The most exciting of UK, USA and European speciality roasters, enjoy a coffee subscription all matched to your tastes

To ensure quality standards, the coffee industry is one that has a professional grading system for all its produce. Operated by qualified individuals who sit at the stages of farming, exporting and roasting, coffee is scored out of 100 - the higher the score, the better the coffee's taste, aroma, consistency, aftertaste and various other attributes. By definition, 'speciality coffees' are those that score at least 80 out of 100; anything less, we call it 'commodity coffee'. As the scoring suggests, speciality coffee can therefore be seen as the best 20% of coffees, and as common sense may think, the higher the score, generally the more expensive a coffee is to purchase through the supply chain and by consumers.

As there is this definitive line between the two coffee types, many known coffee brands, companies, stores and services prefer to only sell coffees that score 80-83 out of 100, just high enough for them to be able to use 'speciality coffee' in all their marketing, low enough for their coffees to be cheaper and make much more profit margin. If you can't beat them, join them, right? No, we strive to do much better than that.

If you know you love coffee and are wanting to brew better coffees at home yet find yourself not knowing which coffees are worth buying or even where to start, or maybe you might already be well versed in the beverage type and know a GUSTATORY speciality coffee subscription is exactly what you need, all are welcome. Known industry-wide for our leading coffee curations, GUSTATORY are trusted by our large community and subscribers, and we've even many baristas and roasters who are subscribers themselves too... you're in fine company.

Well, "coffee is the single most consumed product in developed nations that is produced by developing nations". That is what we believe and advertise across all our media and whilst it is a beverage for us to all enjoy, it should be our privilege to consciously consider which coffee we're consuming.

1  Being sustainable is about more than just the planet. It's also about the people and earning enough profit to survive. With all developing nations' coffee farmers an embedded part of their communities, whether they're small or part of co-operatives, lives and families depend on the export. Fair purchasing should be a minimum.

2  For years, unfair shareholder-pleasing coffee purchasing made by multinational cafe chains and lower-grade roasters is fundamentally driving the problem. Developing nations' coffee farmers wish to operate sustainably to survive for tomorrow. It's a basic human right. Coffee purchased by consumers in multinational cafe chains is heavily overpriced, all served with an abundance of sugars to mask it's true quality. To tackle the crisis they drive, GUSTATORY widens the conversation that speciality coffee is so much more than commodity coffee.

3  By example, Fairtrade's Minimum Price guarantees $1.40 per pound for producers, yet many coffee roasters or multinational cafe chains don't even meet this. By comparison, the best of speciality coffee roasters optionally pay upward of $4.00-5.00 per pound. Why? To produce better quality and towards a more sustainable and ethical future for coffee. Plus, for consumers to enjoy speciality coffee, they don't even need to pay any higher prices.

Curating the best of speciality coffee roasters. One subscription, many discoveries.

Learn more about our Sustainability Mission in really trying to make a difference.

In 2022 we proudly delivered 41% savings on average on subscribing to like for like products direct from each roaster and other services. We fully believe in transparency with everything we do and for GUSTATORY's coffee subscription service's cost saving and performances throughout the last year, learn more in our latest Annual Review (2022).

In addition to our subscription performances, brewing at home also naturally comes with direct cost savings versus takeout coffees. How much can you save by having a coffee subscription?

We recommend: 7-9g/15g for a single/double shot espresso, and 14-19g for 250ml filter methods (brew guides). For the price of 2 or 3 cafe coffees you're able to achieve 15 to 35 cups per 250g bag depending on brew method and strength preferences. Enjoy all our savings on RRP prices, and with dispatches made from GUSTATORY (UK), rest assured, there are also no international roaster import fees for UK residents.

Yes, all of our UK and international coffee subscription's featuring roasters' coffees are roasted fresh to order and shipped to us toward the end of every month ahead of the next turn of the month dispatch period. In fact, this is why we only have one dispatch date within the month, to help ensure all our roasters' dispatches arrive to us as close to one another as possible, for their coffees to be as fresh as possible for you. For our featured roasters located within the UK, their roast dates will be very close to our organised date, some the very day before, and for our European roasters, theirs will be roasted a few days earlier to cater for international shipping. All our roasters roast our coffees on a specific schedule tailored for our dates.

