Disclosure Statement: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
The purpose of this post is not to name all names. Rather it is to share my perspective on simplifying the task when there are so many great brands to choose from. I have other posts where I discuss many of the best brands in detail, those will probably be more helpful if I first explain how I evaluate the brands.
The end result I am after with this post is arriving at a list that few would argue with, not because it’s perfect but rather, because I’m just passing along what a large group of very important persons have already determined (satisfied buyers).
Before we Evaluate the Best Gourmet Coffee Brands
Though Gourmet Coffee beans are grown in very particular places, there are no limits to where the best brands can be found. That might sound a bit odd at initially, so perhaps it’s best to look at the crude oil industry first to better explain what I’m referring to (otherwise known as the petroleum industry). Crude oil wells and refineries are usually in a limited number of areas geographically compared to where gasoline stations can be found in the world.
I used the crude oil industry as an example because in addition to the similarities mentioned above, it’s the one that most closely compares to coffee in scale (crude oil and coffee are the number 1 and 2 industries worldwide measured monetarily by consumption).
Gasoline is “everywhere,” so is coffee in general, and so is gourmet coffee (to a lesser extent) these days . More specifically as it relates to gourmet coffee, it can be found all over the world as a finished product beyond the harvesting phase (either as green coffee beans, roasted coffee beans, or ground coffee). Brands located in places besides where gourmet coffee beans are grown simply import the coffee, process and package the coffee in a variety of ways, and finally make the finished product available to the end consumer.
For example, there are quite a few American gourmet coffee brands in the US that import the coffee beans from the three main regions where they are grown (most generally Africa / Middle East, Asia, and various places in the Americas / the Caribbean where the proper conditions exist to grow Arabica beans). They fall into two general categories. Those that have invested in overseas farms and have the beans shipped to them from their own farms, and those that import the coffee from independent farms or coops in other countries.
What Exactly Defines the Best?
Where to even begin? My starting point is determined after asking myself a series of questions. The best according to whom? The best-selling? The best known? The best coffee beans? The best quality (even this can be defined in a number of ways)? The best flavor?
As you see, it’s nearly impossible to authoritatively assert that there is an absolute best or to come up with say a definitive top 10 (or some other number).
What I’m interested in doing first is demonstrating how to combine some of the things mentioned above to narrow down the many possibilities in the most objective way possible.
Evaluating The Best American Gourmet Coffee Brands
Because I want to focus on a more manageable number of potential brands of gourmet coffee, I’m going to be evaluating only American brands here. In other posts I cover international brands.
Speaking of American, there is one particular enormous online retailer that I have in mind to further narrow down the list of potential brands. Let’s face it, Amazon is huge. So huge in fact that I have two separate lists: the best American brands available on Amazon, and the best American brands available elsewhere.
As you’ll see dealing with Amazon separately makes sense because the data is easily accessible, and it just happens to be a place where very large quantities of American gourmet coffee is sold.
The Best American Brands Available on Amazon
The approach that I’ll be discussing here is far more general than what I use in the post dedicated exclusively to Amazon. In that post I look at additional specifics like:
- the source of the coffee beans (brands that own farms versus those that import from independent farmers / coops)
- type of entity (generic / private label versus officially branded)
- bean characteristics (types of Arabica beans, country of origin, etc.)
- flavor (natural versus artificial, etc.)
- quality (cultivation, quality control / quality assurance, etc.)
In the section above explaining the possible ways of defining what is meant by “best,” I mentioned a fairly simple and objective way to narrow down all of the possible brands into a more manageable list of “finalists.”
By objective I mean “let the numbers speak for themselves.” In other words, I’m not looking at what a panel of worldwide experts might conclude in somewhat subjective terms (based on nuances similar to what wine experts use). Here are the three measures I’m using to evaluate demand, availability of popular brands, and customer satisfaction :
- The coffees must sell on average at least once daily
- The coffees must have an in-stock rate of at least 90% over the past 12 months
- The coffees must be among the best in terms of customer satisfaction
These address the most objective of the questions I had asked earlier (the ones that address “best-selling, popular but also available at least close to year round, according to whom”). Of these the least objective is customer satisfaction, but it is objective enough. Generally Amazon product reviews aren’t complicated and full of deep introspection regarding experiences with the products. They’re more along the lines of “I’m happy, tastes great, would buy again,” etc.
I consider the minimum demand to be pretty self-explanatory, but perhaps the in-stock rate isn’t. When people are ready to buy, they generally only pay attention to what’s in stock. If something is out of stock, it’s there but it isn’t in a sense. What’s the point of highlighting a brand among the best known if it’s not available for considerable stretches throughout the year? That’s the reasoning.
There is also a bit of overlap among all three measures. For example, it could be argued that if a coffee sells well it is also well-known. That, from my perspective, applies more to official brands than it does to generic / private label coffee.
This list is more of a preview than anything else (as I had mentioned earlier, the post devoted to Amazon has all of the information). According to the criteria mentioned above, here are some of the best gourmet coffee brands available on Amazon (in no particular order, you guessed correctly that the ordered lists are in the Amazon only post):
- Koffee Kult Gourmet Coffee
- Gold Company Gourmet Coffee (also known as Hawaiian Gold)
- Java Planet Gourmet Coffee
- Stone Street Gourmet Coffee
- Manatee Gourmet Coffee
- Organo Gold Gourmet Coffee
- Rosso Caffe Gourmet Coffee
- White Gourmet Coffee
- Jo Gourmet Coffee
- Smart Sips Gourmet Coffee
If only identifying top gourmet coffee brands could be this simple outside the world of Amazon …