
Launch HN: Bottomless (YC W19) – Coffee Restocked with a Smart Scale - seizethecheese
Hello, HN! We&#x27;re Michael and Liana, co-founders of Bottomless (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bottomless.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bottomless.com</a>)<p>Bottomless automatically re-stocks coffee using a smart scale. Users leave their coffee on the scale, then we detect the perfect time to trigger re-orders. We ship the scale for free when customers buy their first bag.<p>We met in college, and bonded over talking about businesses we could build together. You could say we&#x27;ve kept in touch since then: we&#x27;re now married. Bottomless was born out of our frustration managing our household stock levels. We always seemed to be running out of one thing or another.<p>When we thought about it, we realized that restocking was a universal problem.<p>But if this was such a big problem, why was there no great solution? Subscriptions should be a solution, but they don’t work well for items that aren’t used on a set schedule. It seemed that if we could capture data on usage and stock levels in a passive way, we could solve the problem. Thus, Bottomless, the concept, was born.<p>The market for stuff people repeatedly buy is enormous. (We&#x27;ll leave an exact estimate up to the reader&#x27;s imagination.) We decided that to start we&#x27;d establish a beachhead with a single market. We landed on selling premium coffee because it&#x27;s cheap to ship and has good margins. It also is much better shipped straight from the roaster than bought at the grocery store.<p>In the beginning, we built the simplest thing possible to test if the concept would work. We hacked together a scale prototype, made five of them and got them into the hands of friends. We bought coffee from roaster websites with our customers’ addresses to bootstrap supply.<p>The goal was to test if people would leave their coffee on a scale, and if we could reorder at the right time. It turns out they would and we could!<p>Since then, it&#x27;s been a matter of making larger batches of scales. We bought a few 3D printers and acquired quite a few burned fingers from soldering.<p>We&#x27;ve benefited from a few technological tailwinds. For one, smartphone supply chain has driven down the cost of components quite a bit. We&#x27;ve been able to build hardware that works for this business model out of super cheap WiFi modules and LiPos. Also, the level of open source software for ML is quite powerful and well-documented.<p>We&#x27;re aware that we are just scratching the surface of re-ordering hardware. We&#x27;d be interested to hear ideas that the community might have about this space!
======
function_seven
My initial reaction to this post was _very_ dismissive. I was ready to jump
into the comments and nod along with everyone else shitting all over it.

But, I don't want to be like CmdrTaco and the iPod, or whoever thought an
rsync bash script could replace Dropbox.

If you prove this out with coffee, and work on making it for all "constant"
foods in the home, this would be awesome.

Milk, butter, cheese, eggs, soda, cereal, apples, tortilla chips, baby food,
etc. A whole section in the fridge or pantry that a user could arrange how
they like, and use the app to set restock thresholds. Smart logic on your end
to bundle items in as few shipments as possible (i.e. send the butter restock
a week before you really need to, because other items are queued up now) and
this becomes a magic grocery delivery service where—not only do you not need
to go to the store—you don't even need to think about placing an order!

Good luck on this, and probably a good decision to target coffee snobs first.

~~~
rorykoehler
I kind of like going to the supermarket. I also like variety. This sounds like
it would work better for offices etc

~~~
seizethecheese
Yeah love grocery shopping when I’m making a meal or shopping for something
unique.

Personally, I’m not a fan of shopping for the same stuff over and over.

~~~
rorykoehler
That's kind of my point. I buy coffee every week but rarely the same one. In
fact discovering, comparing and contrasting various beans, washes, roasts and
preparation types is half the joy of coffee.

