In the early days, we sold simple products that looked, frankly, simple. Customers took home whole-bean coffee, tea and spices in brown paper bags. Nothing fancy.
But as we transformed into an Italian-style coffeehouse, we began thinking about our packaging differently – and our bags became vessels for visual storytelling. We started with stamps, which first adorned the traditional paper bags and later the higher-tech packaging we adopted to keep our beans fresh.
In 1995, Blue Note Blend changed the game: It was our very first coffee to be sold in packaging printed with colorful graphics instead of in a plain bag. These new “rollstock” packages weren’t just eye-catching – they offered us a larger canvas for sharing each coffee’s unique story through images and words.
Today, customers can learn a lot about a coffee from the details of its packaging: how its roasted, its flavor profiles, even a bit about its history. There are clues to its story everywhere, if you know where to look.
