If you’re the person responsible for ordering your office’s weekly shop, you’ll know it’s a minefield of ‘I need oat/cashew/soy milk’ and ‘I don’t like that brand’ and ‘can I make a tiny request..?’. So it’s tempting to simplify the process as much as possible, and just add whatever ground coffee comes up first to the cart. We get it.

But we’ve got some pretty strong opinions when it comes to coffee (as you might have noticed). And we think it’s important you know what exactly our problem with basic bags of supermarket blends is. It comes down to our favourite phrase - single origin. It means that your coffee came from just one country, one region and sometimes even one farm.

That’s the case for pretty much all Pact Coffee… but not for supermarket blends, which tend to have any old beans from around the world chucked in there. Here’s why that’s an issue:

• Mixed origin coffee is… often untraceable

If the coffee you’re buying is a mix of beans from all over the world, from Colombia to Ethiopia, then you can’t pin down where it’s been grown. You also can’t know who has grown it, or whether they’ve been paid a fair price. We think that’s an issue.

Pact works direct with farmer, so we always know who we’re buying coffee from and what impact we’re having by doing so - so we know no-one is getting a bad deal.

• Mixed origin coffee is… a mishmash of uncomplimentary flavours

Not all coffee is created equal. While Brazilian beans are creamy and chocolatey, Ethiopian coffee can be more like a floral tea - both delicious, but in very different ways! Supermarket blends can include widely varying types of coffee all mixed in together - so you’re losing what makes each origin distinctive!

Pact considers the origin and variety of each coffee carefully, roasting the coffee differently to bring out the unique flavour notes and mouthfeel. We recognise coffees from different origins are just that - different. So they should be treated as such.

• Mixed origin coffee is… often masking bad beans

There’s a reason why a lot of people associate coffee with being bitter. Supermarket blends are roasted incredibly dark, in order to make the taste uniform and mask any issues with the beans. Defect counts are high, including anything from insect damage to under or overripe crops.

Pact Coffee is specialty grade, which partly means that defect counts have to be extremely low. Our beans have few to no problems, are perfectly ripe and, because of that, can be roasted properly to bring out their natural flavours.