Buying coffee on Tapper Brews

Coffee roasted near you, ground the way you brew it, delivered the same day. Three questions stand between you and a bag, and this is what each of them is for.

1. Where you are

   We ask for a pincode first because the answer changes the shop. You are shown the roasters who can actually reach you, not a national catalogue with most of it unavailable at the checkout.

   If we have guessed your location rather than been told it, the page says so and offers to be corrected. A guess presented as a fact is how somebody who ordered once from the office gets shown office roasters at home.

2. Reading a coffee

   Every card opens with a photo and how many days ago the coffee was roasted. Then come two marks — whether it is best with milk or best black, and how strong it tastes — then its name and roast, and who roasted it.

   Under those are three short lines: what it tastes of, and whether anything was added to it, such as a flavour or chicory; how much of the bag is coffee; and the bean — its species, where it grew and how it was processed. The bean was settled at the farm, long before anybody roasted it. The roast and the grind you choose are the rest of it — a smaller share than most people expect, and the only share anybody could still change.

   A card never says "N/A". If a roaster did not record something, the card simply does not mention it — so a shorter card is a quieter roaster, not a worse coffee.

3. Why coffee has a date on it

   Every bag says when it was roasted and how long the roaster is happy for it to be sold. That is a roast date, not an expiry date: coffee does not go off, it goes flat.

   Very fresh coffee — two or three days — still has gas in it and can brew unevenly. A week to ten days is usually the sweet spot. A roast comes off sale on its own once it passes the window its roaster set, so nothing stale is ever offered to you.

4. The one question to get right

   We grind to order, which means we grind once and cannot undo it. So the grind is named after the equipment rather than the particle size: pick the thing you own — the steel filter, the cafetière, the moka pot — and we will set the grinder for it.

   If you own a grinder, choose whole beans. Coffee ground this morning and brewed tomorrow is better than coffee ground for you last week, and it is the single biggest improvement available to most people.

   Not sure which you have, or what to do with it once it arrives? The brewing guide has a recipe for each one — and opened from a coffee, it adjusts itself to that roast.

5. How much to buy

   Pack sizes and their prices are each roaster's own, and the card shows every size that roast is sold in rather than only the cheapest way in.

   Buy for a few weeks rather than a few months. Ground coffee is past its best long before a large bag is finished, which is most of why supermarket coffee tastes the way it does.

6. Checking out

   Sign in with your phone number — a code, not a password. Addresses you have used before are saved, so the second order is a couple of taps.

   The delivery fee is worked out from how far the roaster is from you and shown before you pay. Orders over a certain size, and rewards you have earned, can take it to nothing.

7. Following it

   You get a tracking link. The roaster accepts the order, roasts or weighs it out, packs it and marks it ready; a rider collects it and brings it to you. Each step is real — it is the roaster pressing a button, not a timer.

   The rider will ask you for a short code at the door. That is what confirms the handover, and it is why nobody else can collect your order.

8. If something is wrong

   If a roaster cannot make your order, or nobody accepts it in time, it is cancelled and refunded in full — you do not have to ask. Refunds go back to the card or account you paid from. Most refunds arrive within minutes. Some banks take 5 to 7 working days to show them.

   You cannot cancel the moment you change your mind — the roaster may already be grinding for you. If an order stalls, your order page will offer you a way out. Otherwise call the roastery — their number is on that page — and they will sort it out with us. The cancellation and refund policy is the version that counts.

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