Seb: Hello, Seb here from Timely. And today I've got a bit of a different video for you. This is our 2022 year in review. So this is a video we're putting out once a year just to cover the last 12 months, what we've kind of achieved and what we've done, and then also kind of thinking about what it means for the future, the next year ahead and also what it means for you as one of our customers as a general coffee consumer as well. So there's a few things that we should kind of keep in mind before we get started. The first thing is that everything that we're talking about in this video is just about Timely itself. This is not really kind of comparing ourselves to other roasteries or other brands. And importantly, this is about you as one of our customers and kind of what you've helped us to achieve as well. Everything that we're talking about here would not be possible if it wasn't for people that are buying our coffee and drinking our coffee and really kind of believing in what we do and believing in the message. So firstly, thanks to everyone who buys Timely and has bought Timely over the last 12 months, it's been really amazing to connect with more people than ever before and we're really glad for kind of how the product is being received and all the feedback we're receiving is really great and really positive as well.

Seb: But not only is it positive because people are enjoying the product, it's positive because people are telling us that they're really connecting with the product in ways that we find important for the coffee industry moving forward. So firstly, we want to kind of recap about kind of how our roasting is going. So the last 12 months we've roasted 64,000 kilos of green coffee. So that's a little bit more than last year, which is, which is great. And 64,000 kilos for fun a fact is the same as 30 giraffes. So we roasted 30 giraffes worth of green coffee this year across all the time in the facilities. So what does this mean for us? Well, a big portion of this was our house coffees. Timely one time. Two was really popular. This year. We released a couple of different blends, which turned out to be really popular as well. But we also have a really expansive list of micro, lots of limited release coffees. And these coffees were super, super popular over the last four months. Over the year, we released 41 different micro lots, 41 different limited releases. That means that we got samples, we cupped, we tasted, we selected the ones that we liked, We did tasting notes, we did labels. We released 41 different coffees throughout the year. So if you'd seen a video from 2021 year in review, you will notice that this is slightly fewer copies were released that year.

Seb: And there's a few different reasons for that. And most importantly, it's because COVID is still happening, it's still ongoing. And even though it's not really a part of our lives in the same way that it was kind of a few years ago, it's still impacting supply chain and access to coffee and a lot of different ways around the world. So this means that getting access to lots of different coffees is slightly more challenging. Coffee is a little bit more expensive, which means that we want to make sure that coffee is still affordable for you. So sometimes buying in high volumes is the way to go. But our focus, as well as slightly changed because what we want to be doing is buying larger volumes from fewer producers, because we're hearing from our producing partners that this is really the best help that we can provide. Buying so many different coffees that we're releasing more than one a week was really, really fun. But when we're getting different information and we're hearing different things from people who are growing the coffees that we love, it's really important that we respond to that. So the way forward is probably fewer coffees, slightly larger volume, which means that you might see the same coffee you roasted for a few weeks at a time, which in itself is still an opportunity.

Seb: I know that a lot of people think that sometimes when you taste a coffee and you've had that bag of coffee for a week or you've received that coffee already, you don't want to receive that again in the future. Well, the idea is that the slightly larger volumes we're getting, every time you receive it, it's going to be slightly different. The roasting is always going to be really, really consistent. But green coffee itself is a natural product, so it's always going to have a lifecycle. It's never going to be the exact same from one worse to the next, no matter how specific you are. You can make sure that everything is exactly the same in terms of everything that you can measure. But because the green coffee itself is changing from one week to the next, the results are always going to be very slightly different. So it's really a good opportunity to be able to taste the same coffee multiple times to kind of see how that lifecycle is impacting the flavour of the coffee. So that's something you can kind of expect for your head. So a few other things that I've written down on my arm. So we've got on our newsletter that goes out to people once or twice a week. We've now got 5000 and counting people on the newsletter, which is really great. We're really happy to see that many people will kind of receiving our communication regularly.

