About Freshness and our Boxes

About Freshness and our Boxes

Background on freshness: Once coffee is roasted, the time clock starts ticking! Roasted beans begin producing CO2 gas, which naturally protects its delicate oils within. The initial potent release period is called “de-gassing”, which should be allowed for 12 hours. The coffee then begins to release the wonderful flavor and aroma you experience with fresh roasted coffee, but as time goes by, more and more of the flavor and aromas also escape with the gas. This is why most mylar-type bagged coffees feature a “freshness valve”, which is really designed to prevent the bag from blowing up from carbon dioxides – which are released through the valve instead. The bags are often nitrous flushed to help “extend the shelf-life”. However, with all these efforts, the coffee continues to degrade, day after day of its roast, and after a period of about 30 days it has released all of its carbon dioxide, and then the delicate oils are exposed. The beans are absolutely stale, and are spoiling.

Typical gourmet coffee markets offer primarily mass-roasted and pre-packaged coffees, or binned coffees, which are often stale and “topped off”. These are usually shiny and dark roasted – which helps disguise flaws in the quality of beans or staleness. Flavored coffees do this trick well because of their intensity and aroma, and the resulting shininess hides oils coming out of the beans due to staling. You might notice many retailers have dozens of flavors to offer, but you have to ask yourself “when was it roasted?”

The coffee industry has enjoyed its profits from mass-production and pre-packaging – but consumers have not enjoyed the benefit of tasting truly fresh coffee. We want to change that, by working closely with our retailers to deliver as close to demand as possible to ensure the coffee you take home is as fresh as possible. We want consumers to experience fresh, uninhibited coffees in their natural state. (more … read about and see our boxes below)

About our Box

There are a few reasons why we have designed our convenient boxes:

It is a more respectful way to package coffee, so it can breath naturally. We don’t rely on de-gassing valves or nitrous-flushed plastic bags to extend the life of our coffee.
It is very environmentally friendly.
It could be engineered and made locally! – right here in Manitowoc.
With four sides to print on, our box creates opportunity for advertising, promotions, and fund-raisers.
It will be different from all other coffee packages, making it more noticeable. With decorative and colorful touches, we consider it a sort of “billboard” in homes.
We can slip little treasures into them. This is a separate element to our advertising. Imagine asking a friend “hey, where did you get that cool ankle bracelet?” and they answer, “from this neat coffee box!” – the treasures will spark interest and spread the word.
Overall, the boxes are convenient and pre-measured, which is great for smaller retailers (ie: natural markets, gift shops) and they allow us to capture some of the grocery market, without taking business away from coffee retailers.