~~~
hahajk
Me too, but I also like the “surprise me” subscription services like wine
clubs. It’d be a decent backup plan if too many users complained about the
monotony.

~~~
seizethecheese
We actually default people into a "surprise me" subscription.

------
alphagrep12345
Few of questions

1\. People always make weekend grocery trips. Why can't they just add a packet
of coffee powder? Why do they have to use you? 2\. Amazon just discontinued
their dash buttons. There should be a strong reason for it. Do you know what
it is? How are you planning to avoid it? 3\. The issue with diapers and toilet
papers is huge. They take up a lot of volume and have very little weight. Does
the scale approach work for them? I'm not sure.

It'd be interesting to see how you guys evolve going forward. Best of luck :)

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I'll answer some of your questions:

1\. You asked about "adding a packet of coffee powder". If you're asking about
coffee "powder" (i.e. either preground or instant), then you are not the
target market. For coffee aficionados, there is a very short window of peak
freshness, about 1-2 weeks post roast. This model works great for these coffee
folks who care about this freshness. Note supermarket coffee is usually
hopelessly stale by the time it is sold. 2\. While the physical dash buttons
may have been discontinued, the virtual ones (through your phone, the web,
Alexa, etc.) are still heavily in use. My guess if they discontinued them is
that they figured they can get just as much play from the virtual ones,
especially through all the "smart home" devices they are pushing.

~~~
erikig
As soon as I saw this I had the thought... _This is really not about coffee_

------
rconti
If you can crack the market of auto-restocking a large variety of household
goods, I think you're on to something, hopefully just using coffee as a
starting point.

I HATE managing 'subscription' services; it's more work than just reordering
manually, (looking at you, Soylent and Amazon) and Amazon Dash buttons didn't
help because the item you paired it to is never still around when you press
the button.

I wouldn't want to deal with all of this overhead for just restocking one
supply (coffee) but I certainly see the value if many products were covered.

Best of luck!

~~~
swampthinker
In a different life, I was working on a device that could turn any fridge into
a smart fridge. Using computer vision to auto restock food when you ran low.
The prototype felt pretty magical for the few food items it could recognize.

Maybe some day later down the line :)

~~~
seizethecheese
Sounds cool! We've thought about this concept a lot. We always assumed that
the fridge would be too messy for this to actually work. I'd be interested in
hearing about your approach.

~~~
swampthinker
It's so simple it's kind of stupid. Don't have the camera face the inside of
the fridge, point it out and watch the I/O instead.

My email is in my bio, happy to show you what was initially built out and
lessons learned! Could be useful for you.

------
wenbin
I just listened to Michael's podcast interview. Very smart & inspiring!

[https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/invest-like-the-
best/mi...](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/invest-like-the-best/michael-
mayer-pseudonymous-UQn5RGs7T4H/)

~~~
alexpetralia
He sounds like a philosopher more than a business person. But my bias is that
that's a good thing.

~~~
seizethecheese
Hey, these aren’t mutually exclusive.

------
noirbot
So, I really like this idea, and I've been with plenty of coffee subscriptions
over the last few years. My issue/worry is that I don't make coffee at home on
a daily rate. I have coffee at the office most weekdays, and then at home on
the weekend, and then usually also on one day I work from home.

For me, it would be really nice for your service to work out something like
"You make 60g of coffee on Saturdays and Sundays, and then 30g's on Wednesday"
and then work out when I'll be running out, and maybe order me a new bag to
come in on Friday because it knows I'll likely run out on Saturday.

This doesn't seem super hard to do, but does seem like something that's
important to work out, since there's a lot of products that people don't use
on with regular daily amount.

~~~
seizethecheese
Interesting use case.

This actually mirrors a lot of our customers, so it's important for our system
to take this consumption pattern into account.

After a few orders, the system will learn that you make 120g on weekends with
sporadic weekday consumption.

~~~
noirbot
That's really nice! One thought - it might be helpful to have some way to seed
the system with what you at least think is "normal" consumption?

The one other thing that springs to mind is having some way to mark vacations
or other disruptions to schedule? Also potentially a way to mark that you
refilled some other way? Often when I'm on a trip, I'll bring home some coffee
from a local roaster, so having a way to feed that into the system would be
nice.

~~~
seizethecheese
Interesting concept for seeding the system. We used to have something like
that and dropped it because it wasn't too accurate.

We do have a setting for turning off automatic re-ordering to handle vacations
or unexpected bounties of coffee.

~~~
smurfysmurf
I like this idea, and good luck! Just wanted to give some input on this as I
currently work on an ML project at Amazon. The more context possible from the
user to define the space at the very beginning will increase accuracy
exponentially (at the risk of a too much effort required for user onboarding).
Finding that balance is important. Additionally, the user feedback is very
important as well. incorporating a way to say yes a shipment came at the wrong
time, or no it didn't will also improve model development. However both
experiences should be lightweight and seamless - good luck!

