Tired of overspending on coffee subscriptions? Craft Coffee has you covered. Getting started with a coffee subscription is simple, but it is beneficial to do a little extra research before you put your money where your tastebuds are. That’s why we’ve reviewed one of the most affordable yet high-quality roasters AND subscription service–just for you!
All subscriptions by Craft Coffee are, as the company itself describes: “fresh-roasted, conveniently delivered, and price-matched.”
Getting Acquainted With Craft Coffee
Ever since 2011, Craft Coffee has been on a mission to provide you with the most delicious coffee you can get your hands on for the best price possible. Based out of Brooklyn, NY, Craft Coffee is all about bringing affordable, delicious coffee to the coffee lovers on a budget. After all, their motto is “Better Coffee for Less Money.” Starting at just $6.99, Craft Coffee is on a mission to cater to as many tastebuds as possible!
Where roasting is concerned, Craft works roasts the beans to perfection, coaxing out the inner flavor within the beans. Whenever you inquire about starting a Craft Coffee subscription, one of the first things they will ask is what coffee you’re currently drinking. This will help them to better recommend one of their own roasts to match your palette.
Finding inspiration from some of the world’s most popular coffee brands, Craft tests thousands of coffee beans in their lab. Using state of the art technology, Craft is able to cultivate tastes that will leave you craving a second cup right from the first sip.
But don’t just take our word for it! Craft Coffee has also been reviewed and recommended by entities like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Wired just to name a few.
Coffee Characteristics
If there’s another thing that Craft Coffee specializes in besides cutting costs, it’s roasting coffee and matching the similar flavor profiles in bigger coffee brands. To reflect the most favored flavor profiles, Craft Coffee has two groups of blends that they roast. One group consists of five blends to reflect large brand coffees, and a group of four blends to reflect more intricate third-wave coffee blends.
The Five Blends
Inspired by flavors from coffee roasters like Blueprint, Death Wish Coffee, Lavazza, Peet’s Coffee, and Starbucks Coffee, and more. These blends are designed to compete with some of the larger, more popular coffee companies. Here’s a quick rundown on the differences between these blends:
- Streetlight: Notes of full-bodied cocoa and toasted nuts.
- Into The Black: Deep caramel flavors with a soothing, smokey finish.
- Daydream: Chocolatey, with flavors similar to A Day In The Life, Daydream is a sweeter, lighter medium roast.
- Throwback: Smooth, mellow, warm notes of sweet milk chocolate, and gooey caramel.
- A Day In The Life: A succulent, even balance between flavors of notes and caramel.
Four Extra Blends
Craft’s four blends are carefully crafted to compete with popular third-wave coffee brands. Some of the roasters that Craft Coffee models their flavor profiles after are: Stumptown, Blue Bottle, Onyx Coffee, and Counter Culture Coffee. Here’s a quick rundown on the profiles of the four different blends offered by Craft Coffee.
- Fascination: A bolder, more complex roast with notes of chocolate, ripe berries, and a highlight of citrus.
- Ruckus: A significantly dark roast, the Ruckus is a mixture of sweet fruit and caramel.
- Wanderer: A darker roast, the wanderer is full-bodied with sweet, syrupy chocolate flavors.
- Shoulders Of Giants: A bright spark of flavors such as citrus, crisp floral notes, and a base flavor of dark chocolate.
Light’s Out: Decaf
Recently, Craft has also debuted its new decaf roast coffee: Light Roast. This blend is rich and velvety, embodying undertones of sweet raisin and spice. For the coffee lover who can’t consume caffeine, this blend is specifically designed to add a spark of flavor to your taste buds!
Crafting Your Subscription
Currently, when you buy four bags of coffee or more, you can receive each 12oz bag for just $6.99 per bag. With shipping included in the price and no hidden taxes or fees, this deal should be on every coffee subscription lover’s radar. Here’s a quick overview of what a subscription with Craft Coffee looks like.
Choosing Your Options
For starters, before you begin your subscription you have one out of four options to choose that will best decide your subscription needs. These four options include purchasing a coffee for your home, purchasing a subscription for a loved one, wholesale options, and choosing your subscription if someone has given you a gift to Craft Coffee. Obviously, whatever reason you’re needed a coffee subscription will determine what kind of subscription you’ll need.
Getting The Right Grind
After choosing the amount, you’ll need to consider what size of grind you’ll need to brew with.
