From the birthplace of coffee (Ethiopia) to countries around the world, including Sweden, Italy, Argentina, and Australia, the act of drinking a freshly roasted cup of coffee is a vital aspect of everyday life. In places where coffee plants grow, such as Colombia or Costa Rica, many travelers even dedicate portions of their trips to sipping fresh roasts in the country’s coffee-producing regions.
For coffee lovers who would normally travel to taste rare coffee roasts from across the planet, monthly or weekly subscription boxes are a way to sample coffee beans without hopping on a plane—or even visiting the grocery store. Many coffee subscription services use surveys to match you with personalized java recommendations—be it bold and robust or lighter with fruity notes—and some offer cold brew options, as well. To start sipping coffee from around the world, try one of these 9 amazing coffee subscription boxes.
1. Driftaway Coffee
Buy Now: From $12, driftaway.coffee
Driftaway Coffee is a Brooklyn-based roaster that offers personalized subscriptions of single-origin coffees grown on sustainable farms in such countries as Costa Rica, Guatemela, Peru, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, and Uganda. After signing up for a subscription plan, customers receive a tasting kit with four, two-ounce bags of different types of coffee that match one of each of the following taste profiles: “Fruity,” “Classic,” “Balanced,” and “Bold.” Upon brewing all four options, customers are asked to rate the coffees and add their own “tasting notes” using Driftaway’s mobile app, which helps the service personalize each individual subscription based on a preferred roast style.
As a Driftaway subscriber, you can choose how many bags of whole beans, ground coffee, or cold brew you want to receive every week, two weeks, or month (in varying sizes). Each shipment includes one distinct coffee roast based on your preferred roast style, which comes in compostable packaging. Driftaway’s monthly coffee boxes also include a postcard with notes on the origin of the coffee, as well as the story of the farmer who grew it.
Driftaway roasts single-origin coffees from sustainable farms around the world and ships the whole beans fresh to your door within six hours of roasting.
Courtesy of Driftaway Coffee
2. Atlas Coffee Club
Buy Now: From $9, atlascoffeeclub.com
Atlas offers a monthly coffee subscription of freshly roasted micro-lot coffees from more than 50 countries around the world. With Atlas’s “Coffee of the Month” subscription, you’ll receive a 12-ounce bag of freshly roasted coffee directly to your doorstep each month, with the option to ship every two weeks. You can select your roast preferences to include light-to-medium, medium-to-dark, or all roast types, as well as whole bean or ground bags (orders range from 6-ounce bag to 24 ounces total).
In addition to a rotating selection of rare coffees sourced from Kenya, Tanzania, Colombia, Brazil, Indonesia, and beyond, each shipment includes a suggested brewing method, as well as an informative postcard explaining more about the region where the coffee beans were cultivated.
3. Red Bay Coffee
Buy Now: From $17, redbaycoffee.com
Oakland-based Red Bay Coffee Roasters was founded in 2014 by Keba Konte, a food entrepreneur with deep roots in the Bay Area’s specialty coffee industry. The black-owned business champions what it describes as “the fourth wave of coffee—a firm commitment to ensure coffee production is not only high quality and sustainable, but a vehicle for diversity, inclusion, and social and economic restoration.”
When you buy a 12-ounce bag of Red Bay Coffee online, you can opt to receive a recurring order of the same roast every week, two weeks, or month by clicking “Subscribe and Save” at checkout. Subscribers also receive a 10 percent discount on each bag of whole beans roasted by Red Bay Coffee, such as King’s Prize, a single-origin Ethiopian coffee with light, fruity notes, and East 14th, a Tanzanian dark roast named after a large street in Oakland that was renamed International Boulevard.
Moustache Coffee Club allows customers to exchange Starbucks gift cards for an equal amount of credit to its website.
Courtesy of Moustache Coffee Club
4. Moustache Coffee Club
Buy Now: From $22, moustachecoffeeclub.com
With a Moustache Coffee Club subscription, you’ll get a new bag of high-quality coffee delivered straight to your door from small farms in countries such as Brazil, Rwanda, Peru, and Guatemala where single-origin coffee is sustainably produced. You can specify how much coffee you’d like to receive in each shipment (6 or 12 ounces), as well as how often you want the coffee delivered, according to weekly, biweekly, or monthly subscriptions.
A few days after each shipment arrives, the subscription service will email you asking for your ratings on the roast coffees you received. The subscription service will then build out your own coffee preference profile to customize upcoming selections to your specific tastes. What’s more: The website even allows you to exchange Starbucks gift cards for an equal amount of credit to the Moustache Coffee Club.
5. Trade Coffee Co.
Buy Now: From $15, drinktrade.com
Trade Coffee’s subscription follows a similar model to those above: Just answer a few easy questions about your preferred coffee taste (light or deep and smoky?), experience level (“pretty new” to “total coffee nerd”) and ideal brewing method (coffee maker or French press?), and the subscription service will create a personalized flavor profile to automatically “match” you with the roasts you’ll love. Trade’s collection includes more than 400 specialty coffees sourced from over 50 of the top roasters in the United States, including La Colombe, Intelligentsia, Verve, and Stumptown Coffee Roasters.
6. Kurasu
Buy Now: $33, kurasu.kyoto
Kyoto-based coffee subscription service Kurasu delivers specialty coffees by Japanese artisan roasters directly to your door each month (no matter where you are in the world). When you register for a monthly Kurasu subscription, you’ll receive two bags of specialty coffees—3.5 ounces each—from a different Japanese roaster, such as Weekenders Coffee in Kyoto or Onibus Coffee in Tokyo. Each Kurasu coffee shipment also includes a booklet introducing the featured Japanese coffee roaster and its recipe.
Angels’ Cup allows subscribers to sample up to 208 different single-origin coffees per year in a blind taste–test format.
Courtesy of Angels’ Cup
7. Angels’ Cup
Buy Now: From $11, angelscup.com
Angels’ Cup is a coffee tasting club for more adventurous coffee drinkers. Subscribers can sample up to 208 different single-origin coffees per year in a blind taste–test format. Choose your roast and grind, and with a subscription, you’ll receive four coffee samples in each box (delivered weekly, biweekly, or monthly).
Here’s the catch: The bags of coffee will be labeled only with the roast date and a number. To identify the roaster, origin, and tasting notes of each coffee after you’ve tried it, match the number on the bag with a card included in the shipment.
8. BLK & Bold
Buy Now: From $14, blkandbold.com
BLK & Bold, a black-owned coffee brand founded by Rod Johnson and Pernell Cezar, allows customers to set up recurring orders of the company’s signature medium-roast blend, Rise & GRND, as well as its single-origin coffees sourced from countries including Ethiopia, Honduras, El Salvador, and Burundi.
You can choose to receive BLK & Bold’s 12-ounce bags of whole beans on a weekly basis (for up to two months at a time) by clicking the “Subscribe and Save” option before checkout. Even better? The Iowa-based company pledges 5 percent of its profits to local and national social impact initiatives for at-risk youth.
9. Humblemaker Coffee Company
Buy Now: From $18, humblemaker.coffee
Humblemaker roasts organic craft coffee sourced from Colombia, Nicaragua, Tanzania, and beyond. When you purchase one of its 12-ounce bags of coffee (whole beans or ground) online, you can “subscribe” for a weekly delivery of that same roast for up to four months. The independent California coffee company also filters funds to a good cause: Humblemaker dedicates 10 percent of its annual profits to nonprofits that enable children with autism to experience surfing, music, and the outdoors.
>>Next: Where to Find Some of the World’s Best Coffee in the United States