~~~
seizethecheese
Thanks for the advice! I agree there's a tradeoff between asking the user too
much and expecting the system to learn on it's own.

------
LeifCarrotson
I think the business case with the same idea and tech, but a lot better market
cap, would be providing a restocking service to businesses who are using tens
of thousands of dollars of consumable shop supplies than the small audience of
people who are willing to buy coffee from a subscription for $3/mo.

To make the pain point that I'm familiar with on a daily basis crystal clear
to you: I'm an engineer at a small, shop that makes industrial automation
equipment. Each machine contains (in addition to bill-of-materials listed
components, an array of stuff we consider "shop supplies".

Some components I'd inventory include a lot of items from the McMaster Carr,
Grainger, Bolt Bin, and Digikey catalogs. We have racks of pneumatic fittings,
electrical conduit connectors, dowel pins, electrical connectors, extrusion
hardware, labels, and all manner of other industrial Lego. There's a large
area with hundreds of drawers holding alloy cap screws in socket, button, and
flat-head in metric and SAE from #4-40/M3 to 1/2-18/M10 in quarter inch/5mm
increments. Every tool and die shop, industrial facility maintenance
department, auto mechanic, construction contractor, and so on has a similar
set of drawers, shelves, and ULine bins that contains stuff like this.

Each item only runs a nickel to a couple dollars each, so it's hardly worth
adding to a spreadsheet, checking out of inventory, and cutting a purchase
order for a replacement, but our little 20-man shop probably goes through
$150,000 worth of these consumables each year in the process of building $10M
worth of machines. Keep our fabricators supplied with the components they
need, and stop our expensive engineers from spending $50 in time every week or
two purchasing these components, and I'd be more than happy to pay for the
value it would provide. Which is a lot more than the value that would be
provided by keeping my home kitchen stocked with coffee.

Also, from my point of view, the equipment to use to measure this stuff is not
ESP8266 modules and a soldering iron, it's an off-the-shelf PLC, some DIN rail
and screw terminals, and some load cells or maybe strain gauges if you really
want to optimize costs. Get a volume of equipment sold before trying to roll
your own full-stack hardware supply chain...but that's beside the point.

~~~
seizethecheese
Thanks for laying out the use case!

I’ve previously worked in restaurants and there’s an analogous problem there.
I think this tech will be everywhere someday.

I’mcurious about your insight on the tech. Could you flesh that out a bit
more?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Sure.

Essentially, the parent article was discussing how they broke out the
soldering iron and learned about wireless integrated circuits. At a large
enough scale, it makes great sense to do this engineering work: design a PCB
with power supplies and analog circuits, figure out connections to peripheral
sensors, put that PCB and sensors into an injection-molded piece of plastic,
add fasteners and brackets to mount sensors, install connectors and terminate
wires on the sensors and boards, write assembly and C code to make them all
talk to each other ...taking on all the overhead.

But for a lot of small runs of equipment, this doesn't make sense. Buy the
strain gauge already in an enclosure with standardized interfaces and built-in
amplifiers, get a small computer (PLC) that's already in an enclosure and has
terminals to connect to those sensors, write code in a high-level language
designed for talking to sensors, and ship it.

It's like somebody wanted to build a website, so they started digging into
network protocols. There's a place for that, but it should be approached long
after you've fired up a Wordpress instance.

------
drtse4
> The only sensor in the scale is a weight sensor.

? Why not add a RFID reader (relatively cheap) to the scale and then add tags
on the coffee bags to be able to log the consumption for multiple types?

You could even be able to identify the weight of multiple objects (tracking
what's on the scale and how the weight changes when it's removed and when it's
put back) on a bigger(longer?) scale.

And you could sell kits with tags that people could slap on their own
containers and register multiple custom items.

I agree, "autonomous dash button" is a nice way to present it, but if it was
capable of detecting what's on it, it would become more or less a "sentient
dash button", way better ;)

~~~
seizethecheese
Yes, we've thought a lot about this. We could end up doing something like what
you describe.

The reason for the current format is that we want the scales to blend into
your normal life. The scale is the size of one coffee bag so you just put it
where you'd normally put your bag.

~~~
saberience
The scale seems way too big and ugly to fit into my kitchen, never mind
multiple of them.

