Ethically sourced and roasted to order, Modest Coffee has opened with a bang!Husband and wife duo, Marcus Contaldo and Jenni Trilik-Contaldo started Modest Coffee in December of 2013.
Their passion for coffee led them to start Modest Coffee with the idea of making high quality, ethically sourced coffee more affordable on the internet. Marcus, Roastmaster and self acclaimed “Head Geek” for Modest Coffee has been roasting coffee at home since the winter of 2011.
“I started roasting coffee because our coffee guy at the local farmers market could not be reached in the winter. We were hooked, but couldn’t get those sweet beans anymore, so it was either learn how to roast or go back to drinking stale store bought coffee.” says Marcus.
What started out as a hobby, grew to a business and eventually turned into Modest Coffee.
“We noticed that everywhere you went online fresh roasted coffee was ridiculously expensive.”, said Jenni, who handles all back end operations.
“We wanted to make these great small farm coffees more accessible to everyone.”
With that in mind, Modest Coffee reduced packaging, streamlined operations and brought their costs down to where they could offer free shipping on every order. The week they opened they made a post to the popular website Reddit and business from the internet community took off.
“Within the first 24 hours of our post, we had over 100 orders and the majority of them were subscribers”, said Jenni. Since then word of mouth has taken over and they have been receiving more coffee subscriptions every day.
When asked what makes their beans so special Marcus replied, “For us the selection process is everything.
We literally sample dozens of beans before selecting the few that eventually make it to our customers.
“Our beans are all traceable back to the farms that grew them, and we pay a premium to farmers who adhere to better social and environmental practices. We choose high quality coffee beans so that our customers can get the best cup of coffee.”
Things are looking bright for the new startup as they expand into wholesale and business-to-business markets. There is one place you won’t find their coffee- on a grocery store shelf.
“There is something special about fresh roasted coffee. Coffee that has been sitting on a shelf for weeks or months starts to lose its volatile chemicals and you end up with a stale cup of coffee.
” As such, they refuse to sell their coffee unless it can be used within a month. Life is too short to drink bad coffee, they claim. We find it hard to disagree. Their website can be found at www.modest-coffee.com
