We work to maintain blends year-round, but keeping them stocked isn’t as easy as you think.
Our blends may only make up a small portion of our offer list, but they’ve become a part of Sweet Maria’s identity. A big contributor to that is the quality of the ingredients. But our reliance on top coffees that are in some cases origin-specific, leaves our blends vulnerable to supply shortages.
Blends like EspressoA small coffee beverage, about 20 ml, prepared on an espresso machine where pressurized hot water extracted through compressed coffee.: In its most stripped-down, basic form, this is... ...more Monkey, New Classic, and Liquid Amber go back to the early days of Sweet Maria’s, and were vehicles for us to play with flavor, building profiles that weren’t possible with any single component. They’ve gained a pretty loyal following through the years, so we are not surprised to hear from you when they run out!
While we try to keep our main blends stocked year round, it’s not always possible with a seasonal crop. 2025 was a particularly difficult year, with things like crop damage, transportation issues, soaring coffee prices, and tariffs creating the perfect storm for disruptions. Our blends took a hit as a result.
Take for example the crop in Central America, which was diminished by tropical storms leaving us short on volume in key countries we rely on. In some cases, we were able to make substitutions using coffee from other countries that show similar flavor attributes (washed coffee from ColombiaColombian coffee is highly marketed and widely available in the US. They have been largely successful at equating the name Colombian Coffee with "Good" Coffee. This is half-true.... ...more, RwandaA Bourbon cultivar variant from Rwanda and Burundi. Bourbon coffees are named for the island in the India Ocean where French colonists grew it. Some history from the... ...more, and TimorTimor-Leste (East Timor) is a tiny island between Australia and Sulawesi, annexed by Indonesia and liberated in a referendum several years ago. Small scale coffee farming was jump-started... ...more Leste for example). But for regional-dependent blends, like our all-Central American Altiplano blend, it meant shrinking our inventory, and sometimes stocking out altogether.
It’s important to make the point that the coffees we use in our blends are the same coffees we sell on the site. Quality is not compromised in the service of price. When the coffee market is high – like it has been since last year – we don’t simply look for cheaper options to balanceSuggests a harmony and proportion of qualities, and implies mildness since no one quality dominates.: Balance is both an obvious and slippery taste term. It implies a harmony... ...more out the books. We pay a little more to maintain quality. It has meant raising our prices to compensate, increases we hope to walk back to some degree once the market stabilizes.
Believe it or not, that’s not common practice for many roasting companies we encounter. The single originSingle Origin refers to coffee from one location, in contrast to blended coffee. This term is particularly useful in discussing espresso, since most commercial espressos are made from... ...more coffees getting prime real estateA "coffee estate" is used to imply a farm that has its own processing facility, a wet-mill. In Spanish this is called an Hacienda. A Finca (farm) does... ...more on the menu often only account for a small portion of sales compared to the house blend. Perhaps that’s just the reality of a sound business model, but not for us. Cup quality and paying a fair price are always at the front of our minds, and we know that sacrificing those to save a buck only works to erode our reputation!
We’re currently working to get most of our blends back up on the site with sufficient ingredient volumes to help minimize gaps. I do expect Altiplano and Liquid Amber to stock out momentarily when we run out of Central American coffees, and Monsoon from IndiaS-795 is a variety based on the " S-Line" coffees of India, and stands for Selection 795, It has a very fine cup, one of the best in... ...more. These simply can’t be substituted, and we expect reinforcements in the 2nd quarter.
Check out our current blends on Sweet Maria’s and Coffee Shrub.
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