Finding coffee that’s sourced and roasted by people who truly know what they’re doing and how to select the best beans is always the easiest way to get delicious morning brews. So, a coffee subscription that features hand-selected coffees from Q Graders, coffee curators, and jurors for the Cup of Excellence all rolled into one is truly the best of the best.
The co-founders of the coffee company Bean & Bean meet all of these high standards and more. Because of this, you know you’re getting truly special and tasty beans with every coffee selection!
Bean & Bean: Company History/Overview
The Bean & Bean coffee company was founded by the mother-daughter duo Rachel and Jiyoon Han, who are both Q Graders and coffee curators, as well as jurors for the Cup of Excellence, where they evaluate top-scoring coffees from around the world.
Together, with their outstanding coffee skills, they were able to grow Bean & Bean from a single shop in New York in 2008 into the business it is today, with four locations and a roastery. Not only is the coffee that they source organic and fairly traded but it also comes from partnerships that are primarily female-powered.
So, with environmentally sustainable practices and fair compensation to farmers without gender barriers, Bean & Bean has become a company that is good for the planet as well as bridges the gender gap in coffee.
Bean & Bean maintains transparency with their sourced coffee but they also care a lot about the environmental impact of coffee farms. They partner with The Sloth Institute as a way to contribute a portion of their online sales to caring for the sloths that are affected by things such as deforestation and urbanization.
Bean & Bean Subscription Review
Discover the rich world of specialty coffee with Bean & Bean Subscription. Experience the finest handcrafted blends and single-origin beans delivered to your doorstep, ensuring a fresh and flavorful coffee experience every month.
- Pre-ground available
- Expertly curated
- Portion of sales go to The Sloth Institute
- Women-led and driven
- Free shipping only after $35
The package that I received from Bean & Bean included an 11-ounce bag of one of their whole bean signature blends, the Downtown Blend, as well as an individually packaged steeping coffee bag of the same blend. These were presented in fun and adorable packaging that’s entirely eco-friendly and represents the brand of Bean & Bean.
Downtown Blend
The Downtown Blend, which is what I got in both whole bean form as well as a steeping coffee bag, is a medium-dark roast that’s defined as a great option for not only a house roast, which is how Bean & Bean uses it in their own cafes but also for espresso!
As with all of their coffee products, the Downtown Blend is Organic and Fair Trade Certified. Rachel and Jiyoon have been perfecting this blend since 2008 and while the beans used rotate based on seasons, they’ve crafted the best combination of intended flavors for this coffee so that it’s consistent in taste.
Regardless of seasonally changing beans, this coffee always features a blend of origins from South America for the soft sweetness and fruity acidity, Africa for the gentle floral aromas, and Asia for the earthy undertones. This roast has smooth and creamy tasting notes of roasted nuts, cocoa, cedar, and sweet herbs such as lemongrass.
Upon my own brewing, I found that the aroma of the Downtown Blend was roasted, nutty, and toasty, featuring just a touch of sweetness. It works as a warm invitation to the brew!
The taste of this coffee is a well-balanced combination of warm and toasty notes that come together to create a delicious cup of joe that has a nice, sweet finish.
Bean & Bean: Subscription Options
Discover the rich world of specialty coffee with Bean & Bean Subscription. Experience the finest handcrafted blends and single-origin beans delivered to your doorstep, ensuring a fresh and flavorful coffee experience every month.
- Pre-ground available
- Expertly curated
- Portion of sales go to The Sloth Institute
- Women-led and driven
- Free shipping only after $35
When it comes to the subscription options from Bean & Bean, there are actually a few ways you could go. They have a Bestsellers subscription, which you can prepay for either 3 months, 6 months, or a year in advance. With this option, you can get choose to get any of their bestsellers: Downtown Blend, Peru Las Damas, Indonesia Sumatra, Ethiopia Sidamo, Decaf, or you can be surprised monthly with any of these coffees and more.
If you don’t want to prepay, you can subscribe to any coffee of your choice and save 10% with delivery frequencies between every week to every five weeks. Bean & Bean even does a Monthly Surprise Coffee where you can save 5% by subscribing and choosing a delivery frequency of either every two weeks or every four weeks.
