“We do things a little bit differently than a lot of other specialty coffee companies.”
Seth Mills, Director of Coffee at Mistobox
In a world of blonde, medium, dark, light, French, “black silk”, Italian, and a hundred other convoluted and confusing terms that really don’t inform or expand your knowledge, Mistobox is getting straight to the heart of things.
“It’s a very convenient way to get some of the best coffees in the country automatically delivered right to your door, and have a really cool relationship with your curator to taste coffees that you might otherwise not have tried or heard of,” says Seth.
With a well-rounded experience in coffee, including being a former educator at Cartel Coffee Lab, Seth embraces the mentality that coffee is for everybody. Mistobox seeks both lighter profiles and darker profiles. It is a door into a room that is often perceived as tightly closed—the room of specialty coffee. Mistobox presents a personally curated coffee subscription. Customers answer a few questions regarding their coffee preferences (with “I Don’t Know” as an option), select their price range and frequency of delivery, and enjoy coffee sent straight to their door that has been picked out by experts.
“Everyone comes from a totally different background,” says Seth of the Mistobox staff—a lean team of six. “We get to bring that together in a cool way.”
As far as business runs, it’s a pretty sleek model. Every team member work remotely—from Seattle to Pheonix, San Diego to Denver, these individuals touch base as a group once a week via Google Hangouts, and then set to work in matching their clients with their ideal coffee. The coffee roasters themselves are sent packing materials and shipping labels, and customers are guaranteed a timely delivery of some of the finest and freshest coffee in the nation. It is a great example of a simple idea executed very efficiently—and it makes it easy to see how it did well on the likes of Shark Tank, with Mark Cuban investing $75,000 in return for 30% equity. Since the launch of Mistobox’s Shark Tank episode, the company has been picking up steam and is even looking to unveil a second feature of their business that is designed for the more advanced coffee aficionados out there. Available at the end of the summer 2017, "Next Coffees" should be ready to roll, and will allow the customers to run their own coffee queue, to browse through the entire selection on their own and decide when to receive the exact coffee they want.
“Mistobox is a very data-driven company. Our mentality is that if we’re going to do something, we need data to back it up that makes sense…because our customers are going to have a better experience for it,” says Seth.
Mistobox partners with over forty specialty coffee roasters—including Metric Coffee—and selects from over 400 different coffees. For people who love expanding their palate or for coffee fanatics eager to sample obscure yet promising brews from across the nation, Mistobox is the perfect way to mix things up. And frankly, we at Metric are pretty happy to be a part of that mix.
To learn more or subscribe, visit the Mistobox website by clicking HERE.