Behind the Scenes of Your Favourite Canadian Coffee Roaster: Fun with Packaging!

Source green coffee, roast it, toss it in a bag and send it on it's way. Simple, right? Nope! 

We're not here to write about how much work goes into coffee. Sure, we're happy to talk your ear off about the process if you ever want ot give us a call or stop by our Chilliwack coffee shop. But, we want to dive into one of the many FUN challenges of being a coffee brand - packaging!

Even sourcing regular old bags is quite a big process these days. The material has to be widely recyclable. It needs a zipper so keep the beans fresh. It needs a valve for off gassing. It needs to be cost effective so we have to order A LOT, which means we have to find somewhere to store them all. They need to be adaptable to different labels. They need to work with our bagging equipment. Yadda yadda yadda...

Luckily, we work with several companies including Noissue to source our coffee bags. We're happy to have sustainable and stylish bags to put our beans in.

But, for our latest limited edition roast, we want to do something extra special.

We sourced a beautiful coffee from the famed West Arsi region of Ethiopia and it cupped out so good! Big lemonade and peach notes with that black tea flavour that comes with Ethiopian coffee. It reminded us of a friggin' Arnold Palmer! The drink, named after the golfer, is made with half lemonade and half iced tea. 

It's as refreshing as it sounds and this coffee holds up in terms of deliciousness. Instead of just putting it in a regular bag, we got the hair rained idea of putting it in a tall can, just like those iced tea drinks we used to crush in the summertime when we were kids. 

Putting beans in cans isn't new (shout out to House of Funk), but we wanted it to specifically be a tall can to look like the real deal. To do this we ended up calling MANY brewery suppliers and we recruited the help of THREE different local breweries to figure it out. We owe the fine Brewers at Bricklayer Brewing, Sidekick Brewing and Ravens Brewing a coffee for the clutch assists on this one. We also had a local 3D printing enthusiast make a custom can saver for us.

 And that label? Holy smokes our designer @kimdesignedthis really knocked it out of the park. And thanks to Sonic Bark Vinyl Co. for printing these beautiful vinyl labels. Does it look familiar? No hints, but let us know in the comments if you recognize where our inspo came from.

It was fun to flex our creativity and we are stoked with the finished product, but we never would've thought it would be a 4-month process. Woof. Any way, here we are!

The final product, that we are affectionately calling Arnie Palmie, made it onto our shelves and into our online store.

Get yourself a can before it's gone and let us know what you think of the coffee. Plus, keep the can as a limited edition SG collector's item. Maybe one day we'll be famous and it'll be worth a million bucks. Oh yeah, the can saver is reusable too so you can keep all your canned beverages crispy.

If you want to order a can, check it out here.