You can receive your coffee as whole beans or pre-ground and, if you subscribe to individual coffees, you can even pick what you want your coffee ground for. Options for this include cold brew, French Press, Chemex, Drip, AeroPress, and more.
Looking beyond bags of coffee, Bean & Bean also offers subscriptions to their steeping coffee bags, teas, matcha, and chai. The options are nearly limitless!
Bean & Bean: Roasting
As I mentioned earlier, Bean & Bean coffee roasters only source coffee that is organic and fairly traded to ensure environmental sustainability and fair compensation for the farmers that they work with. Moreover, more than half of these producers that they partner with are women as a way to break the gender gap in coffee.
This gap not only causes women to produce less coffee than farmers that are male but to also earn less from their coffee sales than they do. This is due to things such as a lack of transparency, fair trading prices, and access to training and resources.
Through Bean & Bean’s ethical sourcing, they work to improve the lives of women producers and their families by giving them fair trade prices and bridging that gender gap by roasting, selling, and highlighting coffees produced by these women.
In further sustainable practices, Bean & Bean also partners with the Sloth Institute to donate a portion of their sales to helping orphaned and injured sloths return back to the rainforest amid deforestation and urbanization.
As far as roasting goes, they aim to provide the freshest beans possible by roasting every other day and shipping them out within a couple of days to ensure that customers will get their coffee just in time to craft the freshest brews. This is all done at their local roastery in Little Neck, Queens, which is an Organic and Fair Trade Certified establishment.
Bean & Bean: Pricing
When subscribing to Bean & Bean, there are a few price variations depending on their service options. The Bestseller subscriptions, which are all pre-paid for either three months, six months, or a year, run at about $22 per month. Since you’ll pay ahead of time for these deliveries, the cost is combined, so it would be $66 for a three-month subscription for example.
The Monthly Surprise Coffee subscription saves you 5% on the coffee, so you’d pay $19.95 for each delivery with this option. If you want to subscribe to an individual coffee, you can save 10%, but the price varies depending on the bag that you choose.
To give you an example for this, if you were to subscribe to the Downtown Blend that I received, it would be $17.10 for each delivery. Plus, if you spend over $35 on an order, you also get free shipping!
What Makes Bean & Bean Unique
There are many reasons why Bean & Bean is a unique coffee roaster, such as the primary inclusion of women-led coffee producers, their partnership with The Sloth Institute, and their several other sustainable practices.
However, Bean & Bean is also special because of the mother-daughter team, Rachel and Jiyoon, who carefully source and curate each and every coffee that they offer. “As Q Graders and coffee curators, [they] dedicate a lot of time and energy to finding the best coffees around the world to introduce to [their] customers,” which says a lot about their commitment to greatness.
Moreover, Rachel and Jiyoon are also jurors for the Cup of Excellence, which just further proves their expertise in coffee sourcing and roasting. Because their subscriptions include coffees that were hand-picked by these two knowledgeable women, you know you’re getting truly delicious coffees.
How to Cancel Bean & Bean
With a Bean & Bean subscription, it’s super easy to make any necessary changes to your service. If you need to change which coffee is getting delivered to you, how much of it you get, the delivery frequency, or you need to skip shipments or pause your subscription, you can do it all through your online account.
If you find that you would prefer to cancel your subscription altogether, you can also easily do this through your online account at any time!
Discover the rich world of specialty coffee with Bean & Bean Subscription. Experience the finest handcrafted blends and single-origin beans delivered to your doorstep, ensuring a fresh and flavorful coffee experience every month.
- Pre-ground available
- Expertly curated
- Portion of sales go to The Sloth Institute
- Women-led and driven
- Free shipping only after $35
Bean & Bean: Final Thoughts
Personally, I find Bean & Bean to be a very unique coffee roasting and subscription service. If not for the expert care put into selecting, sourcing, and roasting each bag of beans, then for the emphasis that the company puts into highlighting and supporting women producers.
This women-led company clearly also cares for the environment through their sustainable practices and their work with The Sloth Insititute, which is important enough for them to include in their branding! Not to mention that the coffee itself is delicious!
Bean & Bean Subscription Review: Savoring Sustainability
An in-depth Bean & Bean subscription review of their expertly curated, sustainable, and women-led coffee.
4.9
