Craft Coffee Introduces its New Way of Personalizing the Coffee Experience
Christina Drill
August 28, 2014
Craft Coffee is a tech startup and delivery service that delivers to its customers three selections of artisanal coffee from American roasters per month. The company’s objective over the last three years? To bring “good coffee” to Americans who love drinking coffee but might not know a whole lot about coffee that isn’t Folgers, Starbucks, or Chock Full O’ Nuts.
But the American coffee industry is a $4 billion industry, and the founders of Craft Coffee were feeling like they weren’t tapping into the most exciting parts of their business—there’s the internet part, which is unique because less than 5% of Americans buy their coffee online, and the customizable part, which is the part where Craft Coffee felt like they could
And so, the Coffee DNA Project was born, during a 10-week intensive at Y Combinator’s Summer Class in Silicon Valley. Founder Michael Horn and his team spent their time there building better technology to further the “customizable” appeal of their business.
The Coffee DNA Project is essentially a Pandora for coffee. On its website, Craft Coffee asks its customer what kind of coffee they drink, and then recommends small-roast brands they might like based on their big-brand preference. Once the customer has tried all three small-roast brands, they can then go back onto Craft Coffee’s website and rate them. From there, Craft Coffee intends to further personalize the kind of coffee they are sending out to customers, while enlightening and educating their customers in the process.
“We love the artistan roasters, but a lot of the country isn’t there yet,” Horn explains in a press release. “Most Americans stick with the big coffee brand names. We want to push past the buzz, hype, and exclusion of the artisanal coffee scene to [reach] all Americans.”
The Coffee DNA Project allows you to adjust both flavor and price, so Craft Coffee will never send you a more expensive bag of coffee if it doesn’t fit both your flavor preference and your price preference.
Going from picking up a bag of coffee at the deli in the morning to ordering it online on weekends may be a bit of a strange switch for some people, but Craft Coffee cites Zappos as their inspiration. Which makes total sense-- Zappos is a company who took advantage of online sales of a product that was difficult, at the time, to find online.
“Over 130 million Americans pay $4 billion a year on regular beans they drink at home, [and] of that $4 billion, hardly any is sold online. The opportunity, just as Zappos saw with shoes, is clear,” Horn is quoted as saying to a reporter at PSFK.
Like I needed another reason to be excited about coffee, guys! Thanks a lot!
