Drop Coffee Packaging 

The era of boxes is closed, and we are entering a new, colourful chapter for Drop Coffee.

For me, this change is about much more than moving from a box to a bag. It is about creating packaging that reflects who we are today, the coffees we buy and roast, the producers we work with, and the way I see coffee.

We work from the farm to the final cup. Our work with producers is deeply focused on terroir, quality and the unique character of each coffee. I wanted our packaging to reflect the raw coffee more, and to show more of the diversity that exists in coffee and in the people who produce it.

At the same time, I wanted the packaging to show more of us. Drop Coffee is an independent, family-owned business. Coffee production and coffee quality are serious to me, but Steve and I met through our love of coffee, and we built Drop because we thought coffee was fun.

I wanted to create something that could hold all of those things at once: quality and craftsmanship, beauty and curiosity, seriousness and fun.

When I started the design project with Simon Ålander, who also worked with us on our previous box, I had a very simple wish. I wanted to create a product that I would genuinely love to have on my own kitchen counter.

I wanted something more colourful, more alive and more personal. Something that could almost feel like wallpaper, something you might look at on a grey day and feel a little happier. Something that, on an ordinary day, simply makes you smile.

The new packaging is also a reflection of my own roots and my view of coffee as craftsmanship. I grew up with a strong appreciation for quality, food and making things well. My roots are in Dalarna, while Mariatorget in Stockholm has given Drop Coffee courage, community and some of the best regulars we could ask for.

Drop Coffee is 17 years old as I write this. I wanted the new packaging to feel modern today, but also to be something that could last for many decades, a design where you can still recognise the same quality many years from now.

Just like when we bought our 25-kilo custom-made Diedrich roaster, this is about bringing together industrial design and craft.

But this time, I wanted more colour. More life. And more of a feminine expression.

Drop Coffee has strong Nordic roots, but just like every person, every coffee cherry and every flower has its own unique expression, we believe our coffees can have their own colours, shapes and personalities too.

For me, coffee is craft. Coffee is quality. And coffee is art.

This new packaging is our way of bringing all of that together.

Refelct who We Are

We do not just want to make pretty packaging. We want the packaging to feel like Drop Coffee, who we are today and what we have always cared about.

At Drop Coffee, we work from the farm to the final cup. Raw coffee is key to everything we do. Since the beginning, we have roasted all our coffees light, without blends, with the aim of highlighting each coffee at its best and letting its unique character shine through.

We buy coffees that score 87 points and above, but a score alone does not tell the whole story. Every coffee is different. Varietal, terroir, climate, soil, growing conditions and the way the coffee is produced all shape what we eventually taste in the cup.

That diversity is something I want to celebrate more.

The coffees we work with come from different producers, countries and growing environments, and each one has its own expression. Rather than making every coffee fit the same visual language, I wanted the new packaging to help communicate that individuality.

This is also part of who we are as an independent, family-owned business. We are small enough to work closely with the producers we buy from, and curious enough to keep learning, experimenting and questioning how things can be done.

For us, quality is not a single moment in the process. It is the whole journey, from the producer growing and harvesting the coffee, to the green coffee arriving at our roastery, to the way we roast it, and finally to the person brewing and drinking it.

The new packaging is designed to reflect that journey, while giving each coffee room to show its own character.

Coffee in Colour

Since 2017, we have more formally included the multisensory perception of flavour in the way we communicate about coffee, particularly through vision and touch.

I taste coffee in colours.

For a long time, colour has been part of how we describe the taste profiles of our coffees, both in the café and online. For me, colour is not simply decoration. It is another way of communicating what a coffee might feel and taste like.

We have also explored how other sensory elements can influence our experience of coffee. We have made cups in different weights, colours and shapes, choosing forms that we believe can strengthen the fruity, bright flavours we often look for in both filter coffee and espresso.

This way of thinking has also been shaped by our work with dr. Fabiana Carvalho and her research into multisensory perception. Her research helped us understand more about how what we see, touch and feel can influence how we experience flavour.

We worked with Fabiana while helping Matt Winton compete for Drop Coffee at the World Barista Championship in 2018, and I have also explored how groups of roasters perceive our coffees in relation to different colours, with her help.

Over the years, this has become an increasingly natural part of how we think about coffee at Drop.

Coffee is not experienced through taste alone. The way a coffee looks, the cup we drink it from, the weight in our hand and even the colours around us can all become part of the experience.

This is one of the reasons colour has become such an important part of the Drop Coffee identity, and why it felt natural for colour to play such a big role in the new packaging.

Three Categories

All of this work with the multisensory perception of flavour led us to divide our coffees into three flavour categories in 2018.

We introduced the categories on our filter coffee menu at the café and on our price lists as a way of helping people understand the different expressions they can find in our coffees.

The three categories are Comfortable, Curious and Adventurous.

All our coffees are light roasted, and we only buy coffees that score 87 points and above. But within that quality level, coffees can taste remarkably different.

Varietal, terroir and the way a coffee is grown and produced all contribute to its character. Some coffees are familiar and comforting, while others might be more surprising, complex or unexpected.

The three categories are a way of describing these different experiences.

Comfortable coffees are familiar, balanced and easy to return to.
Curious coffees invite you to explore something a little different.
Adventurous coffees are expressive, distinctive and perhaps more unexpected.

