#yourgrind

As of this morning, YourGrind have changed our name to Pact (www.pactcoffee.com). This blog post explains what this is going to mean for our users, why we’ve decided to change our name and why, after much deliberation and soul-searching, we settled on the name Pact.

  What’s going to change?

For our users, nothing other than a few website addresses will change. The site layout, account page, contact information and team will all stay exactly the same.

  Why are we changing our name?

When we launched YourGrind back in October, we made a few assumptions.

Our biggest assumption has been proven right; that most people prefer the taste of fresh coffee, and most people are happy to pay a little over the supermarket price once they had tried it. In addition we’ve proven that that free, next day delivery with a single click can stop our customers from running out.

One or two assumptions were wrong, however. We thought that tailoring the grind coarseness to customers’ brew method would matter as much as the freshness of our coffee beans. Quality grinding turned out to be assumed, rather than something to get excited about. I guess marketers would call it a ‘hygiene factor’, and not a ‘Unique Selling Point’*. So YourGrind started to make less sense.

The new name will not change the way we work. It’s simply that, as a business in our infancy, we have a chance to get these things right, and we take a lot of pride in the details. This one feels like a bit of a biggie.

  So, why Pact?

In listening to our community, we’ve come to learn the things they care about most, namely: Our promise to sell the best coffee we can, the strength of our bond with our community, and our dedication to being open and honest in everything we do. That’s what we hope we have managed to encapsulate with Pact.

  Our Pact with you, our community:

We will never cut corners with the quality of our coffee

We will be honest and open in everything we do

If you have a problem, we will move heaven and earth to put it right

You will guide our decisions. If we can’t do what you’d like, we will be totally transparent in explaining why not.

  Our Pact with our growers:

We will always store treat your coffee with the same love, care and attention that you have

We will ensure you are paid at least 2x the Fair Trade rate for your beans

If we are successful, we will use our influence to make your lives better, not worse

  Our Pact with each other; Colleagues, investors & suppliers

We will put our customers’ needs above our own

We will push the boundaries of what is possible, and raise the industry bar in everything we do

If we make a mistake or spot a problem we will share it with the team to ensure we can all learn from it

We will take pride in the details, because everything matters ;)

      These links may be useful:

www.pactcoffee.com (don’t worry, www.yourgrind.com will still redirect!) 

www.twitter.com/pactcoffee

www.facebook.com/pactcoffee

[email protected] for all general questions. Other email addresses will stay the same, but replace yourgrind.com with pactcoffee.com ([email protected] is now [email protected], for example.)

Early last month we caused a bit of a stir when we announced the newest member of our team, Nick. As Head of Coffee, it’s his job to make sure we’re constantly delighting you guys with the best coffee around. This caused a bit of a stir on Twitter, with a few of you suggesting it was the best job in the world.

So he’s decided it would be selfish to keep it to himself, and would love your help choosing and buying in our next bean. This Friday, we have 5 Colombian single-origin coffees being delivered to the office for a tasting session. These light, bright little fellas are in high-demand at the moment, and we’re going to have to swoop quickly once we find the bean we love.

We’re looking for 10 intrepid volunteers to come to Cosy HQ this Friday and choose our next bean. We’ll teach you how to taste each one (cupping) before asking you to vote on the one you’d like us to stock. We’ll place the order whilst you’re here and celebrate with a quick lunch.

If you’d like to try your hand at being a coffee buyer, just ping me an email on [email protected], and be ready to join us at our office in Bermondsey at 12:30pm this Friday.

Nick, Joe and I would all love to see you here.

We get a lot of emails along the lines of:

“You chaps sure do sound smashing, but I’m not sure I want to buy your coffee just yet because I can’t be sure it’s as good as you say. Isn’t there a chance that all the people saying nice things on Twitter are really an evil mechanical army?”

Sincerely,

Wing-Commander Norbert Wafer.

So tomorrow we’re putting our money where our mouth is, and would love your help to spread the word. From 10am tomorrow morning, we’re taking our filter machine and coffee grinder up to the good people of Mega City Comics in Camden and who are kindly letting us set up shop outside theirs! It’s great to be working along side such a fabulous local business.

We’ll be brewing a batch of incredible Brazilian beans that are roasting as we speak. It’s a ‘pay as you please’ affair and everyone gets a sample bag of fresh coffee too so we’re should be drowning in a sea of happy faces.

Please come along and say hello; we’d love to buy you a coffee. Also, if you think this is the kind of thing your friends may like, help us spread the word by popping a link on Facebook, Twitter or give them a good-old-fashioned phone call. If they live nearby you could even knock on the door. Door knockers don’t get as much love as they used to.

Hope to see you there,

A couple of weeks ago Stephen, Joe and I were chatting over our daily grinding and packing session when we realised that most of our customers didn’t appreciate how hands-on we are with every box that leaves Coffee Towers. Shuddering at the image of vast machines and blinking lights picking and packing your coffee we decided to do something about it, and invited a few of our lovely members down to try their hand at the YourGrind craft. And nail a martini or two. It was a Wednesday after all...

Luckily Nick had been roasting away on Tuesday so we were well-stocked. 4 different beans were ground and passed around to smell, and La Pavoni was on standby for those who fancied an Espresso or two. Stephen had an unsuccessful stab at latte art and it was widely agreed that, although the resulting beverage wasn’t the cortado Chrissy had requested, it was delicious.

We talked everyone through the process of packing each box. Choosing a bean to match each brewing style, grinding & sealing, writing silly notes and carefully packing (the trick here is to keep the whole thing flat. Trickier than it sounds…!). As a couple of the photos show, our creativity was put to shame and we were showered with amazing ideas for future box designs.

Finally Stephen took everyone through our shiny new account page. By this point the espresso martinis had been flowing for some time. Did everyone know that you could now pick delivery dates from a calendar? Or view and change their upcoming order? No. Would they remember this information by the morning? Perhaps.

All in all it was a terrific night, and we’d like to thank Antje, Mike, Emma, Stephen, Julia, Chrissy, Jess and Andrew for making it so special. 

If our Twitter feed was anything to go by it was a roaring success and we can’t wait for the next. We’re thinking of making this a regular fixture – if you’d like to come down to the next just ping me an email on [email protected] or hit me up on Twitter.

Ahoy! 

I've spent a few days trying to write our Big Shiny First Post. I've played with ways to explain what YourGrind is all about; what we think is wrong with supermarket coffee and how we're going to fix it. But it's tricky to get across with words alone.

So instead, why not let us buy you a coffee and you can see for yourself? We're hosting a Friday pick-me-up this Friday, at 18 Hewett St.

Where: 18 Hewett St, EC2A 3NN

When: 1:30pm

Why?: Because a great coffee makes Friday afternoon better

You'll even get a chance to try our latest batch: an incredible single-origin coffee from Guatemala which we'll be shipping from tomorrow until it runs out.