How fresh do you think your coffee is?

There’s nothing like waking up and smelling freshly roasted coffee in the morning. It’s funny how that word ‘fresh’ is so often associated with coffee – but do we ever question it? If you’re like me, you buy your coffee at the supermarket for the weekdays and indulge in your favorite local coffee shop on the weekends. Or maybe you’re not like me and are living the good life
– stopping in at your local coffee shop before work every morning. Kudos.

For all intents and purposes, we’re going to stick with the former character – it suits our story a little better. When you wake up in the morning and make your breakfast plunger, it’s fresh, right? If your morning coffee were fresh, Jack’s Coffee wouldn’t exist. The idea of Jack’s Coffee came about by two regular New Zealand blokes waking up one morning and questioning the freshness of their coffee.

Now, if you’re somewhat of a coffee connoisseur, you’ll know that fresh is best. You’ll be able to understand the heart and soul of a coffee company that didn’t think anyone should settle for second best when it came to freshness.

Our story doesn’t begin with Jack’s Coffee, however. It goes further back than that, to the early 90’s when Jack’s Coffee founder David Burton saw a need in Auckland for a decent cup of fresh coffee. This led to the creation of Burton Hollis, a coffee company created by David Burton that would go on to supply the hospitality industry with fresh coffee beans for 16 years.

David didn’t stop here, however. Seeing that he had somewhat of a monopoly on the coffee industry at this point and had swooped in at the perfect time, he set about making sure that everyone had access to delicious, fresh coffee.

Enter well-known coffee brands like Gravity, Jed’s, Columbus and Burton’s.
David took his coffee skills international, judging the World Barista Championships for a couple of years.

Then he desired to get back to his roots. He saw what could be done with coffee in the hospitality and commercial industry, and he wanted to scale it all the way back down again.

You see, business growth and success often come with their pitfalls. One of these pitfalls is the quality of the product. The downside to manufacturing and supplying coffee at this level also takes away the personalized touch, the connection between seller and customer.

David set about changing all that. He wanted to turn the traditional model of processing and shelving coffee on its head. He felt a need to bridge the gap between roaster and customer, by delivering the coffee directly.

This brings us back full circle to the ‘fresh is best’ philosophy. You see, the issue with buying coffee from the supermarket is that by the time it reaches your pantry, it’s not so fresh anymore. It will sit on a supermarket shelf for who knows how long, and as each day passes, so does an element of freshness.

Jack’s Coffee values the art of drinking fresh coffee so much that they are determined you will, too. That’s why David delivers their fresh roasted coffee to your door. This new model pays homage to a time when people knew where their food came from and had a relationship with the people who brought it to them – just like the milkman.

David loves the interactions he has with the customer. He believes that his knowledge of how to make good coffee is otherwise wasted, hidden behind the roasting and manufacturing process of Jack’s Coffee.

When he delivers his fresh roasted coffee to his customers, he can talk to them about it. He can impart essential knowledge on how to brew your coffee correctly, and how to store it to keep it fresh for as long as possible.

David is a big believer in the process being just as important as the end product. In this day and age, we’re often focused on the end goal. We become so distracted with this, sometimes, that we lose sight of what’s really important – the process and how life is lived in the interim. David says that like when you’re cooking a meal, the process of roasting his coffee is just as much part of the experience.

The flavors inherent to your morning coffee don’t hang around for long. In fact, they peak in the first few weeks after being roasted. This means that by the time you get that supermarket packet of coffee home for your morning brew, you’ve long lost those first essential flavors.

As soon as coffee is subjected to the roasting process, those flavor elements that have been preserved by the integral structure of the bean start to disintegrate. The longer you leave your coffee sitting around, the stronger the bitter characteristics will become, rendering your coffee average in taste and quality.

When the coffee is ground, this entire process is accelerated even further.
Coffee doesn’t get much fresher than Jack’s Coffee. Soon, you’ll be kicking yourself for ever having associated the word ‘fresh’ with your supermarket brew.

And it’s all thanks to David Burton. He’s out there on the grind – pun intended – every day, making sure you’re drinking the freshest morning brew you could get your hands on. He’s changing the way people think of ‘fresh’ and coffee, one home delivered bag of beans at a time.