Still in its Prime

Still in its Prime


I blogged just before I signed up for Roaste.com Prime about what a great idea it seemed like to me.  Then I signed up for it and now I have been using it for a while and there is no doubt I love it.  The links to Prime and my previous blog can be found here...

http://www.roaste.com/content/ROASTe-Prime

http://www.roaste.com/CoffeeBlogs/wakeknot/Cool-new-feature-Roaste-Prime

I did get sucked in by Amazon’s very expensive prime option a year or so ago and it changed the way I shopped.  The fact that everything had free shipping and that everything came in 2 days (or next day for a small fee) and that everything came from a trusted source made it hard to beat.  I can now get things more quickly most of the time than I can in person because it is hard to find the time to get to the store.  

Roaste.com offers the free shipping.  It does not expedite the shipping, but that would be a silly feature to add since the coffee gets here before it is ready to be used – why would I care if the coffee got here on day 1 or day 3 if it only starts to get good on day 6 (this, of course, varies by coffee).  But free shipping is a big deal.  I have gotten to send friends presents – good coffee that I would have never sent them if I had to pay shipping for each bag.


I also have more often I am ashamed to admit sent myself coffee.  Just yesterday I thought about what I wanted to drink and Prime changed the answer.  Instead of trying coffees I have already had I decided to try two new coffees from two different roasters.  When you take a bag of coffee that is $12-14, say, shipping can be a huge added cost if you are trying out someone new.  I am, for example, buying a bag of Deep Cello for the first time.  I expect it to be good – they have good reviews on Roaste.com, but if I’d had to buy 5 pounds to make shipping reasonable I would almost certainly have gone back to one of my old standards.  Instead I am excited to be getting a new coffee.  Add in the prospect ebeans for reviewing it, together with lots of good reviews already logged for a roaster on Roaste and it is hard not to try new coffees!  


I also needed coffee filters and instead of buying a $2.50 set of filters and paying $5 in shipping I got shipping for free and considered it a steal.  


There are even more things I’d love to see on Roaste , for example Grindz is hard to find locally and shipping is usually as much as a container.  If it were available on Roaste, I’d order it tomorrow.  In fact I’d probably order 2 because a friend wants some and I’d love to buy it for him if I did not have to pay such a premium for shipping.  


Now back to dreaming about what the next new coffee I will order using Prime will be (although truth be told I think it is indeed time to revisit a few of my old favorites first)!