~~~
kkarakk
coffee aficionados tend to have lots of random bulky objects in the kitchen
anyways. coffee makers,coffee implements, temperature sensors etc etc

it quickly becomes a hassle to stow it all away everytime so you end up
chucking it all in one "space"

~~~
Grustaf
Coffee aficionados don't want to be restricted to buying from a single, web-
based company. Unless this company stocks hundreds or thousands of varieties.

~~~
kkarakk
anecdotally i'd say that coffee people tend to buy excessive amounts of the
one coffee brand they like, they mess around and buy a lot of samples/get
gifts but they only have one or two blends that they really like

------
bg451
Just a note on four barrel: One of their cofounders sexually harassed and
assaulted their employees. The other cofounders were aware and complicit until
a lawsuit finally hit. They promised to make four barrel employee owned but
still have not followed up on that promise:
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/Four-
Barrel-...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/Four-Barrel-has-
not-yet-shifted-ownership-to-13164101.php)

We stopped ordering from four barrel because of these reasons and I'd
recommend you'd consider not carrying their coffee either.

~~~
seizethecheese
Thanks for the note.

We have been told by Four Barrel that they are now employee owned and that the
former owner is no longer involved.

My email is available at my account. If you know for certain that the above is
not true, please reach out.

~~~
noirbot
I'd be open to believing that and I definitely don't want to mess them up too
much, but at this point, their brand has done so much shady stuff over the
years that it's really hard to trust them any more, especially when there's so
many good options that don't have assaulters and potentially complicit owners
in the mix.

~~~
lampenrad
>I definitely don't want to mess them up too much

You‘re actively trying to get other people to boycott them, which would
eventually put them out of business. It‘s the first time I’ve heard about them
and I don‘t care one way or the other but be honest. There‘s no „openness to
believing“ the „potentially complicit“ here, your post is a complete
contradiction.

~~~
noirbot
More of, I'd like to see more than them privately telling other companies that
they've dealt with the issues. I'm open to someone showing me something that's
more definitive than "We promise we did things", given that they've previously
promised to do things and then not done them.

Their website doesn't seem to say anything about their ownership more than
"locally owned", and at this point, they've burned a lot of their credibility
when it comes to doing the right thing. If they've actually gotten rid of
folks and they're a employee-owned company now, then I have no problems with
buying from them and supporting folks.

I'm mostly just admitting that I haven't heard anything definitive either way
in the last few months, and since the company doesn't seem to be making it
easy to tell if they've changed things, it's likely that folks in the coffee
community still think poorly of them.

------
jchallis
The biggest stockout problems in my life are those where an inconvenience
turns into a big mess. If you can expand your thinking to that problem, I'm
very interested.

Specifically:

Toilet Paper

Diapers

Diaper Wipes

Paper Towels

Cat Litter

Laundry Detergent

Sanitary Napkins / Tampons

Auto-coffee refill is something I can avoid. Diaper stockout -- the horror!

~~~
seizethecheese
Thank you! We're always wondering what the biggest restocking problems are for
people.

Your list are all products we're planning to address eventually. The real
question is: what do we do _next_?

~~~
noirbot
The one other thing that could be a good restock is rice. A solid restock on
quality rice is something that could be really valuable for folks who cook
Asian food regularly, and it's something that people generally make on a
pretty regular basis, but may not have a good local store that has quality
options for.

~~~
seizethecheese
How much does a typical bag cost and weigh?

~~~
noirbot
I usually buy 2-5 lbs, but I know some people who go through 20-40lbs
regularly.

------
davidgh
What I want is a scale on both sides of airport security. I weight myself as I
enter and weigh myself as I exit and if it matches, I know I didn’t leave
anything behind.

Bottomless seems like a clever solution to a common problem. I don’t like
subscribing to auto-refills based on dates as I end up with more than I need
and causes the reverse of the problem I was trying to solve.

~~~
lianaherrera
Interesting use case on both sides of airport security!

Yes exactly. It's almost better to go to the store than having loads of
product sitting around getting stale.

------
curiousfiddler
I have to confess, that I don't understand the business case, but I applaud
your confidence to go after such an extremely niche area (I wouldn't call it a
problem). However, if I convince myself to see the value here, I see the real
product as the solution around using your scale to work on pantry restocking
in general, not just with coffee.

All the best!

