THE ICONIC MARBLE, BLUE LABELLED RETAIL BAGS ARE NOT SO BLUE ANYMORE. WHY?
You might have noticed our label colour update and wonder why we left our blue palette behind and added other colours to our branding. Let's dive in, shall we?
When we decided to rebrand in 2018, we wanted to keep our branding simple (clean fonts), timeless (marble) and to keep a blue colour scheme as oppose to most of our competitors' colourful labelling. Blue was always somehow the Campbell & Syme colour: our first roaster was a blue 6kg Giesen, Joe has painted the shop front with a blue colour too and therefore the blue colour scheme was an obvious choice.
Our blue colour coding was for a long time linked to the actual coffee processing. We matched the different shades of blue with the way coffee is processed. Darkest blue for the natural process, lighter for the honey process, the lightest for the washed process and some other shades for blends, etc. What we found was that this coding was working aesthetically but was not really helping the customer with their buying decision. We've received a lot of emails over the years from our customers trying to find the right match to certain coffees they liked in the past but were not in stock anymore, customers asking for specific flavour profiles, etc.
You could argue that every bag always includes tasting notes that should help the customer to find the right match but we know from our experience that tasting notes can also be a bit confusing. When you fall in love with a Brazilian coffee that's full-bodied, smooth & chocolatey with tasting notes of dark chocolate & praline it's pretty straight forward. But if another Brazilian coffee says white chocolate & golden raisin, is it going to be the right match? What we might be describing is the creaminess and mouthfeel of white chocolate and sweetness and juiciness of gold raisin. The coffee might still have some nutty notes though and you may equally enjoy it.
We took the flavour profile categories in to consideration when we were about to release our rolling subscription in 2020, changing the standard single choice subscription to a 4 category subscription. We decided to offer our customers following options: roaster's choice, chocolatey & smooth, sweet & balanced and fruity & juicy - basically applying what we try to do in our cafe when recommending coffees to customers.
The subscription gives the customer the possibility to log in to their account and change the category anytime they like. We found our customers were more satisfied once they found the category they liked and the subscription customer base grew much faster. Emails regarding the right or wrong match were also reduced to a minimum once the customers knew what to expect from their preferred subscription category.
WHAT CHANGE ARE WE BRINGING THEN?
Blue will always remain the C&S core colour. What we learnt from the subscription experience as well as from previous labelling is that the packaging shouldn't be only visually attractive but it should provide guidance to customers when there is no mediator to do so.
We still want to keep our packing timeless and not overcomplicated and therefore all the information on the label will stay the same. But we are bringing a couple more colours on board to put similar coffees in suitable categories for simpler orientation for customers. And here's what the different categories mean.
BLUE LABEL SHADES: CHOCOLATEY & SMOOTH COFFEES
Whether you have an espresso machine or simply enjoy a more traditional cup of coffee, these coffees are for you. Coffees from Brazil, Colombia or Guatemala are the great examples. Here you find coffees that are full bodied, smooth with medium sweetness and lower acidity.
PURPLE LABEL SHADES: SWEET & BALANCED COFFEES
A selection of coffees that are complex, clean, sweet & have nice rounded acidity, suitable for filter brewing or medium body espresso. Coffees from Guatemala, Peru, Colombia or El Salvador are the great examples.
ORANGE LABEL SHADES: FRUITY & JUICY COFFEES
We like to think these coffees are the adventurous ones, with higher acidity, maybe some funky notes and mostly appreciated by filter & black coffee drinkers. You find coffees from Rwanda, Kenya, Burundi, Costa Rica and Ethiopia in this category.
OCRE LABEL SHADES: LIMITED & EXPERIMENTAL COFFEES
Limited micro lots, experimental processing methods & rare varietals with an unusual flavour profile will be found in this category. These coffees can be pretty wild!
Once you find which category is the right one for you, the choice of your next coffee should be pretty straight forward. Regardless of the new colour coding, we are always very happy to address any issues or question you might have about our range of coffees, the brewing process or anything else you might want to know or explore. Please get in touch, we are always up for a chat!!
Thanks for reading and enjoy the brews!
xx C&S