The categories are not about ranking the coffees. They are about recognising that people experience coffee differently, and that there is a place for many different expressions of high-quality coffee.

With the new packaging, we wanted to make these categories more visible.

The three 250 g bag designs use different colours, patterns and shapes to represent the character of each category. The visual language gives us a way to communicate something about the coffee before you even open the bag.

This is where our work with colour, flavour and multisensory perception comes together with the new packaging.

From Dalarna to the Packaging

The patterns and shapes in the new packaging have their heritage in Dalarna, where I have my roots.

We found inspiration through the DigitaltMuseum, looking at traditional patterns and forms from the region and exploring how they could be translated into something new.

I wanted to bring something of my own heritage into the packaging, together with the way I have always viewed food and coffee: as craftsmanship, with a strong focus on quality and attention to detail.

Dalarna is part of that heritage. At the same time, Drop Coffee has been shaped by Stockholm. Mariatorget has given us courage, community and some of the best regulars we could ask for. These different influences are part of who we are.

When I started the design project with Simon Ålander, who also worked with us on our previous box, I wanted to explore what happens when traditional patterns meet contemporary industrial design.

Just like when we bought our 25-kilo custom-made Diedrich roaster, I think there is something special in bringing together industrial design and craftsmanship.

This time, however, I wanted the result to be more colourful, more alive and more feminine.

The patterns and shapes we found in Dalarna became a starting point rather than something to reproduce literally. We translated them into a visual language for the three coffee categories, using colours that reflect the different expressions we find in the coffees themselves.

In this way, the packaging connects several parts of Drop Coffee: my roots in Dalarna, our Nordic identity, our appreciation of craftsmanship and design, and our curiosity about coffee.

Something old becomes something new, while still feeling like Drop.

The comfortable bag

The Courious Bag 

The Adventurous Bag 

 

Why a Bag?

Packaging and Materials

Alongside the design process, we also started investigating different materials and options for coffee packaging.

Our main goal was to minimise the environmental impact of our packaging while maximising recyclability.

At the beginning of this journey, in 2022, we took the time to understand how packaging is handled and recycled in Sweden. We also became members of Trade Association Packaging Producer Responsibility (NPA), contributing to the system for collecting and recycling the packaging materials we place on the Swedish market.

As we looked into different alternatives, we quickly realised that avoiding plastic altogether would be difficult, even though that was our original goal.

We investigated biodegradable and home-compostable materials as alternatives to plastic. However, we found that these materials were not compatible with how most Swedish households currently dispose of their waste. In practice, many of these bags would end up being incinerated rather than composted.

Instead, we focused on finding the most recyclable material available to us.

This led us to mono-material plastic. By using a single type of plastic in the coffee packaging, we can make the material easier to recycle into new plastic products, rather than combining several different materials that can be more difficult to separate and may instead be incinerated for energy recovery.

At the café, we have also reduced almost all plastic by now, so the new packaging represents a significant change from what we used before.

We know that packaging materials continue to develop, and we hope that better alternatives will become available. If and when materials that better meet our goals become viable, we will adapt our packaging again.

For us, this is not about finding a perfect material once and for all. It is about understanding the systems we are part of, making informed choices with the options available to us, and continuing to improve.

The New Coffee Portfolio

Three bags, three categories, one Drop Coffee

With the new packaging, we are introducing three versions of our 250 g bags, each representing one of our three coffee categories: Comfortable, Curious and Adventurous.

The patterns and colours are connected to the character of the coffees within each category. They are a visual way of helping you understand what you might find inside the bag, before you even brew the coffee.

The three designs will be used across our coffee portfolio, so the packaging becomes a simple way to navigate the different coffees we offer.

At the same time, each individual coffee remains unique.

The producer, origin, varietal, processing method and the character of the coffee are still at the centre. The category is simply another way of helping us communicate what makes each coffee special.

We wanted the full portfolio to feel connected, but not uniform. The bags belong together as Drop Coffee, while the different colours and patterns give each category its own personality.

This is where everything comes together: our coffees, our categories, our work with colour and flavour, our Nordic roots and our love of craftsmanship and design.

Three categories. Many different coffees. One Drop Coffee.

New 500g bag 

New 1000g bag 

A New Chapter

Drop Coffee is 17 years old as I write this.

I wanted the new packaging to feel modern today, but also to be something that can last for many decades. Something where, years from now, you can still recognise the same quality and care that we put into it today.

We have always believed that coffee can be serious without taking itself too seriously.

Coffee production and coffee quality are incredibly important to us. But coffee has also brought so much joy into our lives. It is how Steve and I met. It is what brought us to Drop Coffee, and it is what continues to make us curious every day.

That is what I hope you can feel in the new packaging.

The craftsmanship. The quality. The producers and the coffees. My roots in Dalarna. Our Nordic heritage. But also the colour, curiosity, beauty and fun that make coffee such a wonderful thing to work with.

Just like every coffee cherry, every flower and every person has its own unique expression, I believe Drop Coffee should have one too.

And coffee is art to me, and to us at Drop Coffee.

Thank you for reading, for drinking our coffee, and for staying a little adventurous with us.

/Joanna Alm Leighton
Managing Director, Drop Coffee