July 2022 - Two amazing new coffees. Sendle changes

Date Posted:6 July 2022 

 

You can’t control the waves but you can learn to surf ". Ben Crowe

 

July 2022

Welcome to our subscriber newsletter.

Each month we don the flak jacket and tin hat for what seems like an unwinnable battle to wrestle back control and stability in our business. 2019 feels like a lifetime ago when it was possible to plan, execute and review with some degree of confidence. Oh, those were the good old days.

Near impossible to plan in a post-pandemic economy, so throw away the strategy tools and keep on tuning those basic adaption skills in a game of survivor.

It's the same for all other companies and industries in Australia, if not around the world as they deal with rampant cost increases and what appears to be more frequent rounds of unpredictable events and surprise obstacles placed in front of us.

Last Friday was the 1st of July and normally it's a quiet and uneventful start of the new financial year, but instead this time I woke to a handful of pre-prepared emails from our suppliers claiming recent cost increases are regrettably forcing them to increase prices yet again. Those of you in business will have seen similar notifications over the last 12 months and likely again recently with more to come in the future.

Throughout June, diesel scampered up the price pole to reach an eye-watering level 30 cents higher than unleaded in Victoria. Whilst we are all accustomed to the bonkers price cycles for petrol, seeing diesel climb almost every other day for a month without retreating is an ominous sign of pain ahead. As we all know, diesel is the fundamental fuel that moves goods around our vast country. Freight companies are applying higher and higher surcharges to cover this extraordinary situation.


Take a look at these yummo coffees.

A pair of new arrivals sailed into our orbit last month and gosh they are lovely examples of delicious coffees.

Read the "what's floating our boat" below to learn more.

Secret stuff.

This month's Secret Label involved a lot of work behind the scenes to secure quality lots. It's getting hard to buy good stuff as the brokers have been importing lower grades to cater for what has become a severely price sensitive industry over the last 6+ months.

Nevertheless, we have crafted a wonderful coffee with deep richness and sweetness. We are loving the silky smooth body and the long finish that lasts forever.

Beware of changes to Sendle's dynamic allocation.

For our Sendle fans out there, please be aware we detected a significant change recently (ironically since the 1st July) in the way Sendle dynamically allocates your parcel to their partners.

Sendle makes the choice for who carries your parcel, not us. We have no idea until it's been picked, packed and processed and only when the address label pops out of the printer do we know who's carrying the parcel.

This also means we can't change Sendle's assignment, nor can we block or prevent one of Sendle's partners from being assigned your parcel. Rather frustrating for us as we know what works and what doesn't !

Over the last 2 years, around 93+% of Sendle parcels ended up being assigned to Couriers Please with the remainder allocated to Fastway/Aramex. Mostly, this was due to the bulk of our customers residing within capital city metro areas.

In those areas where Couriers Please did not have adequate coverage, such as some regional towns, Sendle would assign those parcels to Fastway/Aramex.

Sounds pretty simple and for the most part, it worked a treat for customers in Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane, not so good for Perth and sometimes the odd Melbourne delivery went pear-shaped.

Sendle's algorithm has recently flipped and now passing more parcels to Fastway/Aramex with less parcels to Couriers Please. We have seen the trend over the last few days with Fastway/Aramex receiving around 66% of the Sendle parcels, obviously destination makes a big difference.

The upshot here folks is simple - if you were accustomed to a good service from the local Couriers Please agent in your area, then things might change and that change may not be a good one. Like all algorithms, Sendle's assignment is dynamic, it changes without notice and it's a big secret.

We recommend our customers use Australia Post. This advice is especially if you reside in a multi-tenanted building or have your parcels delivered to your workplace.

AusPost is always the safest and best option. Forget about what happened during 2020 and 2021, they are now faster, more reliable/consistent and those annoying problems with last mile failures that make up over 95% (mostly Sendle) of incidents we see, AusPost are better at performing that last mile range.

In our opinion, this change by Sendle will end in tears - please consider our advice and avoid Sendle.

Make no mistake, if it gets painful for us or we see risk to our customers, Sendle will be switched off.
 

 

July 2022 Secret Label

This month we went rich, not just in cost but for a deep richness and complexity in the cup.

When a coffee has an ability to fill the entirety of your taste buds and it has desirable feature of sweetness with long, lingering aftertaste. That my dear folks is heaven in a cup.

July's Secret Label is deceptive, from the moment it's silky smooth notes dance on your tongue till the clean, sweet finish you savoring later.

There's a delicate intersection of fruits, flavors, caramels and chocolates wrapped up in a full bodied cup.

*** SOLD OUT ,  - July 2022 Secret Label ***

 

 

Delighful surprises.

It's that time of year again where change is most prevalent and plenty of new coffee lots are streaming into the warehouse each week.

Many new crops from Central America, South America and Africa have arrived or are on the water due for arrival into our domestic ports in the coming weeks and months.

New season coffees bring hope and excitement along with the inevitable and complex task of integrating into our portfolio. It might surprise you to learn that we don't just automatically take the next crop for any of our coffees without first analysing pre-shipment sample results and making decisions upon whether to commit, or not.

Sometimes it might be a quality concern, or a pricing/value factor, but whatever the reason it has to pass a structured criteria to gain entry privilege.

Each crop or harvest has unique differences that may be subtle or dramatic. Of course, we have trusted lines that are proven performers, but even our most reliable supply still requires rigorous testing and analysis.

However, there are some coffees we have no choice by to take a gamble as supply will always be tight or difficult and in these cases it could be 3 to 5 months before the physical coffee arrives. These are the coffees that sell out before they ship, so it's either get in now or miss out.

Two of the recent coffees we took a punt on have turned out to be amazingly delicious - worthy of a mention here and now.

The first is a recent arrival of new Timor FAIRTRADE Organic that literally flew under the radar. Shipment sample notes appeared within our acceptable quality standards with nothing in particular standing out with exceptional potential.

In the cup this Timor coffee is just stupendous and it was a pleasant surprise to discover just how well this coffee tastes as a black - a reliable indicator of inherent quality. With jaw dropping sweetness, refined acidity, silky and syrupy mouth feel with an almost perfect balance. Perhaps the best I've tasted from Timor. Classy, lovely.

Grab it here - East Timor FAIRTRADE Organic

Tanzania is an origin that tends to fly under the radar. Being close to Kenya it can at times posses all the classic attributes of it's more highly celebrated neighbor as the growing conditions and elevations can be similar.

So it's a real shame that Tanzania, like Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda are often viewed by many as a second choice against the more famous Ethiopia and Kenyan offerings. Truth is, a great quality Tanzanian will always outclass a general Ethiopian.

We have always loved Tanzanian coffees as they can give you the Kenya or Ethiopian experience at a far better value point. They punch well above their weight and over the last decade we have offered some stellar Tanza's.

This new lot continues a winning streak by delivering another exceptional experience.

In the cup we have raspberry, green grape, chocolate and baking spices. As my darling wife Dianne often says when it hits the jackpot......"delicious malicious".

Grab it here - Tanzania