Boom Roasted: How Independent Coffee Makers Use Strong Custom Packaging

The coffee industry is percolating as more and more consumers crave a cup of hot joe. And with the demand for this popular beverage, it’s a great time for enthusiasts of exquisitely designed packaging.

Luckily for consumers, the rise of independent coffee roasters selling their product online means we have a lot more choice than waking up to Maxwell House or Folgers in our cup.

Be Still Cody Coffee sources and roasts coffees from around the world in a tiny town off the west coast of Canada. While they see themselves fundamentally as a coffee company, their search for amazing brews correlated with their love of music. In fact, they wanted to try to simulate that experience of curated music and coffee at home— it’s like bringing the cafe right into your own living room.

Each one of their custom folding cartons includes 250g of coffee and a limited edition promotional mixtape created using owners’ Andrew and Jennifer Paquet’s personal record collection. Each tape is curated to suit the coffee you’re drinking. The idea came from their youth when they would receive mixtapes from friends or siblings. The hope is that the experience will be a catalyst for a shared community through coffee, music, and art.

They narrowed down the necessity for custom packaging and chose Packlane as their packaging provider because of the company’s intuitive software and excellent customer service. The hired a local artist named Karina Kalvaitis to design their packaging. Each image on their carton is a symbol for a piece of the puzzle that makes up Be Still Cody.

Their packaging is vital, and their custom folding carton helps create an experience for each of their clients because they’re a conversation starter. While they view the carton as a communication and packaging tool, they hope it also becomes a piece of art for their customers.

Orange Cactus Coffee is a media company that happens to sell coffee as a way to inspire and delight coffee lovers. In addition to selling whole bean, micro-roasted coffee, the guys from Orange Cactus podcast, blog, and vlog about their passion - coffee.

Each one of their boxes includes product cards, stickers, and a water additive. They hope to deliver “Christmas in the Mail” when sending coffee to customers. While custom boxes help protect their product to get to their final destination, they’re also little billboards advertising the Orange Cactus brand.

Roast Co. Coffee is a specialty coffee roasting company located in Oakland, California that roasts for wholesale customers including cafes, markets, and restaurants throughout the Bay Area. Their custom mailer boxes are filled with bags of whole bean coffee, business cards, stickers and information about product pricing. They use their custom packaging from Packlane to reach out to businesses they hope to partner with as a way to sample their coffee and learn more about what Roast Co. Coffee does and has to offer.

PERC Coffee was founded in 2010 in Savannah, GA as a way to cultivate an appreciation for coffee in the South. Founder Philip Brown had worked for years as a barista, manager, and roaster and decided to take the plunge and jump into the coffee game. He assembled a small team that has grown over the years as has the business.

PERC uses their custom mailer boxes to send out 4oz sample pack bags as a way to get a taste of some of the delicious coffees they offer. Each box elevates the presentation of their sample pack, so it feels more like a gift than just another package in the mail.

Equator Coffees & Teas is a specialty coffee roaster, tea purveyor, and farm owner based in Marin County, California. In 1995, when business partners Brooke McDonnell and Helen Russell started roasting in a garage, it marked the beginning of a journey to build a high-impact coffee company focused on quality, sustainability and social responsibility.

While their goals have remained the same, with more than 500 wholesale accounts and seven retail cafes, their team has grown to over 100 employees. As a women-owned and LGBTQ-owned business, they believe in stakeholder values, which prompted them to become the first Californian coffee roaster to be named a Certified Benefit Corporation.

Their custom packaging includes the extremely limited Panama Finca Sophia Gesha which comes from the highlands of Panama. Finca Sophia is ranked as one of the best coffee farms in the world and was selected as a Good Food Awards winner in 2016. Last year, it won the prestigious Best of Panama coffee competition in the Washed Gesha category.

The front of their box highlights the elevation of this unique coffee while the sides and back display a beautiful image of the coffee plant. The Finca Sophia logo, an abstracted Quetzal bird, salutes the height, the native terrain, and Panama’s indigenous culture. For Equator, having this beautiful and exquisite packaging helps tell their story in a meaningful and impactful way.

Just like every strong cup of coffee has a story to tell, every company’s packaging is unique. Using strong custom packaging to roast the competition is a surefire way to speak directly to every coffee drinker looking to get their fix of this delicious hot beverage.