Kickstarter - Farmstead based Specialty Coffee Roaster Expansion

Food Forest Farms

Hi!

Thanks for looking at our project: Kickstarter - Food Forest Farms Coffee

I retired from Corp Sales 7 years ago and started Food Forest Farms, with my now wife Candice. We did a lot of Aquaponics work, experiments and consulting back in the hay day of medicinal cannabis. That's when we started South Sound Aquaponics. As we saw the writing on the wall and the state/corp take over in the medical space we morphed the farm into a Nursery and Duck operation. We sell at the Federal Way and Des Moines Farmers Markets in the Seattle area. We have settled into Muscovy Ducks, and permaculture herbs. After 7 years our 1/4 acre city farm is almost ready for tours and workshops. We will be posting soon, on permies, for a carpenter type person to help build out our 2 Air B&B spaces. Diversification of farm income is key right now. Keep an eye out for that.



As for our Specialty Coffee - Custom Micro Roasting coffee business: you can go check my Linked In and see my whole sales career. For 5 years I worked for one of the most Permaculture-based farms in Costa Rica, under Bill McCalpin at LaMinita/Distant Lands Coffee. I ran the convenience store, office coffee channels, until I moved into top to top sales with some of the biggest hotel/foodservice chains in the country. The point is, I've built brands for many different companies; now it's time to focus on building one to support ourselves and stabilize the farm income stream.



I would LOVE to have any help from Permies folks if you are feeling it. Please ask any questions or offer suggestions. It's the first time we have really started to be permies. Here is the link to the Kickstarter: Kickstarter - Food Forest Farms Coffee

Thanks in advance for sharing where you see fit.  
Brian & Candice

Visit our Facebook page

I backed you because you roast very good coffee! :-) And I added this thread to a couple other forums where it might get more views. (If anyone ever wants their thread added to other forums, click the "!Report" button and simply ask for the thread to be added to other forums.)

I'd recommend more pictures in your Kickstarter campaign page, including pictures of the coffee, soap, lip gloss, hat, shirt, coffee press, and burr grinder. Or did I miss pictures of those? Of course you likely want better pictures than the one I posted here. ;-)

I think I enjoy good coffee, though I'm not exactly a connoisseur, so I would not know how to describe the two roasts of yours that I sampled. Do you have customer quotes, or other descriptions of the coffee attributes that could be included in the campaign?

Good luck!!

Hi Brian & Candice;

I've added photos and links from your website and Facebook page. It might be good to add the link to your Linked In profile as well.

Also, you might want to consider adding the Kickstarter video to Youtube. Then we can embed the video here as well!

And here are links to Paul's podcasts about how to do a Kickstarter which might be helpful:

How to do a Kickstarter - Part 1
How to do a Kickstarter  Part 2
How to do a Kickstarter - Part 3

Best of luck to you!

Tracy

Tracy Wandling wrote:Hi Brian & Candice;

I've added photos and links from your website and Facebook page. It might be good to add the link to your Linked In profile as well.

Also, you might want to consider adding the Kickstarter video to Youtube. Then we can embed the video here as well!

And here are links to Paul's podcasts about how to do a Kickstarter which might be helpful:

How to do a Kickstarter - Part 1
How to do a Kickstarter  Part 2
How to do a Kickstarter - Part 3

Best of luck to you!

Tracy

Thanks so much for the assist on the photos!  I am going to go listen to those today!  

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:I backed you because you roast very good coffee! :-) And I added this thread to a couple other forums where it might get more views. (If anyone ever wants their thread added to other forums, click the "!Report" button and simply ask for the thread to be added to other forums.)

I'd recommend more pictures in your Kickstarter campaign page, including pictures of the coffee, soap, lip gloss, hat, shirt, coffee press, and burr grinder. Or did I miss pictures of those? Of course you likely want better pictures than the one I posted here. ;-)

I think I enjoy good coffee, though I'm not exactly a connoisseur, so I would not know how to describe the two roasts of yours that I sampled. Do you have customer quotes, or other descriptions of the coffee attributes that could be included in the campaign?

Good luck!!

The reason there aren't pics of the swag is that it doesn't exist yet.  I built our logo via cut and paste.  Found out this week its too low res for any professional printing.  The redesign is active on Fiverr right now.  Will repost here as soon as its done.  I have the shirt/hat/mug guy ready, he just needs the art.  Will update all as it comes in.

The description of our coffee wehear back from everyone is SMOOTH.  It's from 2 main things and its the combination that sets us apart.
1.  We source only super high grade Arabica beans.  We usually test roast at least 4 versions before deciding on any lot.  (the best 2% of coffee in the world)
2.  We Micro Roast ( tech definition is less than 150#/day) 1 to 3# batches on our electric fluid air bed roaster.
    -  By using an electric element to heat the air that cooks the beans, we ARE NOT cooking in an exhaust gas.  Roasters deriving heat from natural gas or propane impart dangerous levels of hydrogen sulfide to the final roasted product.  
    -  Air Roasting negates the burning effect of the conductive heat from abig heavy metal drum roaster,  By not buring the outter shell on a big hot steel drum, to cook to the center, we impart less bitterness in the cup.
    -  Micro Batch roasting means as the roaster I have complete immediate control of every roast.  There is no super hot giant metal drum that changes temp slowly.  I can change the tempof the hot air stream in real time.  Also cooling small batches within 1 minute means I can stop the roast exactly where I want it.  With larger batches, you can get close, but have less control.