Unfiltered July - What's been going on behind the scenes

Following a short hiatus, we're bringing back the Unfiltered newsletter. I've got some exciting updates on how we make green coffee accessible through the site. This issue leans more towards improvements we've made than lessons learned, but hopefully you'll still find it just as interesting.

Wholesale functionality is live

First up: today we're rolling out wholesale functionality. In practice, this means the 10kg and 20kg variants by default will disappear from the site - to access them, you'll first need to be approved for a wholesale account.

Why are we doing this? We've turned our focus to improving the offering for the startup and professional roasters who use us as their supplier. That means functionality that actually matters to you: reduced pricing tiers, free samples before you make big commitments, net payment terms, and easier access to the information you need to run your business. All of these are possible - but not with how the site was configured. The first step is knowing who to show these features to, which means segmenting our customers into wholesale and non-wholesale. Once that's in place, we can start layering on the features that will make using Green Coffee Collective genuinely better for commercial roasters.

There's a second reason too. Earlier this year we ran a survey giving you the chance to tell us how we're doing and, more importantly, what we could do better. Several home and hobby roasters told us it felt unfair seeing the 20kg price per kilo sitting right next to their 1kg price point when it wasn't realistic for them to access it. Separating the two experiences lets us serve each group properly rather than showing everyone a compromise.

If you'd like a wholesale account, you can apply for one here.

What do these changes mean for the site? Right now, not a lot. If you're a home or hobby roaster, you'll continue using the site exactly as you always have. If you're buying from us commercially, we'll be rolling out the new features over the next few months - so by October you should see real improvements built on top of this change.

Warehouse operations: the honest bit

We've been ramping up our warehouse operations, and transparently, we're not where we want to be. Right now we're averaging nearly 72 hours from order to dispatch, which is nowhere near good enough.

The goal is same-day dispatch for orders placed before a cutoff (still being finalised) and next-day for everything else. We've hired a new member of the team, Joe, whose full focus is optimising and streamlining warehouse operations and supporting customers with order queries. Over the coming weeks we'll be working through the inefficiencies, and we're making it our mission that when you place an order, you get it in a timeframe that matches what you'd expect from ordering online.

I'm sure you'll be hearing updates from Joe over the next few months as he pushes forward this area of the business. 

Changes to how larger quantities appear in your basket

For those of you who remember our inventory management system and the headaches it's caused, we're dropping it in favour of multiples of the actual units you're ordering. So for wholesale customers ordering larger quantities: instead of 20kg in your basket, you'll see 4 × 5kg, with the appropriate bulk discount applied.

We've made this change to hopefully remove, once and for all, the "sorry, we've run out of coffee x" emails that happen far too often. So if you're ordering larger quantities, don't be alarmed when you see multiples of 5kg in your basket.

This one's actually a little bittersweet for me. The inventory management system is something I designed myself, built for the stage of business we'd reached at the time - we'd grown past the point of manually tracking quantities on a handful of orders, and we needed stock to sync properly. It worked great, right up until it didn't. Now we've outgrown it completely, which is the best possible reason to kill something you built. Happy tears as we retire it once and for all.

Example of 20kg added to the basket, where now it will show 4 x 5kg with a wholesale discount applied.

Filling in the missing information

Finally, we've been working on the "missing" information on our listings. In that same survey, a number of you asked about water activity, moisture content, and better roasting recommendations.

The result is a new Quality Control component on our coffees. We're retrospectively updating existing listings, and going forward every coffee should include the QC information you'd find useful as a roaster. We've been careful not to overcomplicate it, and we've added context for anyone less familiar with the terminology.

We're please to bring this new level of detail to our listings thanks to our partnership with DiFluid, where you'll see products such as the Omix, Airwave and CoffMeter range hitting the site soon. 

On roasting recommendations: we're keeping the qualitative guidance you already see on the site - broad recommendations on how to approach a roast. But we're adding a new section on every coffee for specific roast profiles.

We'll populate what we can ourselves, but we want this to be community-led. If you've found a profile that really works for a coffee and you're willing to share it, send it to us - assuming we showcase it on the site, we'll credit your account with £5. There's no limit on the number of profiles you can submit, and we'll always credit members of the community who take the time to share what they've learned. Your profile could be exactly the starting point someone buying that coffee in smaller amounts needs.

If you'd like to submit a roast profile - you can do so here.

If you have any feedback on anything were doing or any of the changes we're making my inbox is always open!

Thanks for reading - more soon.