I believe all of the sponsoring roasters meet your basic criteria.

If I take what he means by "ability to pick the blend/type and roast level" I don't think there are any/many? I.e. for a given bean/blend can you pick a roast level?

"basic criteria" =

subq wrote:I realize not many places have all those options so fresh roasted (roasted and shipped same day or within a day) will suffice IMO.

Interesting I seem to be in this very place right now, as I ordered some coffee on Friday afternoon (Dec 9) and am still waiting on delivery. The roaster is from Seattle and I live near in Berkeley CA so I didn't think it would take this long. The sad part is I ordered some tea from Montreal at the same time and it has already arrived.

I am not really scared my coffee isn't going to be fresh because they didnt send it off till Thursday, but I am a little dismayed at this fact. Is it a reasonable thing to ask about? Or should I just lean with my gut and just not order from them again. There is nothing on their site denoting a specific roasting day, so I have no idea what the delay was about.

I have ordered from places where it has taken about the same time, but they note they only roast on Tuesdays and it was a Wednesday what I ordered so no big deal in my book, however with no notes to base my expectations on it's very annoying as I wanted that coffee to bring to a get together.

So what's a person to do?

Bought from paradise roasters before. Roasted monday, then delivered by thursday. Ordered from Verve as well, same deal. I don't know why. It should be faster since I live in the same state as Verve, oh well, the coffee was well worth the price.

Are you getting you coffee in SLO? I found while going to college there that mail would take about the same amount of time to get there no matter where it came from, my parents when they mailed things from Modesto, it would take five days easily to make its way to me. It's so isolated there.

Intrepid510 wrote:Interesting I seem to be in this very place right now, as I ordered some coffee on Friday afternoon (Dec 9) and am still waiting on delivery. The roaster is from Seattle and I live near in Berkeley CA so I didn't think it would take this long. The sad part is I ordered some tea from Montreal at the same time and it has already arrived.

Lots of roasters roast on Tuesday and for some weird reason Friday. So if you ordered Friday afternoon your order would be roasted on Tuesday and hopefully shipped same day. To you, its probably 3 days in shipping so it should be at your door Friday-ish. Given that its holiday season, USPS has slowed down and it behind at least a day.

Intrepid510 wrote:So what's a person to do?

I would call the company from which I ordered the coffee. Misunderstandings happen and either they'll make good on my expectations or not; I don't expect them to address a service issue if I don't tell them about it. On the other hand, if I tell them and they shrug my complaint off, then I won't order again and won't recommend them. For me, this is e-commerce 101.

I would cut them a day or two of slack due to the holiday season.

drgary wrote:I believe all of the sponsoring roasters meet your basic criteria.

This. If I may recount a tale of a my first order with a roaster while keeping the identity anonymous (it is a high end third wave roaster that I am sure many of you order from).

I had been waiting to try their coffee for a while, and was thinking of ordering via mail, but then found out about a shop not too far from me that would be serving their coffee. So I waited it out until the the shop opened as to both avoid shipping charges, and vibe out a new local shop. Anyways, I got there on the grand opening and the coffee for sale was about ten days off the roast (to be fair, they opened the day after a hurricane where neighboring towns were flooded). The espresso was good, but alas, I went home with no bag of coffee.

At this point, I finally decided to order a couple bags directly. I got one bag for drip, and one for espresso. I rarely order from roasters out of state, but in the past they had arrived within a couple days (3 tops). There were issues with the delivery company not being able to find my address, which I came wind of via a letter in my mailbox, telling me that my address was incorrect. Well then how did this show up?

Finally after quite a few phone calls and emails, the coffee shows up, 10 days off the roast. Same level of 'freshness' I turned down at the shop. Granted, this was not in any way the roaster's fault. However, I still felt slighted by not being able to get their coffee fresh, after waiting so long, and hearing such good things.

Well, they went above and beyond what I could have expected. The small lots that I had ordered were already gone, but I was compensated two weeks later with two comparable 12 oz bags of coffee free of shipping-- delivered via a different method-- which arrived two days post roast.

What they did was in no way required, but it really shows their commitment to quality service and good customer relations.

Intrepid510 wrote:Are you getting you coffee in SLO? I found while going to college there that mail would take about the same amount of time to get there no matter where it came from, my parents when they mailed things from Modesto, it would take five days easily to make its way to me. It's so isolated there.

There's no good roasters in. Kreuzberg I think gets theirs from Verve. I always get mail order coffee either from paradise or verve, going to switch to blue bottle or red bird. There's a roaster in SLO called Coastal Peaks Roasters. Not really a good roaster since they over roast their beans, you could see the see through packages where the beans are super oily. What a disappointment. I thought I found a cheap roaster locally, but it sucks. I got free samples, but I didn't like it.