skills that complement yours….and make sure that it is somebody whom you don’t mind spending a huge amount of time with :-).  

I went into business with my husband, Richard (founder of Beans Coffee Club) and so we rub along ok.  We are a great team, Richard is much less risk-averse than me; I take my hat off to him for that, plus he has huge experience in the technical side of things and has a great head for business.  I, on the other hand, have over 20 years of experience in brand building and innovation so the balance is a good one.

Entering into the speciality coffee market is super exciting, it is a pretty cool and energised category and you get to work with some great people, the only challenge is, is that it a flooded market and therefore potentially difficult to cut through the noise.  This is partly the reason why we set up Beans Coffee Club - There are over 400 independent coffee roasters in the UK and it can be time-consuming, complicated and expensive to work out which ones are worth trying, let alone know which of their coffees you might like.  

Starting a subscription-based business - people (I think this even mentioned when we were on Dragons Den) are cautious when it comes to subscription businesses.  Personally, I think this comes from the fact that a couple of years ago everybody seemed to set up a subscription and well quite frankly you do not need everything on a subscription.  And the result? - Hmmm a few too many subscription companies failing.  Does this mean that subscriptions are a risky business?  No not really, not if the product(s) work in that purchasing format - which essentially is all a subscription is…..a subscription is making it easy for somebody to buy something over and over again.  If you want to start up a subscription-based business ask yourself does the product work?  Why would anybody want this on a subscription?  Why would somebody choose to buy from you over and over again?  Do they need anything more?   

Subscription-based businesses are great but they can also be quite complex and the acquisition can be harder and more expensive as it is a bigger commitment to sign up to a subscription vs a one-time purchase. 

If you would like to find out more about Beans Coffee Club, visit https://beanscoffeeclub.com/