2023 A Year in review
Each year we like to wrap things up with a post showcasing our biggest achivements.
Partnership buying
I think this is the year that most of our coffee purchases have come from direct relationships, bought on trips to the farm from people that we’ve been working with for years. It feels like a real culmination of what we’ve been working towards. Having released lots of coffees this year it’s been really exciting to see that. 2023 marks a bit of a milestone in the history of a business, we’ve positioned ourselves to buy most of our coffee through established partnerships.
Team development
That’s gone hand in hand with really good development in our team, we’ve sent team members on four buying trips this year, Pandora is currently in Colombia, Tim and Iain went to Costa Rica, Ben went to Brazil and I’ve been back to Honduras. In the past it was mainly me going on these buying trips but it’s been amazing to have a team that can take on a lot of the responsibility of these sourcing trips and also benefit a lot from how amazing they are. It’s really nice because these trips really give people a sense of connection to those relationships, for example Tim has been twice now to visit Diego Robelo’s farm Aquiares and really knows the place well now, he knows what he’s looking for on the cupping table and really feels that sense of pride in those coffees.
Circles
Origin trips lead us nicely to one of the biggest things that Round Hill has achieved this year; Circles. Circles is essentially a single coffee, a real crowd pleaser chocolatey Brazil that will be available all year round. A lot of the thought behind this coffee is that it would be a good fit for cafes, restaurants, hotels, places like that, that want something really good but perhaps a bit easier to work with than Unit 14. Something with a little less acidity, something that doesn’t change but still a really good, sustainably sourced specialty coffee. Ben visited Brazil earlier this year to meet the producers who we were partnering with for Circles. Ben had a great time getting to know Natalia and André Luiz Garcia and visiting their farms and came back really excited about them as people, the work they're doing and of course, about the quality of their coffees. But the work Ben’s done for Circles began way before his trip, we released Circles at the start of November but it’s been a big part of Ben’s workload since January. Going back and forth with importers to find suitable farms to work with, designers on the branding as well as long discussions with the team about the purpose of it as a sub brand and how to get the messaging right. Now that it’s released we’re all very happy with it and I’m super proud of what Ben has put together!
The Round Hill Box
This year has been a big one for refining what we do, from small tweaks to full overhauls, from the usual adjustments like making changes to roast profiles to somewhat frustrating but necessary changes like re-building our website twice. One big change that we’re very happy with is our subscriptions. One of the main reasons for redoing our website was to make our subscriptions better and they’ve been working really well and feedback has been good. We’re particularly proud of this subscription, the Round Hill Box, when we were thinking of a name we really struggled but we think this is a simple and to the point way to say it’s a box that we put the stuff we’re most excited about it, it could equally have been called the best of Round Hill Box but that’s a bit long. In any case, we’re really enjoying putting it together and enjoying having this space to talk to you guys and share what we’re up to. More than that though it allows us to buy really special coffees and know we have a home for them, knowing we have subscribers to this really gives us a lot of confidence and freedom. So to close out our year in review we wanted to say thank you for choosing to subscribe, it really does mean a lot to us!