Seb: And more importantly than that, it's actually being opened far more than the industry standard. So the open rates and the engagement rates are really amazing. So not only is it going out to more people than ever before, but it's actually been engaged with more than ever before, which we're really, really happy about. Also, our most popular product this year was our feature Coffee subscription. So this is the subscription product we put out where every single week we send out a different coffee to the last week. So like I said, it may not be a brand new coffee every week, but it's going to be different each week to the previous week. So you're never going to receive the same coffee twice in a row. So our feature Coffee subscription has been growing really fast. It's been really popular and we're really, really happy about that. So you can find more about that on the Timely Coffees dot com EU website. We don't need to go too much into that right now. And one other thing that I wanted to share about the year gone past was something that Sara Gutierrez shared with us. Sara Gutierrez is a coffee producer from Colombia who we buy a lot of coffee from, so we buy a lot of our kind of Timely one coffee from Sara. We also buy a couple of micro lots and limited releases.

Seb: We speak to Sara really regularly or WhatsApp on emails. We've got really good connections. We negotiate prices directly with Sara. So Sara is a really good example for us of how we can do something that is pretty, pretty close to what a maybe a traditional direct trade model would be like without actually having to travel to origin. We can still make sure that we're kind of negotiating with people and making sure that the relationships we have a positive. So Sara is kind of for us, we're working with Sara to kind of create this model that we can then use with other producers around the world. So we're doing something similar next time with Pedro Guevara in Brazil, and then we'll kind of keep replicating that model in different ways. So this year our favourite quote came from Sara Gutierrez. Sara Gutierrez is a third generation coffee producer. Sara Gutierrez is husband, father and brother. All also produce coffee. They all work kind of on the same set of farms. Sara Gutierrez When I was speaking to Sara a couple of months ago, she said that the amount that she's receiving for coffee from Timely is the most that anyone in her family has ever received for coffee. Across every generation, every person in this generation, Sara's family, no one has ever received this much per kilo for coffee.

Seb: So this tells us a couple of things. It means that the system that we're putting in place is working because Sara is finding ways to reinvest that money into expand her own land and earn and own production facilities. So she's doing more education as well. This is all by by her own motivation. She's really motivated to just be the best coffee producer she can be, and we're really proud to be working with her. Sara is already qualified to great and she's involved in the Cup of Excellence, and Sara is already doing really amazing things. But just to be able to really see that the system we're trying to put in place and the work that we're doing is really actually having meaningful impact. So it's easy for a coffee producer to say we're spending more money than we ever had before, but unless you actually know that the person that you're buying coffee from who's actually growing that coffee is receiving more than ever before, then that is really the next step. When you are buying coffee from a broker, which we still do because we have to win one of the sides, we can do everything directly. Then you can spend as much as you want. But unless you can actually speak to the people who are growing it and you can actually have a true and honest conversation with them about what it means to them and about how you can how you can support them moving forward.

Seb: You don't know how much they're actually receiving. So this is what Timely is all about. It's not about fair trade certifications, organic certifications. It's not about these things that we can kind of put on our bags which make us feel like we're doing good without actually doing the hard work with and actually investigating what that means for the people growing the coffee. So to hear this from Sara, that this is the most anyone in her family has ever received for coffee is really great. It means what we're doing is hopefully working and we're really excited to keep doing this same system with Sara and hopefully replicating this with a couple of other producers around the world. So that's what we've been doing in the year 2022. We'll have another really busy year in 2023 ahead, but we'll release another video very soon about what's actually in store for them. So in the next few weeks that'll be coming out. But more importantly, if there's anything in this video that I've spoken about that you want to talk to me about, then just get in touch with me at seb@timelycoffees.com.au. I'm pretty busy. So sometimes it takes me a little while to reply, but I'll try and get to every email as soon as I can. But importantly, we just want to say thank you again for all the support over the year.

Seb: It's been really busy for us, but it's kind of been a little bit unpredictable for a lot of people. So we're really grateful to support ongoing support from all of our customers, people talking about us, people buying coffee, everything that we talk about and everything we do wouldn't be possible without people actually believing in what we do and buying our coffee. So the other thing as well is have a great end of the year break. Hopefully everyone gets some time off. How are we going to be celebrating that? We hope that you spend some time just kind of, you know, recouping as well for a year ahead. And that's pretty much all I've got. Thanks again and see you next time for another beer. I. I cover a couple of things about and we're just going to pause for no apparent reason. But if you think your coffee subscription is out, is the feature Coffee of the Week every single. That's pretty much what we've got. Whoa. Ooh. I shoot. You choose you. More importantly than more importantly, Jesus Christ. And just send me an email at Seb at Timely Coffees. Yeah, that's my ema