Today we’d like to introduce you to Patrick Swain. Them and their team share their story with us below:
Kaffee Bitte started with the goal of creating a better coffee experience. A month before the Covid outbreak, Patrick was a junior at Indiana University with a passion for coffee and his mom, Jenny, was eager to start something new in Cincinnati, Ohio. With Patrick’s business skills and Jenny’s sales experience, we knew we’d make a great team!
While Covid put the business on hold for several months, we got right back to it in the fall of 2020 and really pushed ourselves throughout 2021. At the start of 2022, we began working with local coffee roaster, Coffee Break, who helped us create the coffees we sell today, including our popular high-energy blend, Crank, which is naturally higher in caffeine!
A year later, we added biodegradable sugarcane straws to our product list with an initial idea of supplying coffee shops with an eco-friendlier way of enjoying an iced coffee. After seeing so many plastic straws, we thought there had to be a more sustainable option! We soon began to realize that restaurants need these straws too. We currently offer the sugarcane straws for retail in packs of 50 as well as in boxes of 1,000 for wholesale.
After 1 logo redesign and 3 coffee bag design changes later, we are proud to have our products sold in over 40 grocery stores and markets across Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo, and Northern Kentucky! As of recently, we have been supplying restaurants, bars, and coffee shops with our biodegradable sugarcane straws!
We have risked a lot to start and continue to grow Kaffee Bitte, but it seems to be finally paying off! We think the passion we both have for this company has been the biggest driving force to our successes. Our vision for Kaffee Bitte has been huge from the start, and we hope to open a coffee shop in the near future!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Weeks after we got our first batch of coffee ready to sell, Covid-19 hit the United States. With the country on lockdown, we had to put our business on hold for a couple months. Grocery stores were struggling and not looking to add new products to their shelves. We were able to push through the remainder of 2020 but with limited sales.
With neither of us having any experience in the grocery industry, we have made some small ‘mistakes’ along the way, but in our eyes, these failures have taught us everything we know today. We continue to teach ourselves as we go and build/improve Kaffee Bitte as a brand.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Kaffee Bitte?
Kaffee Bitte is a company located in Cincinnati, Ohio that sells both coffee and biodegradable straws. We focus a lot on sustainability with all of our coffee sustainably sourced and our straws being the best alternative to paper or plastic! They are 100% plant-based making them biodegradable, and they do not get soggy in your drink! Our original idea when we brought on the straws as a product was to supply coffee shops with a better alternative to plastic straws. We soon realized that restaurants and bars needed them as well.
As of today, we sell our coffee in about 40 markets/grocery stores across Ohio and Northern Kentucky. We also sell our straws in many of these stores in packs of 50.
In addition to this, we have recently begun supplying restaurants, cafes, and bars our straws in bulk (quantities of 1,000).
We are extremely passionate about the customer have a great coffee experience while also contributing to a cleaner environment! In the next year or so, we hope to open our first coffee shop here in Cincinnati, Ohio!
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Our name Kaffee Bitte comes from the German phrase, “Einen Kaffee, Bitte!” or “A coffee, please!”. There is a rich history of German food and culture here in Cincinnati and I wanted to show how passionate we were about starting this business right here in Cincinnati, Ohio!
Contact Info:
- Website: kaffeebitte.com
- Instagram: @kaffeebittecoffee
- Facebook: @kaffeebittecoffee