~~~
malloreon
As other commenters have noted, there's a broader business case to be made for
a service that knows when you're running out of anything in the home or
office.

------
schappim
Michael and Liana I love what you are doing and the intersection of
electronics hardware and e-commerce.

Some background: Hi I’m Marcus. I’ve previously started an IoT company and
have just made & patented some WebUSB Shipping Scales and a seperate WebUSB
Label Printer (primarily for e-commerce. E.g. creating shipping consignment
labels directly from Shopify and other platforms).

We made our own hardware to automate our electronics components e-commerce
business and now are looking to share it with others.

Whilst my company sells sensors including the load cells found in scales, we
found it way easier to go to China and mod an existing scale, really just
switching out the electronics for our own.

I’m wondering what path you took with regards to the electronics. Are the
insides a mash of Sparkfun and Adafruit parts?

How did you came to the decision that 3D printing was worth it even for an
MVP?

Just out of interest, what wifi module are you using ? I’m guessing an
ESPXXXX?

We skipped wifi because our solution had to be idiot proof. Think the
difficulty in making a process that would enable your grand parent connect the
scale to wifi... I’ve been there, and it still somewhat sucks with cheap wifi
modules.

Have you considered HomeKit?

I wonder at what point other technologies like cellular would make sense.

Sorry for all the questions!

Written on a phone. Excuse the typos.

------
conductr
> universal problem

Slight inconvenience != problem. If this works out, I’m going into the
catheter business because peeing is universal too.

I do wish you best of luck and hope you find people who care enough to buy
your product. This just sounds like an uphill battle to me

Edit to add; I’m not a fan of the weight approach. This assumes a lot and
can’t predict what I’ll need tomorrow. Also, it forces me to put things back
in their place, no thanks.

~~~
seizethecheese
Interesting opinion! I think that restocking is a universal problem. We're
just very used to having to think about it.

------
edmundsauto
Super interesting, congratulations on launching! I think the HN perspective
here ("Why can't they just add a packet of coffee powder?) is bog standard + a
lot of people aren't your market.

The consumer side is interesting and has been addressed, but I think the more
interesting component is you've essentially become an integrated sales partner
for a really big industry. I've worked a lot in leadgen, and it turns out that
most companies are pretty bad at optimizing for conversions. They pay a lot to
keep the inbound requests going, but often they're not very good at handling
the needs of a particular channel (especially when that channel has different
expectations than their normal customer).

By actually making the sale, you turn coffee companies into a branded drop
shipper. That's really really smart, IMO -- you've got the consumer at the
purchase point, which is really the chokepoint for a lot of business.

Congrats again!

~~~
lianaherrera
I'm glad you get it. Thanks for the kind words.

------
alexbecker
I don't see the value-add of a scale over, say, a button. I'm going to be
interacting with the coffee when I use it, why not just leave the decision to
re-order to me then?

~~~
seizethecheese
Thanks for the feedback. We weren't sure a scale would work either. We tested
it with some skepticism.

It turns out, leaving your coffee on a scale is intuitive for most people.
This actually works as a way to do re-ordering without the user having to
think of it at all. It's like a Dash button that presses itself.

For what it's worth, Amazon recently discontinued Dash buttons. :)

~~~
paulgerhardt
We love our Bottomless scale!

The thing I would add is this product works particularly well at our office.
It’s one less task to delegate. At home I can mentally keep tabs on how
supplies are diminishing but in an office environment there are more chaotic
variables that I don’t have visibility into the effect resource consumption.

Also protip: tare (reset to zero) the scale with an airtight container like a
“coffee gator” and store the beans on the scale in that.

~~~
alexbecker
I can see the office use case a lot more than the personal one--because I
might not feel like I have the authority to re-order coffee when it runs out.

Maybe you should market towards offices more? (Your website reads as very
consumer-focused to me right now.)

~~~
seizethecheese
The above is a customer, but I'll jump in here.

We work with offices now! We have 2lb and 5lb bags on the platform.

------
bradknowles
Can you share your designs of your scale?

What I want is a scale that I can put under the cat food or water bowl (or
under the cat litter tray), so that I can measure on a minute-by-minute basis
how much water was drunk, how much food was eaten, or how much poop or pee was
generated, and see those trends over a long period of time.

