You may be nostalgic about the hours you used to spend in cafes, but true coffee lovers haven’t let indoor dining restrictions keep them from their favorite beverage. At-home coffee consumption has surged this year, and NYC-based coffee subscription service Trade has seen a boost in business due to this demand.
Now Trade is raising capital to grow its audience even further. On Tuesday, Trade announced that it raised $9 million in a funding round led by Madrona. The company hopes to use this money to develop more support tools for roasters and attract more customers.
Trade partners with coffee roasters from across the country, and then offers a direct-to-consumer coffee subscription to customers to supply them with a diverse selection of over 400 kinds of artisanal coffee.
The company launched in 2018, and since then it has already shipped over one million bags of coffee. Trade has seen its number of subscribers more than triple over the past few months, while maintaining 90 percent retention after customers’ first orders. Because of this, Trade expects to ship another one million bags of coffee in the next six months.
Trade has also benefited from this year’s boost to direct-to-consumer brands, as more people turn to online shopping and subscription services for their everyday needs. In addition to this, coffee roasters are using Trade to help sell their beans during a time when wholesale orders to cafes have slowed down.
Trade CEO Mike Lackman believes the company’s curated selection of coffees, its personalization technology and its modern supply chain will help “propel” the at-home category to grab a larger share of the massive United States coffee market.
“Our customers are passionate about good coffee, but struggle to find different brands and specialty coffees that meet their expectations for taste, quality and sourcing,” Lackman said in a statement. “Our brand and platform that connects coffee drinkers to roasters solves that problem.”
