Faff Coffee: Democratising specialty single origin coffee

We recently caught up with Dave Law of Faff Coffee who’s fed up with the hassle and faff of specialty coffee. He’s also done with the stingy little 7-8 gram bags of coffee which only make 150ml cups of coffee. He’s gone straight for the kill with 15 gram bags.

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“Faff Coffee was born out of a love/hate relationship with coffee. Coffee can be a wondrous thing. It can be anything from your morning kick in the face, to a complex specialty experience to ponder over. But whatever it is, why does it require so much effort on your part to enjoy it? Why is it so easy to enjoy an outstanding craft beer or wine, but when it comes to coffee you’re left faffing about with table spoons, messy grinds, cafetieres, scales, useless espresso machines or brewers that look like something you last saw in your high school chemistry class.”

Let’s have a look at the branding

With a brilliant combination of yellow, black, pink and purple, it definitely stands out as an alternative to the norm. It’s bright, it’s bold and it yells “Try me!”. And best of all, it’s very simple.

Here’s what we discussed

OK Dave, what made you decide to start selling coffee in bags?

Ever since I started working in coffee I’ve been super interested in ways of making it easier for people to brew coffee at home. I strikes me as a really unique problem for coffee – that it requires so much preparation from the consumer to enjoy it. It’s not like craft beer or wine where you can just crack open a can or bottle.

I came at coffee from a speciality angle from the get go. This interest started as helping customers at our coffee shop Brew Lab learn how to use the usual home brewers like pour-overs and Aeropresses to make great coffee. But I was always on the lookout for better ways to break down this barrier to enjoying great coffee.

I started getting interested in ready to drink coffee: In particular cold brew and spent some time developing cold brew products. But cold brew has never been a particularly good way to get across great coffee to people.

More recently I’ve come back to thinking about ways of making hot brewed coffee more accessible. And I firmly believe that if speciality coffee is to grow as a category of coffee – which it really needs to – it needs to be easier for people to brew it.

What about Nespresso Pods?

I’ve looked at Nespresso pods but I’ve always been pretty disappointed by them as method of making coffee. Yes you can get a great result if you put outstanding coffee in them like Colonna do. But the fundamental problem I feel Nespresso has is that it is its own style of coffee drink. If you’re filter coffee fan they just miss the mark completely. And even as an espresso fan – its 5g of coffee! I always feel like I’m being short changed.

I came across coffee bags a few years ago and was severely underwhelmed by what was on the market. They’re not filled with nearly enough coffee to get a good result, and the coffee that is in a lot of them could be a lot better.

Recently though I started to think about how you could improve them. I wondered if you made a coffee bag that contained the right amount of coffee for the vessel people would drink them in (a mug) and used a quality 80+ coffee that was roasted to a good medium roast, would you get a good result? The answer, I think, was yes!

So that’s how I got to coffee bags. I think they’re an incredibly simple and un-pretentious way to make a great coffee. If we’re to capture more of the 80% of home coffee drinkers that still drink instant, that’s what speciality coffee needs

Love the concept. What do you tell people who aren’t sure about coffee in bags?

Interesting question because it depends on who is asking. There are so many types of UK coffee drinker and I think the answer is different for everyone.

Maybe someone has tried coffee bags before but they prefer the coffee their cafetière makes. I tell them that all the coffee bags they’ve tried before don’t have enough coffee in to get a good result. You need double what Taylors put in their coffee bag for a well extracted cup. And that’s what we’ve got!

Maybe they’re a speciality fan and enjoy their hand grinder and Aeropress. I ask them if there are ever any situations in which they don’t have their hand grinder and Aeorpress on them when they want to make a great coffee!

Maybe they’ve been enjoying visiting their local independent cafe and had the baristas waxing lyrical about hand-brewers but they can’t be bothered with all the faff. I tell them that there is an easier way!

Ultimately its great quality speciality coffee, steeping in hot water. So you get a very similar result to great quality speciality coffee steeping in a cafetière, but with none of the kit or clean-up.

OK, right now you have one product. Any more products in the pipeline?

Yes – we keep getting asked for a decaf coffee bag so I’m sure that will be next. I’m also desperate to find a more sustainable solution to the film used for wrapping the coffee bags. But other than that, I’ve got lots of ideas for other ways to take the faff out of coffee.

There are some really interesting developments happening in instant coffee that I’m watching closely. I think there are some easier ways to approach filter and espresso coffee for the home too. I’m also keen to revisit RTD coffee at some point too and I’ve got some ideas how things can be improved there.

What’s the plan for Faff going forward?

The mission for FAFF is to democratise speciality coffee. It doesn’t have to be this hard for the coffee consumer. I think it’s crazy that roasters sell a product to their customers without having any control over the customer’s experience of it. A brewer can sell a beer and it will taste to the consumer exactly how the brewer wants it to taste. A coffee roaster sells a bag of beans to a consumer and there are so many variables that come into play to determine whether the customer will have a good experience with it or not. I want to take those variables out so more people in the UK are drinking and enjoying speciality coffee.

Thank you Dave, that’s amazing.

Go and have a look at Faff website and give it a try.

Thanks Dave for your time, and all the best. What a brilliant concept.

About CoffeeCode

This article was written by Gregg Romano who is the founder of CoffeeCode, the UK’s fastest growing and most exciting coffee blog. CoffeeCode has a focus on great coffee, inspirational design and sustainability.

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Faff Coffee

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