Your lineup. It's not your strongest hitter, it's about WAR.

What is a general line up coffees?  What should yours be.

Lets go back in time first and look at the biggie's, what do all the big roasters do. What do they have in common there are things everyone seems to have?

There's a: “Dark” thing, some  "Breakfast” thing. There’s usually some “island” blend. Some kind of continental wording.

And the blend game.

This exists from blue bottle to intelli to counter culture onto verve and george howell. If you focus on just light you’re painting yourself into a small corner. You can own that corner but it will have it’s limitations.

What about the dreaded second wave? We see more regional things. Brazil Cerrado. Ethiopia Yirgacheffe. They start to use tin tie bags, usually paper. That’s mostly the cheapest option from bag manufacturers.

What about third wave?

Farms. Lots of microlots. Processing x 10. Honey, natural washed. And while everything seems nice there is some shadyness going on. There are people who buy past crops because they’re discounted and pass off their entire lineup as third wave and third wave prices.

Coffee beers. Everyone sells stouts. And lots of brewers already work with people. Can we do more? 

To shine through alcohol most roasters use their darkest stuff,  and fairly cheap, and in general I don’t go that dark to make it toasty properly and don’t really fly with cheap coffee anymore. There are exceptions of course.

Certifications. Organic, Rain Forrest, FT. Yes I'm going to skip over them, I encourage you to do the legwork here.

My lineup:

Started out selling single origin lights then switched somewhat.
Reasons why I changed things up, changed names, change my value proposition. How through that it's developed into the business I have and wanted to do.