Develop Coffee That Defines Your Brand
Create a signature blend through collaborative development that reflects what makes your business distinct.
Back to HomeWhat Custom Blend Development Delivers
Through this collaborative process, you'll develop a coffee blend that distinguishes your business from competitors using generic supplier offerings. Your blend becomes part of your identity - something customers associate specifically with your cafe or restaurant.
The development process typically involves three to four tasting rounds where we refine the profile based on your feedback. By the end, you'll have a documented blend formula that remains yours, maintained with consistent quality through careful sourcing and roasting protocols.
Beyond just creating a unique product, you gain confidence knowing your coffee program reflects intentional choices rather than accepting whatever standard blends suppliers offer. This ownership over your coffee quality helps you serve customers with genuine conviction.
When Standard Offerings Don't Match Your Vision
Many cafes and restaurants serve the same coffee blends as their competitors because wholesale suppliers offer limited options. When a customer can get nearly identical coffee three blocks away, your beverage program doesn't contribute to what makes your business memorable.
Off-the-shelf blends are developed for broad appeal rather than specific contexts. They might work adequately, but they don't account for your particular brewing equipment, service style, or the flavor preferences of your regular customers. You're fitting your operation to the coffee instead of the other way around.
Some businesses try requesting modifications to existing blends, but wholesale suppliers often can't accommodate custom requests without high volume commitments. Small adjustments that would make the coffee work better for your operation remain unavailable because you don't order enough to justify recipe changes.
You want coffee that reflects the care you put into your business - something developed intentionally rather than selected from a limited catalog. Creating that requires working with a roaster who treats blend development as a collaboration rather than a one-size-fits-all transaction.
Our Collaborative Development Approach
We begin by understanding your operation - your brewing methods, customer base, price point, and what role coffee plays in your overall business. This context shapes which directions make sense to explore during development.
Rather than presenting you with pre-made options, we create initial samples based on your requirements and preferences. These serve as starting points for refinement rather than final proposals. You taste, provide feedback, and we adjust accordingly.
Throughout the development process, we explain what each component brings to the blend and why certain combinations work better than others. This helps you make informed decisions about tradeoffs between different characteristics like body, acidity, sweetness, and how the coffee performs with milk.
Once we finalize your blend formula, it's documented with specific origins, percentages, and roast profiles. This documentation ensures we can maintain consistency when producing your blend, and the formula remains yours even if you eventually decide to work with a different roaster.
The Development Journey
Discovery Session
We start with a detailed conversation about your business, customers, and what you want your coffee program to achieve. We discuss flavor preferences, functional requirements like milk compatibility, and any constraints around pricing or sourcing ethics. This session typically takes 60-90 minutes and can happen in person or remotely.
Initial Samples
Based on the discovery session, we create two or three initial blend options for you to evaluate. We send samples along with notes explaining the thinking behind each approach. You taste them in your actual service environment - brewed how you'd normally prepare coffee - and provide detailed feedback about what works and what doesn't.
Refinement Rounds
We iterate based on your feedback, typically going through two to three refinement cycles. Each round narrows in on the target profile, making adjustments to individual components or overall balance. We encourage testing with your regular customers during this phase to ensure the blend performs well in real service conditions.
Finalization and Documentation
Once you approve the final version, we document the complete formula including origin selections, percentages, and roast specifications. You receive this documentation along with guidelines for proper storage and handling. We also establish quality benchmarks and discussion protocols for maintaining consistency over time.
Investment Details
Development fee for complete blend creation process
The development fee covers the entire collaborative process - discovery session, sample creation across multiple rounds, roasting time, all coffee used during development, and complete documentation of your final blend formula.
This is a one-time fee for blend creation. Once developed, you purchase your blend at standard wholesale pricing based on your order volume. There are no ongoing royalties or additional development charges unless you want to create an entirely new blend later.
The development timeline typically spans three to five weeks depending on your feedback timing and availability for tasting sessions. We work at a pace that allows for thorough evaluation rather than rushing decisions.
Complete Development Package
After Development: Ongoing Pricing
Once your blend is finalized, you order it at our standard wholesale rates based on volume. Typical pricing ranges from $14-18 per pound depending on the specific origins used in your blend and your regular order quantity. We discuss exact ongoing costs during the development process so there are no surprises.
Our Experience With Custom Development
We've developed custom blends for cafes, restaurants, and specialty retailers since we started offering this service in early 2021. These projects range from simple two-component blends focused on consistency and value to complex profiles balancing multiple flavor characteristics.
The businesses we've worked with appreciate having input throughout the process rather than just approving or rejecting finished samples. This collaborative approach takes longer than presenting pre-made options, but it results in blends that genuinely reflect what each business wanted to achieve.
Most custom blends we've developed remain in active production. When businesses find something that works for their operation and customers, they tend to stick with it. We maintain the same sourcing and roasting protocols for these blends as we do for our standard offerings.
Development Track Record
These numbers reflect completed projects where businesses proceeded from development through to regular ordering. Some initial consultations don't progress to development, which is fine - not every project needs to move forward.
Our Development Commitment
We commit to working through the development process until you're satisfied with the result or until it becomes clear the project isn't heading toward a workable solution. If we reach a point where we genuinely cannot create what you're looking for within reasonable parameters, we'll discuss that honestly rather than delivering something that doesn't meet your needs.
The development fee is paid upfront before we begin work. If for any reason the project doesn't result in a blend you want to use, we'll refund the fee. This has happened twice in our development history - once when the customer's requirements exceeded what we could source reliably, and once when internal changes at their business made the project no longer relevant.
After finalizing your blend, if quality issues arise that result from our roasting or sourcing rather than handling or storage on your end, we address them immediately. Your blend formula documentation includes the benchmarks we've established, making it straightforward to identify when something is off-spec.
Not Sure If This Is Right for You?
We can discuss your situation before you commit to the development process.
Ask Questions FirstStarting Your Blend Development
To begin, reach out with basic information about your business and what you're hoping to achieve with a custom blend. We'll schedule an initial conversation to discuss whether this service makes sense for your situation and to outline what the development process would involve.
Some businesses aren't sure yet what they want from a custom blend beyond "something unique." That's fine - the discovery session helps clarify objectives and establishes direction. Other businesses come with specific flavor profiles in mind, which we can work toward directly.
Once we agree to proceed, we collect the development fee and begin the discovery session. From there, the timeline depends largely on how quickly you can evaluate samples and provide feedback between rounds.
Development Process Timeline
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1
Initial Contact
Reach out with information about your business and custom blend interest.
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2
Preliminary Discussion
We talk through your goals and outline the development approach.
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3
Commitment and Discovery
Development fee paid, detailed discovery session scheduled.
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4
Sample Creation
We create initial samples based on discovery session insights.
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5
Iterative Refinement
Multiple rounds of tasting and adjustment (typically 2-3 rounds).
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6
Finalization
Blend approved, formula documented, wholesale ordering established.
Most development projects complete within 4-6 weeks from initial contact.
Begin DevelopmentReady to Create Your Signature Blend?
If you want coffee that reflects your business rather than settling for standard supplier offerings, custom blend development provides that distinction.
Start the ProcessQuestions? Reach out at [email protected]
Explore Our Other Services
Roasting Experience Day
Spend a full day learning the craft alongside working roasters. Hands-on experience with equipment operation, quality assessment, and understanding what roasting actually involves.
Wholesale Partnership Consultation
For cafes and restaurants exploring coffee supply relationships. We discuss your needs and determine if our offerings align with your operation.