Need Some Direction When Buying Coffee Online?
There are reasons why people like to get in their car and head off to the local store to buy things like coffee, but there are other tangible reasons that some people are drawn to the internet to buy specialty coffee.
CoffeeResearch.org has a list of steps to take when purchasing coffee and some of those steps involve being physically near the coffee beans.
“Before you buy green coffee beans, smell them,” the Web site states. “Ferment and smoke damage can be easily detected at this point, whereas they might be more subtle when roasted.
“Pick up the green coffee beans. How do they feel?” it states. “If they feel glass-like and fragile, they have been over dried or dried at too high of a temperature. If they are pliable, they have not been dried sufficiently and should be rejected since mold growth at this point is unavoidable.”
Yet, even the ability to see, smell and touch the beans, is not enough to disregard the benefits of getting coffee online even if it’s simply a time-saving measure for consumers.
Once a consumer purchases a batch of coffee from an online vendor, they can choose to continue to use them with the knowledge that the beans from vendors are generally from the same farms. That means that quality can be judged by previous purchases.
Another benefit of buying online is to ensure the consumer receives the freshest crop. As many people know, items in grocery stores and other stores can be kept shelf-sitting for some time and that’s after the beans traveled from farm to store.
Online shopping can cut out the shelf-sitting time at the store so that the beans can go straight from farm to the consumer’s home.
“Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers generally have items shipped from distributors to regional warehouses where they are distributed to individual stores before reaching customer homes,” Carnegie Mellon University stated in a press release.
Although confidence in quality gained as a regular customer and freshness are two benefits of online shopping for coffee, another benefit fits into the environmentally friendly trend that’s swept the nation.
A Carnegie Mellon University study determined that shopping online in general is a greener choice to make. Apparently, online shopping requires 35 percent less energy use and reduces emissions of carbon dioxide.
“Consumers are looking for ways to live a more environmentally conscious lifestyle, whether that be recycling at home, reducing paper and packaging consumption or purchasing products that have less impact on our natural resources,” Buy.com CEO and President Neel Grover stated in the Carnegie Mellon press release.