A New Direction Forward
We are so pleased to finally reveal our new branding to the world! This has been a long time coming for H&S Coffee Roasters. A project that "officially" started in early 2020 was sidelined by the pandemic and focus on ensuring H&S would survive. Now we face a new set of challenges, and a large part of this rebrand has the future of our business, and the specialty coffee industry, in mind.
Our New Logo
First up, we have a new logo design. We wanted to create a more versatile design which featured a mark that was able to separate from the logo, and a design that would fit in both horizontal and vertical placements. The mark represents many stages of coffee-- a seed that is beginning to open, representing the farmers and cooperatives that we work with. A flame to represent the act of roasting, which we pride ourselves in; and a drop of espresso-- the final stage of a coffee's journey from seed to cup. The mark visualizes these stages individually, and all at once. Much like our experience of coffee can be realized by one aspect, while at the same time it represents all the work that came before. Our focus as a coffee roaster has long been the understanding that we represent everyone who comes before us in the global coffee supply-line.
The logo is a symmetrical circle, which fits great into all design formats. Within the circle is the asymmetric placement of our name, to add a bit of tension and break up the symmetry. It's perfectly imperfect, much like coffee itself. The font is a san-serif, with a fun and curvy flair.
We've also decided it's time to ditch the "+" in our logo, and fully embrace the curvature of the ampersand. A small detail, but one that fits better with our new design and reflects the actual company name.
Our New Bags
We've long been dissatisfied with our bags. They do not offer much protection for the coffee, and our coffees stale at a faster rate. This is not a huge problem for frequent purchasing of retail sizes, but as more of our offerings become higher and higher quality coffees, with appropriately very light roast profiles, many of our customers like to intentionally age and preserve their bags for future drinking. This also affects the larger sizes we offer-- 5lb bags are likely to stale before they can be consumed fully.
On the plus side, our old bags were very cheap to produce, and consumed very little energy to create. They were very sustainable in this way. They were not recyclable or compostable, but there was very little carbon footprint to throw away when they inevitably wound up in the trash.
Our new bags, by contrast, offer much better protection for the coffee. They are heat-sealed, zippered and feature one-way valves to slow down staling. This makes them easily re-usable, and not just for coffee. They are constructed with #4 recyclable LDPE materials, offering one of the best recycling solutions we have found for coffee packaging (although #4 is not accepted by our local municipality, sadly). They are manufactured in a CO2 neutral facility, drastically cutting down on their carbon footprint. And finally, they look and feel great in hand-- they are very aesthetically pleasing and we know that pretty bags sell better!
All in all, we strongly believe this transition supports H&S's sustainability goals-- while the energy cost has increased to produce these bags, the carbon offset and potential for reuse and recycling makes these bags a net positive for better sustainability in our company.
Our New Sizes
Our offerings now come in three bag sizes: 250 gram, 1 kilogram, and 5 pound. This change allows us to offer our smallest retail size at a better price-- as new 2022 lots come in, they are priced far higher than last year and a smaller bag size gives a better sense of value. A larger volume offering, in the form of the 1kg bag, provides a value discount per pound, and the 5lb bag offers the best price per lb. Both of the latter sizes are now offered with a percentage discount over retail. We hope this move will provide better options to try our diverse offerings, as well as better value for sizing up. We strongly believe that the future of specialty coffee includes higher green prices, and we are thinking about the future of our industry and how we fit in it with these new bag sizes.
Our New Labels
We've brought label printing in-house, which surprisingly offers better pricing per label over our old labels. What's better, our options for printing custom labels are now nearly limitless! We can print just about anything we want. We are thrilled to be able to offer limited releases with unique aesthetics, and plan to offer a limited release each month. This also opens the door to white-label services, where we can produce custom branded bags for our clients. No restrictions on color, and we plan to fully utilize this by offering bright, fun and colorful designs.
All in All
To wrap it up, H&S has changed quite a bit with this rebrand. We are excited for the future of our business, and our commitments to environmental sustainability and economic equality for the supply-line remain steadfast. With better preservation of our coffees, fun packaging, and more options, we believe the future is bright for H&S.