Cats are really good about hiding weakness and illness, and we've found that
frequently one of the best indicators of health issues is a significant change
in the intake and output processes.

You could then follow that up with a bigger scale you can put under the
food/water bowl area, so that the cat ends up weighing themselves, every time
they go to the bowls.

But I want these things recording this data locally, making it available
locally, and not sharing it with any facility that is outside of my home.

~~~
kickopotomus
You can make one yourself pretty quickly with a Raspberry Pi and a few dollars
(<$20) worth of parts. All you need is a load sensor[0] and an ADC[1].

[0]:
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10245](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10245)

[1]: [https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-
adc/](https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-adc/)

------
Beefin
The problems that this batch of YC companies are solving is quite strange.
Happy to be proven wrong but it doesn’t seem any of the companies in the
winter batch is addressing the RFS problems...

------
ham_sandwich
I just heard about this on Patrick O’Shaughnessy podcast. As a coffee-fiend, I
really should look into becoming a customer, and am also interested to see
what offerings come next.

Reminds me of a Whitehead quote that I like that can also serve as a heuristic
to evaluate business ideas:

“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which
we can perform without thinking about them”

I love that literally everything is abstracted away from the customer. Stuff
just appears like magic.

~~~
tedmiston
Any chance you have a link to the podcast episode?

~~~
seizethecheese
[http://investorfieldguide.com/bottomless/](http://investorfieldguide.com/bottomless/)

------
rangersanger
I hate subscription services and smart home solutions, but you've hit on an
actual solution to an actual problem. I have a subscription with Peace Coffee
right now that I have to manually manage. I only subscribed because it saves a
good bit of cash. I'm sitting on an extra 5lbs of coffee because I'm not good
at that kind of thing. This resolves that.

I'd totally sign up today, but why only a dark roast option? Add light roast
and I'm 100% in.

~~~
seizethecheese
Hey there, you can sign up for any coffee! Sorry our on-boarding flow is a bit
confusing.

Just click the "Shop All Coffee" link.

------
nathan_f77
This is awesome! I've been wanting to build something similar to this for many
years. I also wanted to hack together a prototype with a Raspberry Pi and
scale, and automatically add items to a grocery list whenever the weight
dropped below a certain threshold. Automatic ordering and delivery would be
great too, but I don't think that would be viable in most countries.

I'd love to have a smart fridge / pantry where every spot on the shelf had a
scale, and could detect when things are running low. Unfortunately most of the
big appliance companies seem to be spinning their wheels on strange and
useless "innovations" like putting Twitter on your fridge.

I think starting with a single product and having a subscription model is a
really smart idea. Unfortunately Amazon has an enormous edge, especially after
acquiring Whole Foods. Also the Amazon Dash button, and Amazon Go for
automatic checkout. I've been expecting Amazon to put out a product like this
for a long time (maybe their own smart fridge with automatic restocking.)

So I think it's very brave to go into this market! I hope it works out well
with the coffee, and that you're able to expand into other products.

------
shostack
I'm trying to understand if I'm your target audience, maybe you can help.

I make espresso at home and primarily enjoy premium roasters. By my
spreadsheet logs I average ~39 espresso shots/mo, or ~2.1 bags/mo assuming an
average of 18g shots. But that frequency can vary with things like travel,
etc.

Really what I want is to be able to pick from a variety of my favorite beans
across different roasters, and have them delivered in that narrow window right
as I have ~72g of beans left in the bag (~4 shots worth), and a roast date
that makes it so that just as I'm finishing the bag, I'm about a week past the
roast date of the new bag.

I've avoided the subscriptions from roasters because I dislike the idea of
ending up with bags I won't use before they go bad, or running short of beans
and not having coffee on days when I'm waiting for a delivery. I also like the
flexibility to mix things up and frequently changes the roasters and beans I
buy.

Is this a fit for me?

~~~
subpixel
As someone who ran a retail e-commerce operation for a decade I strongly
advise against building a company to serve customers with such exacting
requirements unless your unit economics are way better than you will see
selling any variety of bean.

~~~
shostack
I was just sharing stats because I happened to have the spreadsheet up. I'm a
data nerd so I modeled out my coffee consumption to prove it paid for itself
to drink better coffee at home.

