"People were always suggesting we do a Texas-themed coffee, and I always liked the idea. But I knew that if we developed a coffee, it needed to be different somehow.
We knew who we wanted to work with: Big Bend Coffee Roasters, in Marfa. Their founder, Joe, impressed me so much the first day we met. I don’t know too much about coffee, other than I love it. But Joe talked about chemistry, and roasting processes, and the various growing methods of the different regions across the world. He’d been there, on the plantations in Mexico and everywhere else, learning about the trade. It was obvious he knew what he was talking about.
And just as important as his expertise, Joe was interested in collaborating with us on a coffee. He gave us the green light, and then for two years . . . nothing really happened. We just never got going with a design for a coffee bag. Or rather, I just never got going with anything we’d try. Design after design, I wasn’t feeling it (even though, by any objective measure, they were great designs).
Things changed when I began working on the Pure Pecan Oil product. I’d found these beautiful French-made aluminum bottles, sturdy and with a food safe interior coating. But for various reasons, we didn’t think it was the best packaging for the pecan oil product. So, I had a great bottle, but nothing to put in it.
Around the same time, I was scooping coffee grounds out of a bag one morning and as usual, I clipped the side of the bag on the way out and grounds spilled all over the counter. I thought to myself, ‘It’d be so much better if I could just pour it.' And thus, I’d found my use for the aluminum bottles: Ground coffee. I Googled around, and no one was putting coffee grounds in a bottle, apparently. The novelty of an idea is an important criterion in my product development, so that was pretty much the deciding factor. We were going to bottle our coffee grounds.
We hired Jon Schubert to do the label. He did two versions, and I picked the lesser of the two, for reasons I can’t entirely explain. But at the 11th hour, when the labels were already being prototyped at the pewter label company, I came to my senses. If there’s a more beautiful coffee package in the world, I haven’t seen it." - vf