Welcome Email Sequence

Hey [First Name],

Marcus here — I roast all the coffee at Copper Kettle, and I'm the one who'll be filling up your inbox over the next couple of weeks. Just wanted to say welcome properly.

I started Copper Kettle six years ago in a garage with a 1-kilo sample roaster, a notepad full of flavor descriptions that made no sense to anyone but me, and an embarrassingly large collection of coffee from around the world that I'd been collecting since my twenties.

The garage is gone. The notepad is still going.

What I wanted then is the same thing I want now: to roast coffee that actually tastes like the place it came from. Not every bag has to be a revelation. But every bag should taste like someone cared how it was made — from the farmer who grew it to the person who poured it.

That's the whole pitch.

Over the next few emails, I'll share what we're currently roasting and why I chose it, a bit about how we think about sourcing, and what it actually means to get coffee that was roasted last week instead of last month. (It's a bigger difference than you'd think.)

No daily deals. No "limited time offer" subject lines. Just honest notes about coffee, a few times a month, from someone who genuinely thinks about this stuff too much.

If you have a question, a brewing problem, or you just want to tell me you've been drinking bad office coffee for years and you're ready to make a change — reply to this email. I read every one.

Thanks for being here.

Marcus
Head Roaster & Founder, Copper Kettle Coffee
223 Riverside Ave, if you ever want to stop by

Hey [First Name],

I want to tell you about the coffee we're roasting right now.

It's a natural-process Guji from the Shakisso zone in southern Ethiopia — and the reason I almost passed on it is the same reason I ended up buying the whole lot.

When I first cupped it back in January, it was almost too fruity. Ripe strawberry, dark cherry, a hint of something almost wine-like. My first instinct was that it would polarize people. Some would love it. Some would taste it and think something had gone wrong with their bag.

I kept going back to it. Three cupping sessions over two days.

The thing about a natural-process Ethiopian coffee — where the cherry fruit dries around the bean before processing — is that it captures something you simply can't manufacture. The terroir of the region, the specific microorganisms in that dry air at altitude, the choices the farmer made about how long to leave the cherries on the raised drying beds.

Mekdes Lemma, who runs the washing station in Shakisso, has been farming this land for 22 years. She farms heirloom Jimma cultivars — indigenous varieties that have never been modified for yield or disease resistance. They produce less. They taste like nothing else.

I bought the lot.

At a medium-light roast, the strawberry note mellows into something more like raspberry jam, and a clean chocolate finish comes through at the end. It's a morning coffee, but a considered one.

If you try it, I'd genuinely love to know what you think.

Marcus

P.S. We only have 90 bags of this lot. When it's gone, we move to the next one. That's just how small-batch sourcing works — and honestly, it's part of what makes it worth paying attention to.

Hey [First Name],

There's a corner table at the roastery where the same three people sit every Tuesday morning.

They've been coming in since we opened. They know which single-origins are coming before I announce them, because they've been paying attention. One of them — a retired schoolteacher named Pat — has a running theory about the correlation between Ethiopian altitude and acidity that I'm not sure is scientifically rigorous but is more thoughtful than most things I've read.

I think about Pat's table when I'm deciding what to source next.

Copper Kettle exists because of people who care about what's in their cup and want to support the farms and farmers behind it. Not out of obligation — just because it matters to them, the way well-made things matter. Every bag we sell represents a direct relationship: with a specific farm, a specific harvest, a specific set of hands that did the work.

When you buy from us, some of your money goes back to origin through the premium we pay above commodity pricing. That's not marketing language — it's how we've sourced since day one.

The Copper Kettle Subscription

If you've enjoyed what you've tried so far — or you're ready to make a deal with yourself to stop drinking mediocre coffee — our subscription was made for you.

Subscribers get first access to limited lots. And you'll always get coffee roasted within the week.

And if you're ever in the neighborhood on a Tuesday morning — come find Pat's table. They're easy to spot: they'll be the ones arguing about altitude.

Thanks for being part of this.

Marcus
Copper Kettle Coffee
223 Riverside Ave · copperkettlecoffee.com