

Blue Bottle acquires Tonx - coloneltcb
https://tonx.org/frequency/joining-forces?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=frequency32

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jgh
I've been a Tonx subscriber for almost two years now... Not exactly sure how
to feel about this, I hope it doesn't really change anything. I really enjoy
their service, the coffee they send is always fantastic, and the quantity is
perfect for my consumption patterns.

edit: I took a look at the Blue Bottle service just now. While the price point
is half of what I pay for Tonx for the same subscription, it seems like you
get the same bag every time? Part of the fun of Tonx is the fact that they
send you stuff that they think is great from all over the world, and not just
the same thing every two weeks.

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acmiller
I'm a current Tonx subscriber, and I bought Blue Bottle when you could only
get it from that hole in the wall on Linden Lane.

But for some reason this announcement still feels like a loss to me. It's
probably my aversion to all those SF people who rave about Blue Bottle, but
get drinks that drown out the coffee flavor with milk and sugar.

But it'll probably work out for the best.

~~~
mikegreco
I agree. The beauty of Tonx is that it's all about the coffee itself. No milk,
no sugar, no dilution. Blue Bottle seems more about the coffee _drink_ and
less about the _coffee_

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fennecfoxen
The Blue Bottle siphon bar in Chelsea (NYC) is a bit of a step back in the
direction of "coffee itself". The brew methods are on the fancy side, but you
can get the flight of two siphon coffees and compare the different qualities
of the beans and such :)

~~~
mikegreco
That actually makes me feel much better about the matter, good to know!

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mikegreco
I'm really conflicted by this.

The good: Tonx is awesome. Blue Bottle is great. I can't imagine coffee
quality will decline due to a merger.

The bad: Tonx has lost a lot of agility. Will great and potentially risky
campaigns like the recent Starbucks campaign [0] still be possible with a
retail infrastructure to support and worry about?

The ugly: Tonx brings to the table two amazing single origin roasts every
single month. Blue Bottle seems to be focusing on expanding their digital
presence with this deal [1] and at least in my experience, that is NOT what
makes Tonx so fantastic.

It will be interesting to see where this goes.

[0]: [https://tonx.org/better](https://tonx.org/better) [1]:
[http://blog.bluebottlecoffee.com/post/82020818086/welcome-
ab...](http://blog.bluebottlecoffee.com/post/82020818086/welcome-aboard-tonx-
and-handsome-coffee)

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xntrk
I have been using Tonx for about a year and it has been awesome. Hopefully
this doesn't change much about the service.

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coloneltcb
I don't think it will in the short term.

This is a really smart move by Blue Bottle though. Overnight, they have a Web
presence and a mail-order/distribution network.

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bradly
Interesting. Blue Bottle already offers subscription coffee by mail. I believe
it is cheaper than Tonx, and much better coffee in my humble opinion with the
ability to choose your beans. I'm hoping the quality and pricing flows towards
Blue Bottle instead of the other way around.

~~~
prostoalex
Tonx's selection is broader, with 26 shipments a year you get 26 different
single origin beans. On Blue Bottle site I chose a subscription for a drip
coffee maker and was given a choice of 4 flavors.

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jafoca
I have been with Tonx since near the beginning and love their coffee. A friend
of mine even worked for a competitor (regular coffee co.) for a while but I
couldn't make the switch due to the lack of variety.

I just hope that Tonx won't lose it's laid back 'drink it how you like it'
attitude in favor of the coffee Puritanism I experienced at Blue Bottle a year
or two back.

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rubiquity
As I've written on HN before, both of these brands have fallen out of favor
with me recently. Blue Bottle is living off of a reputation it soon won't
have, and local roasters have better beans than Tonx does, at a better price.
For people that don't have roasters in their city I guess Tonx is a good
choice, though.

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greesil
You hipster. It's starting to get a larger following, so you can't like it
anymore. Everyone already knows, quality doesn't go downhill until the stock
is publicly traded. Then they start "value engineering".

