Get Fresh Coffee Beans Delivered Right to Your Door!

Are you struggling to find some fresh coffee beans in your area? Are you tired of tasting the same old cup of Joe? I was, and when my family and I relocated to the Nashville area a few years ago, I was shocked that I couldn’t find anything with a roast date less than 20 miles away! 

For the coffee geek that I am, that was a significant issue. I go through a pound of coffee every week. Driving up to 20 miles to pick up coffee is not an option. Buying multiple bags at once at the roaster is also not ideal. By the time I open the last bag from my order, it is already past its peak of freshness. It would not be as good as it could be. As a result, I started digging around online. I considered ordering coffee online from different roasters, but the cost of shipping each bag turned my guilty pleasure into an expensive luxury. Ordering a bulk of coffee pouches at once was off the table, too, for freshness. Fortunately, I stumbled upon Drinktrade.com, and that solved my problem.

Before I go into details, I want to clarify that I am not affiliated with Trade in any way. I do not get anything from them. This article is solely about my personal consumer experience. As a matter of fact, I asked them for sending me pictures to illustrate this article. They did not reply. So much for sponsoring 😉

Are you ready to explore 475+ unique coffees delivered right to your door?

What is Trade?

Launched in 2018, Trade (Drinktrade.com) changed how you buy coffee by connecting customers to over 50 of the country’s best specialty coffee roasters. It provides you the opportunity to discover 475+ roasted-to-order coffees. 

What does Specialty coffee mean?

Specialty coffee is a term to design a high coffee grade from farm to cup using single origin or single estate coffee. The coffee is roasted and extracted differently. Those coffee beans score higher than 80 points on the SCA quality scale (Specialty Coffee Association).

Personalized coffee picks – a matchmaker between you and the coffee beans

They make you take a short quiz (7 questions) to understand your preferences and then suggest a selection of matches. Depending on your profile, they recommend the perfect bag o’ beans.

Roasted-to-order

You can purchase either directly or via a subscription model. I am personally not a fan of subscriptions. I consume my coffee very quickly and change my mind regularly about what I want.

The website is clear and straightforward. You can search by the roaster, by brew method, origin, or even by taste profile. 

For each of the 475+ choices, There is a clear description, including the day of the week that it is roasted. 

After checkout, Trade places the order with the roaster, who ships it directly within a day or two after roasting the batch. All in one, it takes only a few days to receive my bag of FRESH goodness carefully packaged in my mailbox.

Other options out there to get fresh coffee beans

Trade is not the only company proposing “roasted-to-order” coffee and curated coffee selection. Atlas Coffee Club, Bean Box, or Crema. co (not a typo) are other options, but I haven’t tried them.

Atlas Coffee Club has two types of subscriptions: Coffee of the Month Club, You try a coffee from a new country every month, or you can browse their collections. If you don’t know what you like and are a newbie in the coffee world, this option is better suited for you. Atlas Coffee Club is like a world coffee tour in a box and could be a good starting point as they choose for you.

Bean Box®️ is a company of artisan coffee experts, founded in 2014 by two software engineers. They work with some of the best coffee roasters located around Seattle’s coffee hub and delivers them right to your door. They carefully select the best coffees and roast them to peak flavor. Such an artisan approach comes with a higher price tag that reflects higher quality. You pay for the process, the premium content, and the experience of having ethically grown, professionally selected, and roasted premium coffee.

Crema.co, launched in 2015; they collaborate with 45+ highly respected roasters from hot spots like San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. They firmly believe that coffee is a community, not a commodity. Its mission is to empower farmers, roasters, and coffee drinkers to truly live well. If you’re environmentally conscious and care about the workers and the coffee production process, this is a subscription for you.
You begin your coffee journey with a simple eight-question quiz; then, you can choose between a “set & forget” or “à la carte” subscription.

To put it succinctly, Atlas Coffee Club offers a great choice for newbies who want to be guided. Bean Box is your high-end option that focuses on top quality. Crema.co is your best alternative if sustainability and fair trade is your priority. Trade does a little bit of everything, thanks to their large selection.

Coffee beans freshness

After almost two years of using this service, I found that most roasters play the game. According to the date on the bag, most bags I received were roasted right after my order or, at worst, just one day or two before, which is acceptable. As a result, it is usually less than a week old by the time I receive it.

I only had one bad experience with a bag over two weeks old by the time I received it. Trade’s customer service stepped up and immediately refunded me.  

Free shipping and fair prices

Trade appealed to me by offering free shipping, without a subscription, as long as I place a new order every two weeks. That was the flexibility and terms that I wanted. After using them for a while, I noticed they extended free shipping to 3 weeks between purchases.

The cost is in line with the price you would pay if you purchased directly with the roaster. Overall, I paid between $14.5 to $17.00 for a 12 oz pack of fresh coffee. It is not cheap, but this is the average price for this quality. It is well worth it if the beans are fresh. As a side note, I recently saw that Target carries coffee from Stumptown and Intelligentsia. Still, when looking at the pack’s roast date, the coffee is usually several months old. In my opinion, paying over $15.00 for old beans is a waste of money.

Using their subscription model allows you to get lower prices, but as noted above, I never used it; since I wanted the flexibility of placing my orders when I wanted and purchase what I prefer that day.

So much choice!

In addition to freshness and free shipping, the great advantage of using a service like Trade is their excellent and wide selection. They provide over 475+ different coffees from over 50 of the best roasters in the USA. Based on your preference and the rating you leave with each purchase, they recommend other choices that you may like.

I discovered a few gems, and I feel the need to share my favorites, especially for espresso, but they also work fantastic with a French Press or other brewing methods:

• Dharma Espresso Blend by Temple. It became my benchmark to evaluate any coffee.
• Geometry and Monarch by Onyx Coffee Lab.
• I tried several options from La Colombe and liked them all.  Nizza was my favorite, syrupy and thick, lovely.
• Black Magic Espresso Blend by Groundwork.

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I bought some coffee that I did not care for, but I understood it was part of my coffee journey. After trying a few highly rated medium-light roast options, I realized that I was not a fan of their acidic and bright character. Instead, I enjoyed the chocolate character, mixed with a zing of the fruit of some medium to medium-dark options, mainly when they include Ethiopian coffee. The fun part of coffee is that there is so much to explore and try. Your taste will evolve with time as well. A tasteful and exciting journey!

Always room to improve

Trade lets you rate your coffee after purchase, but it is only a choice between “like” and “don’t like.” You can enter a comment. The issue is that once you rate a coffee type, you can never edit it. As I mentioned earlier: tastes can change, and I couldn’t update my review after buying a specific coffee multiple times. 

A rating using 1 to 5 stars would be helpful; there is a lot more than just liking or not liking a coffee.

The rating and the notes seem to be only for your personal information; you cannot see a review from other consumers, which could be beneficial.

I acquired some coffees based on Trade’s recommendations on my profile and past rating and found it was not always reliable. I did not care for some options marked as “great match,” and I did really like some that were not recommended at all.

The bottom line

If you haven’t the option to locally purchase coffee beans with a freshness guarantee, these new innovative platforms let you access a wide selection of premium options delivered to your door.

Trade is a very compelling option. They offer convenience, a great choice, free shipping, and the system works very well. I recommended it to several friends.

However, if you have good local options, favor them and support your local artisans.