That said, the convenience of having a bag of beans of my choosing delivered
right when I'm about to run out, but not so far in advance that they start
hitting that 2wk+ staleness threshold (I don't need it to be as exact as I
stated), all without going to the store, is a nice convenience. I'm excited to
see a product like this that can remove one more thing I needed to worry about
from my life.

~~~
subpixel
I didn't mean my comment to sound critical of you. But when it comes to
coffee, you will be hard to please, and hard to please customers are tough
customers.

------
gibsjose
Love the idea. Please try to add Madcap
([https://madcapcoffee.com/](https://madcapcoffee.com/)) to your list of
coffee producers; they are one of the best coffee roasters in the US, in my
opinion. They already have a traditional subscription model that ships all
over the country.

~~~
seizethecheese
We'll be sure to reach out! Thanks for the tip.

~~~
noirbot
I'd also totally recommend Dark Matter. They have a great subscription right
now that, IMO, is fairly approachable, but still interesting enough for folks
who are into unique coffee. They also have one of the best supply chains I've
run into - 2-day shipping to most places, so you're getting really fresh
coffee. Turns out Chicago is nice for that.

Madcap is also excellent, as well as Tandem, Wild Gift, Ritual...

On the other side, if you're not aware, you might take some flack for working
with Four Barrel, since they've had fairly public issues with their founder
sexually harassing folks, and then further shadyness:
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/Four-
Barrel-...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/Four-Barrel-has-
not-yet-shifted-ownership-to-13164101.php)

~~~
seizethecheese
Thanks for the recommendations!

Re: Four Barrel - copied from above:

We have been told by Four Barrel that they are now employee owned and that the
former owner is no longer involved.

My email is available at my account. If you know for certain that the above is
not true, please reach out.

------
timothycrosley
Bottomless is awesome! I've been part of the service for a while now - and
only stopped using it recently because my neighborhood coffee roaster (who I'm
trying my best to support!) isn't on the service:
[https://lovelicton.com/pilrim_coffee_comes_to_oaktree.html](https://lovelicton.com/pilrim_coffee_comes_to_oaktree.html).

I don't necessarily have ideas about how to improve or expand your service -
however since you are in Seattle and utilize Open Source software, I encourage
you to hack on some of those projects with the community at our next
OpenSource hackathon in Licton Springs.
[https://lovelicton.com/images/events/2019/hackathon.jpg](https://lovelicton.com/images/events/2019/hackathon.jpg)
(our next one is April 29th).

Thanks for starting an awesome Seattle company!

~Timothy

~~~
seizethecheese
Glad to hear you churned for a reason other than the service!

We believe companies should find a way to give back to the open source
software they use. We're actively thinking over how best to do this. Thanks
for the links!

------
Grustaf
If this is serious, you are solving the wrong problem.

You assume that you can mail order the coffee your clients want through an
API, this is the hard part. It's not hard for people to know and signal that
they want more coffee. But even worse, you limit coffee variety to a small
fraction, most gourmet beans don't even have websites.

But if we are assuming API-reachable mail ordering, here are some much simpler
solutions:

 _An amazon button next to the grinder.

_ A one click app with a today view widget. It can even pro-actively suggest
that it might be time to order more.

*Automatic re-ordering on a schedule that is easily changeable. Almost everyone will have fairly constant consumption patterns, getting new coffee a few days too early sometimes is not an issue, it won't go bad.

~~~
DebtDeflation
>An amazon button next to the grinder.

Amazon just announced, a little over a week ago, that they are killing the
Dash buttons. As part of the announcement, they said they believe that the
whole concept has outlived it's usefulness and has been replaced by voice
ordering with virtual assistants ("Alexa, order coffee").

I think the real problem was that the idea of having a separate button for
every product was untenable. The same issue faces OP's concept - are we really
going to put a separate network-connected scale under every single consumable
good in the house?

~~~
Grustaf
Yes i know they did, but it would still be a much better solution to this
“problem”. I think those buttons are a nice idea by the way, i’m surprised it
failed!

------
ash663
Just got a subscription! Hope I receive the beans before I run out of my
existing stock, or I'd have to make do with umm chai.

The 3 months free trial is great, but would you be adding a per-month option?
I don't like to lock myself into one service for a year.

------
gdsdfe
I think to better understand why this is great you'll have to listen to the
latest "invest like the best" episode. In short using iot you can make
subscription based services work at an optimal level.

------
h0h0h0
Cool technology concept! Amazon will buy you for sure.

However

"Bottomless was born out of our frustration managing our household stock
levels. We always seemed to be running out of one thing or another."

is infomercial level actor marketing.