~~~
rubiquity
I don't drink milk-coffee drinks so when I evaluate a coffee shop it is
strictly on the quality of the coffee. Whether it is a cup of black coffee or
their beans. Blue Bottle's coffee (read: not espresso) beans are absolutely
horrid.

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mhluongo
And now we know that cash infusion Blue Bottle got is being put to good use.

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vladgur
Man I wish these companies stopped assigning flavors to the their roasts and
just listed them as medium, dark or light.

I like medium roasts, every other is either lost on me or is not guaranteed to
be consistent between roasts.

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jknightco
Almost all "quality" coffee is done at a light roast, as the more you roast a
coffee the less of the actual coffee you're tasting. Anything you get from
Blue Bottle, Stumptown, Intelligentsia, etc. is going to be a light roast.

~~~
vladgur
I generally pick coffee beans by smell and i get them at whole foods,
oftentimes within a day or two of the roast date. Ive tried sightglass,
ritual, four barrel and blue bottle(not available at whole foods, but some
other places in the bay area).

Pretty much none of them are ever labeled dark, medium or light roasted and
instead they come up with these imaginative flavor descriptions which I never
appreciated in wines and I definitely dont appreciate in coffee.

Based on my fairly good sense of smell, ive learned to distinguish medium
roasts from dark and light onces because dark ones are generally too burnt and
bitter for my taste while light ones are too acidic.

All of these coffee brands do have dark roasts(yes even Blue Bottle -- do you
think Three Africans is light?) and medium roasts and plenty of light roasts.
Its just tough to find any that are labeled as such

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reillyse
I don't want to start a war but I think labeling coffee by the roast level is
far too simplistic for most people. The roast level as you've described really
just tells us what the bean looks like, i.e light medium & dark. I'm a huge
proponent of lighter roasts, but not for the color. More because higher roast
levels get in the way of the beautiful flavor inherent in good coffee (the
corollary of this is that it's easy to hide bad coffee in over roasting -
hello Starbucks)

The flavor profiles aren't "imaginative descriptions". Yes they are very
subjective, but that doesn't mean they do not exist, just that our senses
aren't good at detecting & describing them. To give an example, I run an
online coffee company and over the last few months we've shipped coffees that
genuinely smell everything from a Papua New Guinea that smelled incredibly
like chocolate & nuts through to a Yirg that smelled uncannily like
strawberries & cream. Honestly I thought the last one was BS until I smelled
it. I wouldn't consider that I have an amazing sense of smell but I can tell
the difference between three or four unshipped types of coffee that we have in
our packing space by smelling the degassing valve.

tl;dr There are so many differences between coffee beans for a description of
the roast level to adequately describe them

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vladgur
There was a freakonomics episode called 'Do more expensive wines taste better'
which essentially presented wine experts with a a blind test of different
wines and they were not able to tell which ones were cheaper and which ones
were pricier based on the 'flavor profiles' that they detected.

While it doesnt mean that there are no flavor profiles on roasted coffee
beans, what it means is detection of the flavor profile is probably very
subjective. In my experience flavor profiles are rarely guaranteed between
roasts, one thing i could always tell if this particular roast is acidic or
too dark.

This is just my perception. I usually make my coffee using a Capresso Burr
grinder and aeropress. You can usually find me at whole foods sniffing the
timestamped paper bags of coffee until i settle on something that doesnt smell
too burnt or too acidic.

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kenferry
Seems like a merger one can feel ok about.

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hpref
Blue Bottle -> Broom in Harry Potter (GOF, advertisement at world cup)

Tonx -> Harry Potter character

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jgh
Explain please.

~~~
hpref
Not really relevant the link between the two being from the same fictional
world... gave me a chuckle.

[http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Bluebottle](http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Bluebottle)

[http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Nymphadora_Tonks](http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Nymphadora_Tonks)