The best method to decide this is considering what your preferred method of brewing is (drip coffee, pour-over, French press, Aeropress, etc.). The sizes that Craft Coffee offers include whole bean, French press, flat-bottom filter, and cone filter.
Timing The Delivery Cycle
Finally, all you need to do is decide on how frequently you’d like to receive your coffee. Craft Coffee offers shipments of one bag of coffee every week, two bags of coffee every four weeks, or you can create your own custom delivery cycle.
Things We Like
Customer Service & Satisfaction
Craft Coffee works hard to ensure that every batch of hand-roasted coffee is rich and robust in flavor. However, not all taste palates are made the same–that’s why Craft’s customer service team works hard to mend any discontent or dislike you may find with any of their roasts.
Specifically, if there is a roast that you have brewed and tried and do not enjoy, Craft will grant you the ability to talk to a real person on the Craft coffee team via in-person chat, phone call, or email to voice your complaint/request. To make it right, Craft will work endlessly to find a suitable replacement roast/blend that you’re sure to love.
Front-Lining The Coffee Subscription Service
Setting the standard for online coffee subscription services, Craft Coffee originally started as a startup company on a mission to cut out the middle-man (primarily grocery stores) that stand in the way between coffee lovers and high-quality coffee. In fact, Craft Coffee is the first coffee subscription service to really get the ball rolling when it comes to creating and fueling coffee subscriptions.
Through Craft Coffee’s initiative behind the coffee subscription, several other coffee subscriptions have based their own business models based off of Craft Coffee’s. One of the groundbreaking tools that Craft Coffee used to change the subscription service game is the utilization of the personalized coffee recommendation through the flavor/palate quiz.
Roasting & Subscription Services
A great characteristic of Craft Coffee that makes it so efficient, accessible, and easy for consumers to utilize is the fact that they are both a roastery AND a subscription provider. As a result, Craft is able to ensure that every small-roasted batch of coffee is carefully filtered through and roasted to perfection since they have more control over the coffee roasting and subscription process.
Low Costs & Fast Shipping
Craft Coffee ships all coffee to you at no cost at all! You can receive delicious coffee with no hassle and no extra shipping fees. In addition, Craft will deliver coffee that is shipped to you as quickly as possible, as soon after the roasting process is complete. Waiting only 24-72 hours, Craft Coffee sends you a fresh bag of coffee as quickly as possible for you to brew and enjoy. This is an excellent service in comparison to other coffee subscriptions that wait a week or longer after roasting before sending your coffee to you.
Things That Could Be Better
Website User-Friendliness
Though this isn’t a direct critique of the coffee itself, Craft’s website can be more user-friendly when it comes to selecting your coffee brand. The biggest thing that we noticed that could be designed better is the drop-down menu to select the kind of coffee brand that you currently drink before Craft Coffee recommends their personal blend option to you. We found that the drop-down bar doesn’t reveal all of the listed coffees, and it can be hard to browse through what’s listed because you can only search by one letter at a time.
Furthermore, it can be difficult to locate the characteristics of the flavors and roasting of the blends. For example, it’s very easy to navigate the website to find information about the coffee subscriptions, but you may have to do a little more digging to find out information regarding the coffee blends themselves.
Beginner Level
Though it’s been established that Craft Coffee is excellent to receive high-quality coffee at a low price, Craft Coffee definitely limits the experienced coffee drinker/enthusiast to encountering a wide-range, large-variety of authentically-grown coffee from around the world. Though you’ll get your dollar’s worth with Craft Coffee, it’s definitely a stepping stone for those who are looking for access to more complex, craft-roasted, intricate level coffee.
The Verdict
For the coffee lover living on a budget, Craft Coffee is a great option for those who need great coffee for a great price. If you’re looking to test try a coffee subscription for the first time but aren’t interested in tasting coffee from large brand coffee companies themselves, Craft can create a coffee subscription for you that will allow you to enjoy succulent coffee without breaking your bank. For the level of quality that it offers, Craft Coffee is a subscription method that beginner-level coffee lovers would greatly benefit from.
Happy caffeinating!
Craft Coffee Review: Crafted for Coffee Lovers On A Budget
Rich, robust, succuent flavor--all for some of the lowest prices imaginable?! Craft Coffee subscription offers all of this and more!
Product In-Stock: InStock
4.4
