I guess I'll continue to use local pickup at Chromatic Coffee... and I was planning on shipping a bag of Unicorn Pony to my folks ahead of my trip down, but $2 flat shipping isn't too bad.

FWIW I just ordered two pounds of Guatemala beans from Equator...no extra charge for shipping.

^^^ I think you must have just hit their [Equator's] $35 free shipping threshold.

Just wanted to comment on 2 of the listed "free shippers" and add one to the list ...

Starting with Terminus in Washington...

jbviau wrote:Added Terminus, out of Tacoma, WA. They get extra bonus points for being on the "small quantities" list, too!

Disclaimer: I live in Boston, across country from Terminus. That said, they have the slowest shipping of any roaster I've ever ordered from. Yes, it's free and it's cross-country, but the same is almost true for Chromatic ($2 flat-rate), who have the fastest shipping I've ever seen (including from roasters here on the east coast). But I give points to Terminus for communication ...god bless 'em, they emailed to say that it would take 10 days for my order to reach me. No apologies. And the coffee was pretty good, but might've been better with quicker shipping?

Novel Roasters in Texas. Novel only roasts on Thursday and ships on Friday. But I still got my order the following Monday! Excellent coffee to boot. I'll definitely order again, right up there with Chromatic.

Metric in Chicago. These guys aren't on the list yet, and their shipping is free and fast. Ordered on Sunday night, had the coffee the following Wednesday. Again, it went from Chicago to Boston, so that's fairly standard shipping time - but for free, it's great. Excellent coffee, but maybe not as top-notch as I'd heard about Metric. Still, I plan to order again.

Thanks for the report, Matt! By the way, Metric's shipping isn't free with no minimum; I just did a test order and saw $5.25 shipping on one bag of Konga but no shipping charge on two bags.

jbviau wrote:Metric's shipping isn't free with no minimum....

Thanks for the correction, totally spaced on that!

In regards to metric, if you get the 1 month subscription and don't mind staggering two orders every other week, you can get free shipping on both orders. I read that you can tell them what blends or single origins you want to try.

Not the same, but at least you don't have to burn through two coffees at the same time. Alas, you still end up paying a few bucks on shipping however you dice it.

Technically, there is no such thing as free shipping. It's either included in the total price or listed separately. So either you pay more for the coffee per pound in total or pay less for the coffee itself and then just pay extra for shipping.

When we did a little survey with our customers, they preferred to pay for shipping separately. Usually, when shipping is included in total price, it offers slowest (cheapest) shipping available. Since our goal is for our clients to get the freshest coffee possible, slow shipping is not an option. Also, if you offer free shipping, cost of one pound increases dramatically, so the customers who order more than one pound are paying for more than one shipping.

I think that is false. That assumes all roasters are of equal quality.

I am a household of two that doesn't bulk order coffee so I enjoy lower quantities and don't want to buy two or more lbs of coffee to realize the value of separate shipping.

At the end of the day overall value is assessed and I think those with free shipping are usually best value for someone with my consumption habits.

I would say most with extra shipping are pushing over $20 for 12 oz. That's more than most in this topic. Redbird being the exception

As for slow shipping, I don't know any that take over three days based on experience.

I took a look at the CremaBean website. They have a $3.99 flat rate and free above $50. Hard to beat that, especially with their good prices.