An online shop for coffee: selling a taste the buyer cannot try

A coffee roastery sells a product the buyer can neither see nor taste. All that is left is the bag and the words on the page — which is exactly why an online shop for coffee is one of the finest examples of design feeding straight into sales.

For the concept roastery Aroma we built a dark, documentary shop: big photographs of beans and bags, honest details about every coffee, and a subscription that matters more than the one-off purchase.

Why a dark shop

A dark background is risky with food — with coffee it works, because coffee itself is dark, warm and roasted. Brown beans on black gain a depth they never have on white. A dark page also makes the price a less shouty element and the product more like something you treat yourself to.

The rule we follow in every dark shop: the text has to stay readable. Grey text on black is a designer’s habit that literally hides the price from an older buyer. We use light text with high contrast, and keep grey for the less important labels.

What every coffee has to say

Someone who buys coffee online usually knows more than the average customer. If all you write is “Aroma Espresso, 250 g, €9.90”, you have lost them. Every product needs:

• the origin — country, region, farm or cooperative;
• the variety and the processing (washed, natural, honey);
• the altitude;
• the roast profile — light, medium, dark, and what it suits;
• the tasting notes — three, not ten;
• the roast date. For coffee this is what a use-by date is for meat. A shop that does not show the date is telling you it does not have one.

The subscription is a business model, not a feature

A one-off bag of coffee is a single event. A subscription is the same customer every month, with no further advertising. That is why at Aroma the subscription stands level with the main range instead of being hidden on a sub-page.

A good coffee subscription needs four decisions, and no more:

1. Which coffee — the same one every month, or the roaster’s choice.
2. How much — 250 g, 500 g, 1 kg.
3. How often — every two weeks, monthly.
4. The grind — beans, espresso, filter, french press.

Every further step lowers the number of subscriptions actually completed. Skip the questions the buyer cannot answer — choosing a roast profile on a first order, for example.

The technical side: what runs the shop

For a smaller roastery there are two sensible routes:

• An existing platform (Shopify or WooCommerce, say) with your own visual identity. Quick to market, a monthly cost, and changes are limited by the logic of the platform.
• Your own shop with a payment provider (Stripe) and your own catalogue. Dearer at the start, no monthly subscription and no limits — worth it once you have particulars such as subscriptions with a grind option, wholesale prices or a link to the roasting log.

The same holds in both cases: stock has to be real. A coffee the customer orders and you do not have costs more than a lost sale — it costs trust.

What is different about coffee

• Delivery decides the purchase. Nobody will pay €5 of postage on €12 of coffee. So: free delivery above a set amount — and set that amount so that it encourages a second bag.
• The first order is a test. Which is why a pack of three small samples sells better than a kilo.
• The repeat order is everything. The shop has to allow “order again” in one click from the order history.
• Wholesale — for a roastery, cafés and restaurants are often a bigger share of revenue than online sales. The site needs a separate entrance for them.

With coffee you are not selling a product, you are selling a habit. A shop that does not support that sells once.

What we can do for you

We build online shops for smaller food and drink producers — roasteries, winemakers, oil mills, butchers, bakeries — with subscriptions, a wholesale section and a link to stock. Take a look at the Aroma demo, then write and tell us how many products you have and whether you also sell to the trade. Those two facts alone show which route is cheaper for you.