Coffee is an easy gift to get right and a surprisingly easy one to get wrong. Concrete ideas with prices, based on how the person actually makes their coffee, plus two things best not bought.
Why coffee works as a gift
It has three things few gifts combine: it's personal without being presumptuous, it gets consumed (so it takes up no space and creates no obligation to display it) and it lasts weeks rather than a moment.
The risk is the opposite of what people imagine. Almost nobody goes wrong by giving bad coffee; people go wrong by giving the wrong format — beans to someone with no grinder, capsules for an incompatible system, or a coffee maker to someone who already had one they liked.
First: find out how they make their coffee
It's the only question that genuinely matters, and you can usually answer it with thirty seconds of looking at their kitchen.
- Capsule machine — check whether it's Nespresso® Original or Vertuo. If it's Vertuo, compatibles are no use to them; give something else.
- Moka pot or drip — ground, or beans if they have a grinder. When in doubt, ground.
- V60, Chemex, French press, AeroPress — this person grinds their own coffee. Give whole bean single origin and let them choose the setting.
- Espresso with a portafilter — whole bean, and if they're genuinely keen, something from an unusual origin.
Ideas with real prices
To do it properly without overspending (€25-35)
A kilo of single origin coffee, whole bean or ground, at around €31. It's the most direct gift and the one that goes wrong least often: if the coffee is good and freshly roasted, it shows from the first cup.
For a gift with some scope (€55-80)
A box of 100 specialty capsules (€65) if they have a compatible machine, or two kilos of different origins to compare. Comparing two coffees side by side is also the quickest way for someone to start noticing differences they'd previously missed.
For a gift that lands every month (from €29/month)
A subscription for several months. It's the difference between a one-off present and something that turns up at their door reminding them you thought of them. For birthdays of people who are hard to surprise, it works particularly well.
If they don't have a capsule machine
The machine loan programme solves the equipment side with no upfront cost — as a gift it goes considerably further than the price suggests.
Two things best not given
A grinder, unless they've asked for one. It's a gift that sounds excellent and ends up in a cupboard. People who want to grind already grind; for anyone not interested, you're giving them one more step every morning. If you still think it'll land, the differences between hand and electric are in the grinder guide.
Decaf, unless you know they drink it. It's easily read as a comment on their habits, even when it isn't.
Corporate gifts
For Christmas gifts to clients or staff, coffee has a practical advantage over the traditional hamper: it gets consumed, it creates no obligation and it doesn't end up passed on to someone else. We have terms for company orders, including large formats and machine loan for offices.
When to order
We dispatch within 24-72 hours of roasting, but at Christmas, Reyes and Valentine's the whole delivery network is saturated, so it's worth ordering with a few more days' margin than you would in March.
A concrete recommendation: for Reyes, order before 30 December. For Christmas, before the 18th. If you're cutting it fine, write to us and we'll tell you whether it'll make it — better than gambling on it.
Everything mentioned is in the shop, and the plans are under subscriptions.
