North Star Coffee Roasters
For our new packaging we wanted to ensure we had a beautiful and eye-catching design that would help us communicate our deeper purpose as a business, which is to help build a coffee industry that works for everyone. To do so, we put a lot of time into understanding our business, what we wanted to communicate, and the practicalities required of the packaging. We ultimately wanted to convey a sense of place with our coffees that signified the incredible producing network we partner with and do so without, in any way, being culturally appropriating. Approachability, creativity, and a sense of fun was also important to be more representative of who we are as a team and business, along with considerations as to how the producer narrative was represented.
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The result is a bag bursting with color and a pattern inspired by the global tradition of quilting. We wanted to make maximum use of the star which is not only a key part of our identity but also very representative of the magic of the starry skies above coffee farms. We feel the slightly kaleidoscopic effect of the pattern really does justice to the captivating contents of the bag itself. We have worked hard to make our range more approachable. It hit us last year as our online shop sales responded to the vast swathes of people suddenly working from home that our range can be a little difficult to understand if you are new to buying coffee from businesses like North Star. Despite it being super cool that we know where our coffee comes from, the altitude it grew at, the varietal etc, we are not too sure how much that helped our customers decide on what they wanted to buy – particularly in a retail setting where they may be confronted by multiple bags of single origin beans. They may have found themselves going for familiar coffee producing countries which they may have previously encountered. The only downfall being that we work with a lot of producers, pushing experimental and innovative techniques that may result in a coffee far from what they were expecting in the cup!
We therefore started to think about how we could profile our range into just two categories that would more easily communicate what to expect in the cup to match a particular flavor profile preference and this is what we came up with: BASE – This range includes coffees that are traditionally more approachable with good balance and body. The natural acidity of these coffees is more rounded and at a low to medium level, making them better suited to enjoy with milk and usually on ‘metal filter’ brew methods such as espresso, French press or stove top (and of course through the highly versatile AeroPress). EXPLORE – Here we aim to showcase lots that push the boundaries of what coffee ‘should’ taste like, challenging tradition with innovation and, on occasion, providing a market for experimental processing.
These coffees can be incredibly complex with medium to high levels of natural acidity that can be at its best with ‘paper filter’ brew methods such as the Chemex, V60, Kalita or AeroPress. Some of these coffees can take milk but many are best enjoyed without thanks to their more fruit forward profile. Along with each range being packed into a different bag color, we have also included information on the front label that tells customers what to expect from the coffee. For example, in the place of altitude, there is ‘Enjoy with’ to signify if we recommend the coffee with or without milk (or with the Base range, both!). Plus, there is a QR code which takes customers to the product page for that coffee on our website. These pages feature videos directly from the producer themselves to better connect customers directly with them and allow them to tell their own story in the manner they would like to.
