secret business truth

it's a somewhat secret thing to admit, but there are some customers that businesses do not want. customers who take up too much time and cost you money, or are dishonest, hateful, steal from you -- you have to circumvent them. you don't get pleasure from it, but you do ban them. businesses pretend to want all customers but they secretly are trying to distance their business from customers who cost them money.

rest assured, we want 99.999% of our customers. in 11 years, we banned 40 customers out of 50,000+   most humans are good people. and when a good person has a problem, we have no problem helping them. when a mentally disabled thief pretends to have a problem and we try to help them, they have a temper tantrum.

so apparently the banned customers got together this week and had a therapeutic session on reddit using lots of vulgarity, hate speech, and name calling, honestly acting like they were all back in 3rd grade, and then they all felt better. and i'm glad they feel better now! but they're still banned. haters are gonna hate. the more success you have, the more people start hating you for your success. there's almost something american about hating success. everyone loves to hate on the winners. anyway, there's a reason the club of banned customers are the .0002% of customers that we don't let order from us anymore. the excessive vulgarity and name calling and lies are kind of a clue as to what type of people they are, which is mostly how they got banned in the first place. the banned happy mug club apparently hoped that we would go out of business because of this week's venting session, and it certainly did get us a lot of attention, but alas, our sales for the week are considerably up. not an all time record week, but well above average! lots of first time customers and tons of traffic on the site and we've been burning the candle on both ends keeping up with orders -- as they say, all publicity is good publicity. amidst the flood of posts from anonymous people vowing they would no longer subscribe to our coffee subscription, we lost exactly 4 subscribers (but gained 30 within a couple of days). No hard feelings to those 4! Do what you think is right! When you're ready to come back to happy mug, we will welcome you back in and give you amazing coffees at 40% cheaper than other roasting companies. Supportive emails have poured in from our regular customers giving us a head's up about the venting session and also letting us know they knew it was all slanderous lies and exaggerations and wishing we would defend ourselves. (truths aren't that hard to discern for the average person though. our stance is to avoid drama and negative people and just stay out of it. we let conversations about us stay organic and we don't interfere). but still, thanks for sending love our way! and to be honest, i'd be mad too if i stole from one of my favorite companies and got banned because of it and wasn't allowed to order from them anymore. i'd probably want to vent and then feel better for a minute but still secretly be mad at myself for stealing from them and getting caught.

the funny part of it is that the only reason these people even knew they got banned is because after they tried to steal from us and swore at us and vowed to never do business with us again, they did try to order again. and we cancelled their order. and that made them absolutely furious.

bottom line: if you steal from us, we're gonna call you out. we're gonna report you to your bank, we're going to report you to fraud apps, we're going to come after you. online fraud hit 2.7 billion dollars this year and i have no patience for any of that. if we let you steal from us, our honest customers would have to pay more. that's just not okay. if you steal from us, we will report you and prosecute you. if it hurts your feelings and makes you feel upset, i mean, maybe stop stealing. or just steal from someone else, because we aren't going to sit back and do nothing. you chose the wrong company to try to steal from. as to our honest customers, no worries. we've got you. we're honest too.

for what its worth, we love 99.999% of you because you're making the world a better place. we couldn't do this without you. you're letting us expand the network of passionate farmers who are becoming rich because of you. through us, you're sending kids in third world countries to better schools, you're building them water wells, you're building hospitals. not only that, but here in the states you're letting us educate people about specialty coffee. you're letting us employ people in our rural community at well above-average wages. you're letting us donate and support non profits in our community. you're letting us come to a job where we get to roast and drink amazing coffees and then share them with you. we love you so much. we have the best job in the world because of you. come visit whenever you want so we can have a mug of coffee with you and give you a hug and show you pictures of all the differences you're making to humans worldwide (give us a head's up first though because we are BUSY).

our lease is up at the end of the month and won't be renewed (unless its a bluff!), so we probably will be out of operation for a bit next month, but we are scrambling to limit the disruptions. we found a place that we can move into and it needs a little bit of work but we shouldn't be down for too long. we will be moving for the fourth time -- we've been growing 40% a year and it's amazing.  the timing is frustratingly short so when we do go dark next month, don't worry, we're going to come back stronger than ever once we get set back up. our new home is a beautiful clean warehouse with high ceilings and lots of room for upgrades and growth and proper zoning. we thank you for your business, we thank you for believing in the mission. our business model has allowed us to disrupt the specialty coffee industry -- paying farmers super high prices and selling you their coffee at razor thin margins -- focusing on high volume instead of high profit -- with coffee that literally tastes better than competitors who charge you so much more and then pretend it's all going to farmers. it makes them look greedy when we split a coffee arrival with them (Onyx) and we sell it for half the price that they do (and roast it better and ship it faster). our low pricepoint is bringing in customers who otherwise couldn't afford specialty coffee -- which in turn expands the specialty coffee market -- which is good for everyone! our commitment to extremely fast turnaround and dependability means you can count on us. we will get your order out the door same day no matter what. tornadoes, blizzards, floods, nah, we don't miss a beat. no excuses. we are in pain, exhausted, grumpy, fiercely roasting and packing your coffee and making sure it gets shipped out. you have all kinds of struggles and stresses and challenges, and our coffee should help you, not stress you out.  the things we have overcome to get orders out the door is worthy of a book when i retire and have time to write it. we've got your back.

we are artists here, we are crazy passionate, dedicating our lives to perfecting the art of coffee. you'll just have to forgive us for being crazy, it's part of the situation. the coffee beans we send you are from passionate farmers and talented importers, then through countless hours that we spend tasting through samples, then roasting the best ones multiple times until we perfect the roast, then replicating that roast over and over and over sitting there each and every day nailing each roast within a couple of seconds.  every.single.day -- so it's hot off the roaster the same day that you order it and shipped immediately. we work 18 hour days, we work weekends, we work holidays, we absolutely have your back. forgive us if you come out swinging when you say you threw it away without tasting it and we swing back saying you are wasteful. we and many others poured our heart and lives into that piece of art and it hurts that you didn't give it a chance. if you do something like that, at least just try to ease us into what happened, don't come out swinging. coffee is our passion, our livelihood. we are sending you our art and we don't send it if we don't pour our emotions into it.

but to be honest we are having fun. your support allows us to do this every day and the momentum is growing. 1400 pounds a day. don't worry about the simple few who swear every other word talking smack about us. they are in a rough chapter of their life, but we love you, and we're all on the same team. let us respect each other as humans trying to do the right thing to other humans. we respect your differences and for what its worth, i sure do love a good mug of coffee.