A history of Tanbrown coffee

In March of 2021, Ethan and I became friends out of unfortunate circumstances. Around that time, 6 Asian women were killed in Atlanta, Georgia. This blow echoed throughout our city and the nation. During this time, we were both working in coffee. I felt the weight of being the only person of color, the only Asian, Femme presenting person and wondered if anyone else felt the way I did. In late March of 2021, I hosted the very first Asian Coffee Check-In call over Zoom as a platform. Sixty Two people showed interest in this community, and among them, Ethan was one. He did not attend the meeting, but later, we connected in person due to a commonality of holding a marginalized identity in the city of Atlanta. Our friendship grew as we continued to keep up with one another, and after a meal in October of 2021, we decided to start a coffee roasting business.

This revelation was not unintentional or on a whim. We both have a passion for community, coffee, and presenting coffees uncommon to the public. Roasting is also a profession that is hard to break into, especially for a person of color in Atlanta. This is due to gatekeeping and ladder climbing common in the coffee industry and exhibited in a lot of the behaviors of coffee companies in our city. Over the course of time, we saw these trends in behavior both directly and indirectly and decided to be direct advocates of change within our direct coffee community. Because roasting is one of the most lucrative and influential jobs within the coffee supply chain, we knew that to make a difference, we would have to actively be working in that space. We took time to develop our palates and sensory skills and used our backgrounds and years of experience to start what today is, Tanbrown coffee. This case study is here to show the design process of launching our website which had a goal of mid-January of 2022.

What is the coffee scene like right now?

Customer personas: Who would even want your coffee?

With all of these findings working front and center, we knew we wanted to create something with just enough information to please the coffee professionals (roasters and baristas) and prosumers while ensuring accessible options to a general consumer. The personas were based off of interactions and observations we have had with a network of over 1000 coffee professionals throughout the U.S. and globally. We developed four personas based on trends we saw from coffee professionals (roasters, baristas, brewers, green buyers), prosumers, and general consumers. We saw a desire for education, access to tools, better coffee quality, community, and familiarity.

Customer journey

First listed out brief list of actions and entry ways. Then journey mapped, and built a basic wireframe on Figma, here are the basic functions we needed the site to perform at a base level in what we wanted to include for the MVP. We didn’t want to get too caught up in the Features and Specs as we wanted more items to intentionally build later. From doing these activities, it better allowed is to think about the potential pathways a customer would take when searching for Tanbrown. We wanted to know how a customer would feel going through these flows with including the base level of interactions to maintain a functional site.

BRANDING

Tanbrown coffee was a name that was derived from sitting down to talk about the design process. Ethan and I knew we wanted to guide the brand with the words Playful, Nostalgic, Welcoming. When we thought about our original colors, the colors tan and brown came up in conversation, and we realized, we could put them together to be Tanbrown because coffee is tan and brown and we are also tan and brown. We wanted to have an air of playfulness while still addressing complex topics within the coffee space.

When choosing the logo, there were many iterations and drawings to decide on the final, but we wanted it to look symbolic, embody our brand, and still maintain a playfulness. It mimics the shape of a slide while also having a more literal T and B in the logo. We also liked the idea of making a logo that could be a symbol and felt as though the shape of it reminded us both of symbols and letters from our respective motherlands and alphabets.

Finally, the colors and typefaces were chosen to make the brand feel more open and welcoming as well as call back to childhood with colors similar to those of primary colors. We plan to use them all in systems and have different means of showcasing the colors and fonts.

Initial Branding ideas

Final Branding decisions

Bag iterations and mockups

Some of the initial bag mockups were not the direction we wanted to go. From them, we found that we wanted a full bag sticker with description on the back, but we also wanted more engaging colors and filling more space to be appealing to a wider market while we use this in the interim. The mockups below were concepts for either future designs, or imagining how to transfer our current brand to something tangible.

Choosing a platform

Because this was a quick build with a tiny team of two, we wanted to use a site builder in order to support all of our back end needs. We researched three different competitors in order to determine which would be best for our needs as we continue to grow. At the end, we chose Shopify looking towards the future. Since upfront, we wanted something that was simple and had a powerful backend dashboard, we wanted something that was tried and true for order fulfillment and keeping track of tax information.

Final products: WEbsite, bags, and card illustrations

All of the final graphics, illustrations, and production have been created by Marissa Childers in collaboration with Ethan Darla. Check out the final product at Tanbrown.coffee

Final thoughts

Some of the challenges on this build were ultimately working with constraints and trying to keep a focus for a short turnaround time to meet a goal. We had some bumpy moments and breeches in communication, due to working multiple jobs with different schedules, but through it all learned and grew with one another to build the start of a new business. It was a short sprint in order to create a functioning site and a brand so we can test the response for our coffee and iterate on it in the future. We are making a lot of progress, not a lot of perfection.

In the future, some features we want to add are:
+subscriptions - to continue to drive support and give customers a way to buy without having to return to the site
+account management - to allow customers to return back, see their purchase history, and potentially provide personalized discounts
+newsletter pushes - to facilitate heightened engagement and educational opportunities
+“artists we love” page - to provide an area to support our local community and artist friends
+blog - a place to share more educational musings and keep up to date with the coffee trends
+video spot for education - to showcase our creativity while maintaining a teaching platform

It will continue to be something to intentionally grow and think through as we get more data from our customers and how business continues to flow. Ultimately, we are excited to see this business come to life and have the opportunity to represent the API community within the coffee space.

We recently reached our first 100 sales, gained 600 followers in the first 6 weeks of launch, had our first pop-up, will have our coffee featured at the Brewista booth at the Specialty Coffee Expo, received a gear grant, and have continued features down the road! So keep your eyes peeled for Tanbrown Coffee.

UPDATES FROM 2022

We have overhauled the site and updated the look and feel of the website into a second iteration that highlights our products and services more heavily on the landing page. We now host products from Brewista on the website and after research, have implemented a subscription service. In November of 2022, we launched a newsletter and were heavily focused on pop-ups. We were featured in Sprudge, Eater ATL, Atlanta Journal Constitution, and worked on projects like Matchbook Coffee Project and Leaderboard Coffee.