Ange Besant, founder of Deadly Sin Coffee Co, talks starting up a coffee brand during the pandemic and how six months later her product is being used as an incentive by employers to woo staff working from home back into the corporate office.

What does your business do?

Deadly Sin Coffee Co is a coffee brewing business which is New Zealand’s strongest coffee. We have online direct to customers retail channel and also wholesale. We have coffee beans which are freshly ground and we do plunger coffee, espresso, filter coffee, and also have a range of merchandise of T-shirts and hoodies and caps, key rings, stickers and keep cups.

Our roaster sources our beans from Panama and Brazil and we worked closely with the roaster to create our particular blend. He roasts the beans and then they get delivered to us then we grind and package the beans, and send them out. We’re currently in conversations with a couple of different cafes to use our product, which is the next step for our business which is currently sold online.

What was the motivation for starting it?

We launched the business in November last year, and it was the start of lockdown when we were all working from home when the idea came to me. I love my coffee and I realised working from home that I couldn’t go to my favourite cafe and get the coffee I loved and all the coffee I was buying elsewhere just wasn’t hitting the spot. I also really like going to the gym and always have a shot of coffee before I go and the idea of the business was sparked by the thought of “Gosh I wonder if there is a super strong coffee out there [that I could make from home].” I started researching and I realised there wasn’t; nobody was doing this super strong coffee that still had a smooth taste to it, so it was born from a gap in the market.

How big is your team?

At the moment there are eight of us, four fulltime, the rest are on contract.

How was your business funded?

We funded it originally through our own savings, and having worked for many years I had money I wanted to invest in. We’ve invested heavily into the business itself and getting the blend right, getting stock and merchandise and packaging. Hard to put a figure on the early investment to start but approximately $20,000.

How are you finding running the business and what challenges have you had to overcome?

The challenge which has ended up being really beneficial was learning all of the systems that help to run a small business; as we’re an online business, it has been learning the likes of Shopify and others, and getting my head around how these systems work to be able to run a well-oiled online store. For me that was quite a big challenge but now that we’ve got all the systems running it incredible the support and online tutorials you can use.

What are your long-term plans for the business?

I want my coffee to become a brand that people have in their homes, in their work, something that is loved and they have easy access to, that becomes a way of life almost. There’s thousands of coffee labels out there, but we don’t want to be one of them, we want to be niche market and something different which is why we placed ourselves as New Zealand’s strongest and smoothest coffee.

We’re talking to cafes at the moment and we want to have this available in cafes as well as push more into the corporate office supply-side and offer staff discounts. We do want to get more hospitality customers on board. Most of businesses we have talked to are excited by the product; a) because it is something new and b) because there has been a lot of talk about the prices of coffee – I went and bought a coffee the other day and it was $8.50 and I just about fell off my chair, and so with our prices, we’re definitely not cheap but we’re not expensive so we believe we can bring a good offering to cafes that can give a bit of competitiveness in the market. A 250g bag of coffee is $14.50 and if you look at other brands like Supreme and Allpress that’s around that price, but what we’re looking at doing through office suppliers is give them a highly discounted rate based on volume to be competitive.

At present, we have a couple of organisations that we’ve been talking with about who are looking at getting all of their workers back in the office. There are a lot of culture initiatives going on, and a lot of businesses I have talked to through my HR network from my previous life have talked about coffee being able to woo people back to work so we’ve been able to chat to a couple of organisations to supply them with coffee for their staff.

These businesses are looking at actually providing a barista on-site and giving people the opportunity to have really nice freshly made coffee and not have to pay for it. They are looking at combating the cost of travelling into work and making it attractive. You go to work and you might save $20 a day if you have three coffees a day. I thought that was quite a cool way to entice people back. I’m not sure if I’m able to share their names, but I’ve got quite a big professional services firm in Auckland, an engineering firm down in Nelson who are currently trialling our coffee for that purpose, and a number of others in different industries. I thought that was quite initiative and having worked in HR, I know how difficult sometimes it is to come up with cool cultural initiatives. I worked in HR for about 20 years and then I went out consulting on my own and mentoring before starting this.

What advice do you give to others wanting to start their own business?

Follow your dreams – seek out what you love in life and give it a go. Connect with people who might be in similar industries or who could help out; utilise the people and the skills around you. You’re not alone, if you reach out to people and utilise your networks then there is a lot of support out there for small businesses.

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