Q3FY21 - Polycentral

October 25, 2021

• Wins

  • A successful first drop! Tiffany was kind enough to post on Instagram, which led to a bunch more leads by word of mouth
  • s/o to Tiff, Stephen, Reed, Reylyn, and Bess

• Concerns

  • Who is the customer?

    • Owns a high end grinder, has opinions on what like/dislike, enjoys variety
    • New to speciality coffee, owns equipment, drinks well-known brands (BB, Stumptown)

  • Financial sustainability / pricing

    • $24/8 cups of coffee is $3/cup; that seems like a great deal for the customer
    • Includes shipping and packaging, which atm is extremely variable
    • First drop was not profitable. How can we breakeven on unit economics?

  • Operations

    • Coffee is very time sensitive and it's stressful to thread the needle on multiple moving parts
      • Degassing, roast dates, delivery
      • Timeliness is definitely an area I can improve on
    • Packaging
      • We're relying on Ice's printer for stickers and labels
      • There's a coordination cost and unknown supply cost as well
      • Current packaging too small (but perfectly sized to fit 15g's). New mylar packaging? What else can we look into?
      • Variety coffee bag packaging was nice and pretty. Transparent bag makes it Instagrammable, but not cost nor environmentally friendly
    • USPS
      • Cubic pricing? Pricing seems extremely opaque

  • Brand

    • Design needs to be improved as we feel out the brand (time sensitivity a callenge)
    • Environmental impact

  • Ultimately, what do I want to do with Polycentral?

    • Is this a product for myself (extremely funky beans at likely higher price and cost)? What kind of market am I serving?
    • How can we serve roasters and understand their business better? Can we minimize costs in shipping or take rate so that we can benefit roasters?
    • Coffee knowledge
      • Do customers want this?
      • Stubs on: degassing, brew methods, equipment (?)
      • More about origin; how do we gather more information about farmers and share that with the customer?

• Next

  • Tracker for when customers pay to the day beans are received
  • Choose beans for Q2 drop (3/4 remaining)
  • Packaging
  • Later later
    • Figure out conversion funnel. Q4 or Q1