Coffee Nerdery Collective
A new sales channel for your coffee
Virtually no change in how you work
Nothing to manage. No upfront costs. No bulk orders.
You only pay when you sell.
We're not here to replace your direct sales.
We're here to introduce you to people who haven't found you yet.
Why should you trust us?
In June 2024 we launched a free Coffee Discovery Quiz. No sign-up wall, no sponsored results, no algorithm for sale.
It matches coffee nerds with roasters based purely on what they'll enjoy.
Nearly 100 roasters are now listed on Coffee Nerdery. None of them paid to be there.
The Collective came out of listening.
Roasters told us subscription boxes were squeezing their margins, demanding separate batches, and shipping stale coffee from central warehouses.
Coffee nerds told us they were reluctant to hand payment details to a roaster they'd never bought from before.
The Collective solves both.
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June 2024
Quiz launched, free and ungated
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~100 roasters
In quiz results, none paying for placement
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£0
In quiz results, none paying for placement
Reaching new customers is expensive.
Most options available to roasters sit somewhere between expensive (paid ads, uncertain returns) and extractive (subscription boxes that squeeze your margin, demand a separate lower-quality batch, and ship from a central warehouse, so the customer who thinks they're getting your best work often isn't).
There hasn't been a middle option until now. A sales channel that sends you real customers at your real price, with no upfront cost, no bulk orders, and no compromise on the coffee you're putting your name to.
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Typical subscription box
- Payment on their terms — net 30, net 60, or longer
- Bulk pricing negotiation / Margin squeeze
- Separate batches or bulk orders (extra work)
- Central warehouse adds transit time and handling risk
- Buyer thinks they're getting your best. Often they're not.
- Generic audience, passive subscribers
- Exposure limited to their subscriber base
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Coffee Nerdery Collective
- Payment typically within an hour of dispatch.
- You set the retail price. We get a flat 20% commission, inclusive of Shopify fees.
- Same batch and workflow as every direct order you fulfil.
- Ships direct from you. Same freshness as buying direct.
- What buyers receive is identical to your direct orders.
- Your product pages are optimised for search: your coffees get found on Google and in AI results too.
How it works for you
We connect to your Shopify store and orders from us arrive exactly like your direct orders. No new systems, no new workflow, nothing to maintain.
- Your products sync automatically
By default, all your coffees list at the same price as on your site. You choose which products appear, set your own prices if you want to, and can create Collective-only listings. - Coffee nerds discover your coffee and add it to their basket
They might be buying from other roasters in one order. That's the point; it's how someone who's never heard of you ends up buying your coffee rather than defaulting to whoever they already know. - They check out through Coffee Nerdery
Payment handled by us means buyers are more willing to try a roaster they've never bought from before. The main thing stopping someone from taking a chance on someone new is gone. - The order drops straight into your Shopify
Roast, pack, ship as normal. Same process as every other order: your usual carrier, your usual rates.
We collect the shipping fee from the buyer and pass it to you in full alongside the 80%.
The only thing different is where the customer found you. - We transfer payment, including the full shipping fee, typically within an hour.
We've written down our commitments so you can hold us to them.
Most platforms start generous and turn extractive. We've seen it happen. So rather than asking you to trust our intentions, here are the structural rules we're building the Coffee Nerdery around:
The discovery quizzes stay unbiased
Recommendations are based purely on the coffee's merits, never on commercial relationships. We'll never compromise that, for anyone.
Free traffic stays free
Roasters in quiz results will never be charged for that traffic. Not now, not later.
20% flat
No special deals, no preferential rates, no exceptions. If that ever has to change, we'll tell you why, publicly, before it happens.
If you leave
After your initial 12-month term, leaving the Collective doesn't affect your Discovery quiz results.
These commitments are published on our website. We've made them public so the coffee community can call us out if we break them.
The terms. All of them.
We've kept this deliberately simple. Complexity in commission structures usually means someone's hiding something.
- You keep 80%. On every sale, at your price, with your full shipping fee passed to you in its entirety.
- We take 20% and we cover all transaction fees. No preferential placement for bigger names, no special discounts, no negotiated rates.
- You typically get paid within an hour of dispatch.
- No minimum volumes. One bag or a hundred, same terms apply.
- 12-month initial term. We invest in your listings, your SEO, and your visibility from day one. We ask for a year in return.
An example order where a bag of coffee costs £9.50 and the postage costs £1.50:
- Your coffee: 80% £7.60
- Your postage: 100% £1.50
- Our commission: 20%Includes the Shopify transaction fee of £0.47 (2.0% + £0.25 GBP) £1.90
- You receive £9.10
It takes less than an hour to set up
Getting listed on the Collective takes about 45 minutes. We connect to your existing Shopify store and there are no new systems or new logins.