[DamnYuppie]

I know lots of people who would pay for good instant coffee for a few weeks out of the year. I like to backpack and many people love their coffee and jump through hoops to get their fix in the backcountry. They would definitely be into good coffee that is portable and instant with just hot water.

[throwaway729]

Yes. You definitely need to market this to the backpacking crowd. They'll blow $100's on light, compact gear and then shove beans + grinder + aeropress on top... and then deal with the mess. Or at least, I will :)

The subscription model isn't great in this respect.

I travel up to a dozen times a year and backpack at least a couple weeks per year (in aggregate).

So that's 3x2x12 (3 cups per day of travel for each work trip) + 3x14 (backpacking trips). And probably another dozen or three here or there for random stuff (full-day bike rides, long drives, run out of beans @ work, etc.)

If I like Sudden, and especially if it's better than Starbucks drip served at airports, I'd use it for all of these things.

But I'm not going to+ sign up for a subscription because the vast majority of the year I'm happy with my espresso machine at home and decent drip at work. It's not like hygiene products where I just need a steady drip. My demand for instant coffee is very bursty. I expect that's true of others as well.

Maybe the logistics just don't work out without a subscription model, which is fine. And I certainly won't pretend to know what I'm talking about. But you're definitely losing one potential customer by forcing me to do a monthly subscription :)

Also, something is confusing in your ordering page. How many servings of coffee do I get for $19? I feel like that'd be useful information to have somewhere on the order page. Is it 8 cups of instant grounds? Or enough instant groups for 8 "cups" of coffee?

--

+ well actually, I am to try it out. But I won't mess with starting/canceling the subscription in the future. If you gave me a way to schedule things though, that would convert me for sure, assuming I enjoy the coffee.

[zloof]

It definitely does work well for backpacking and based on your amount of usage - sounds like something that could work well. Definitely have run some campaigns with a travel focus. However, the bursty demand you mentioned is what we hear from travelers and backpackers - that makes it a lot harder to serve (it's hard to get in front of you right around when you'll need it).

A big part of our mission is serving coffee for everyone's need - we have some people who use it camping, we have others who use it on the way to work. There is room for both.

[finnh]

With the 4-6 (+) shelf life you mention elsewhere on-thread, could you setup a seasonal subscription? "Camping time! Send me x ounces every: May [x] June [] July []"

[zloof]

Yeah that could definitely work. We're limited technically at the moment (e.g. can't really extend our platform to do things like that), but hiring a team to enable things like that.

What would be really neat is if we learned exactly how much you need and sent you the right amount at the right time.

[finnh]

Just let me schedule it. Trying to "learn" the right time and amount probably won't work well with such small datasets, and has a high risk of annoying your customers.

At most, send me a reminder email asking if I want to repeat last year's order.

[bahro]

Totally. If you can make instant coffee that tastes even okay, it would be revolutionary for backpacking.

Coffee is the most important thing my partner and I check to make sure we have before we enter the backcountry. And it's always instant, not out of preference or cost concerns, but weight.