Please note: an important factor to consider is that coffee shouldn't be consumed immediately after being roasted to enjoy it's peak flavours, and in the same way to how the best of roasters openly publish comments on their bags such as 'best after 8 days' or 'best enjoyed after 10 days', we too encourage this, with this called the 'coffee rest period'. Such a period of time exists because a by-product of coffee roasting is CO2, in which this gas can make brewing difficult. For more info, please read our article on the coffee rest period within our Journal & School. With this in mind, for all the regular features of a roaster geographically distant from us, our careful organisation and planned logistics caters for this time period, ensuring that the recommended length of coffee rest period passes during shipping and that the coffees you receive will be well within their recommended brewing time. We understand that it may seem common sensical to think that coffee roasted yesterday will taste better than coffees roasted several days prior, however, we assure you that that isn't a professional recommendation and is an opinion shared by many of the best roasters.

All deliveries are made direct from GUSTATORY, based in the United Kingdom, in which we curate and manage all our subscriber's packages in-house to ensure package quality, variety and organisation. All coffee box subscriptions are dispatched across several days within the same dispatch period, taking place from each month's first Monday and/or 1st-2nd whichever best fits given each month's changing dates. As above, we have this consistent dispatch period to ensure coffee freshness from all our UK and international coffee roasters in which all subscribers are consolidated into the same dispatch period irrespective of individual payment cycles. Subscribing at some point in the middle of the month will mean you'll be automatically allocated to the next dispatch period, but rest assured, we have your subscription - welcome! All UK deliveries are sent via 48 hours postal service, with many subscribers receiving theirs the next day (postcodes may vary). For international shipping, all parcels are sent by expedited tracked methods, however, timeframes do vary per destination country.

Recycled packaging? Absolutely, but we've also considered more than just that. Creative and colourful packaging comes at a cost and we're humble about ours. Printed packaging is a regularly overlooked, detrimental factor when consumer brands consider their environmental impact. Using recycled material is one thing, but that's not everything. We work with an abundance of brands and with our team all consumers ourselves, together, are well aware of branding / packaging options. Despite this, we dispatch all our parcels within humble, minimally branded boxes. Why?

1  Towards the environment, unlike almost all other subscription services across every product type imaginable, we choose not to use overly-printed / branded packaging - not even featuring a tiny logo - to eliminate our requirement for ink on postal boxes altogether. Each coffee subscription box we deliver is made from recycled cardboard, our tape from recycled kraft paper and our insert cards from recycled fibres.

2  Towards cost, we price all our subscriptions according to the true value of the actual coffee you're receiving and not include the pointless cost of some packaging you'll no doubt dispose or recycle of 20 seconds later after opening. Sure, we agree that creative packaging designs are fun and nice to receive, however, it's what's on the inside that counts, right? We let the speciality coffees inside our humble packaging do all the talking.

Learn more about our humble packaging. It's an important consideration for us.

Browse our 9 rolling month-by-month multi-roaster coffee subscription packages below and feel free to easily cycle through each to discover your favourite coffee type. If you're unsure and are just getting started, we perhaps recommend the Selected Mix; for our cheapest offering, try our PERCENT budget package, and for our most popular - and also our best in class -, try the Plus 87 coffee package. Once you've decided on a favourite, each subscription individually presents you an account setup process. After selecting the number of bags you wish to receive, feel free to also mix and match with additional other coffee types to create a bespoke coffee delivery, and in the next stages, tailor your subscription to your personal preferences, be it brew method, flavour notes or processing preferences (if any). If you only like classic chocolatey coffees, or perhaps, you're a fruity, funky natural coffee kind of drinker, even if you've no preferences at all, personalise your subscription to ensure you're receiving coffees that you like.

Highly curated, best-in-class, the gift of variety, for the love of discovery...as we're often told, 'what's not to like here? GUSTATORY is great'. Plus, if you find yourself with too much coffee one month, simply amend, skip, pause or cancel anytime. Easy.

Voted as ELLE's and Esquire's 'Best Wholebean-Only Subscription 2021', Shortlist's 'Best Coffee Subscription 2020', Good Housekeeping's 'Best For European Speciality Coffee Subscription 2021', amongst others, with our founders exclusively interviewed on leading coffee agendas such as UK Coffee Week and the true sustainability of coffee by Sky News, BBC and many more, our curator's coffee discoveries are yours to trust and enjoy.