~~~
seizethecheese
Thank you! Maybe we're the next Amazon...

We are new to marketing, so this is helpful.

------
moonka
I rolled my eyes reading the synapsis, because I am picky with which coffee I
order, and prefer to grab bags of local roasters. Then I looked at the
roasters you offer and was impressed. I'll be putting in an order once I
finish the bag in my cupboard I just picked up. If only you had Slate* it
would be perfect for me because you'd have 4 out of the 4 I prefer instead of
just 3 out of 4.

*[https://slatecoffee.com/](https://slatecoffee.com/)

~~~
Latteland
I work right by the one in pioneer square. slate is excellent. I hate that
they refer to a latte as espresso + milk though :-)

~~~
moonka
Yea, that's absolutely trippy. Still worth it though. I just started working
near that one, I have to stop by.

------
mchannon
I'd be interested in learning how you plan on keeping up with corporate wi-fi
networks kicking you off, changing passwords periodically, and/or having a
weird login screen (the kind you see at airports, for instance).

Also curious if you're using the same PITA approach to "learning" wifi
credentials that everybody else is (disconnect iOS from primary wifi, connect
to IoT device as wifi, teach it the network and credentials, reconnect iOS to
primary wifi).

------
duado
Make this work for everything in my pantry and you have a customer. Order me a
Whole Foods order that has the breadcrumbs, ketchup, and canned beans that I’m
low on.

~~~
seizethecheese
That's the long run plan. Looking forward to have you signed up in a few
years!

------
puranjay
I didn't think this was a problem that needed to be solved. Then I realized
that I was running out of coffee and unless I make the trip to the store
tonight (tough chance - I have a movie night planned), I will be out of coffee
tomorrow morning.

Not the end of the world scenario, but I'm basically a zombie without my
morning coffee. Not something I want to experience on my Sunday

------
sbov
I would have loved this for baby formula. But I'm not sure if a family buys
that for a long enough time for this to make sense for that. And most people
try to avoid it nowadays. It also keeps for a pretty long time.

Our formula stock was a daily discussion. Will this last through the night?
Running out was always a red alert though. Hungry babies don't care what time
it is.

~~~
Grustaf
Perfect example of where this product is useless. Just have it automatically
deliver on set intervals, that can easily be adjusted. Have a bit too much is
not an issue, it doesn't have to be fresh. Besides, you should be
breastfeeding.

~~~
sbov
> Besides, you should be breastfeeding

Not everyone can. And you get an incredible amount of shit from basically
everyone in society if you don't. We even had one nurse call formula poison.

~~~
Grustaf
Most people can but don’t, especially in the US. Partly because of insane
parental leave rules, mothers are expected to go back to work after a few
weeks. But a lot of people just don’t want to, and that’s about as stupid as
refusing to vaccinate.

------
sshagent
this is a lot better idea than those dash buttons. I wish you all the success,
and hopefully you'll then be available here (UK)

~~~
seizethecheese
Thank you! We're a dash button that presses itself. :)

------
arnihermann
I've been using Bottomless since January. I love how it doesn't make me think
at all – there's just coffee. Always.

------
J253
Love the idea. I assume the prediction about when to reorder is more
sophisticated than just coffee_weight < X, so how well does it deal with
highly variable coffee usage? For example, randomly throughout the week my
wife wants coffee as well so I’ll make a double batch...but there’s no rhyme
or reason to her coffee cravings.

~~~
seizethecheese
Yes, it takes your history into account, so it will learn of this variability
over time.

------
jedmeyers
Happy beta customer for almost a year. The only problem I have experienced is
that that the roaster might take a variable amount of time to actually send
the beans, so there is always a slight possiblity to run out, which is
especially bad on Sunday since USPS don’t deliver and consumption is the
highest during the weekend.

~~~
lianaherrera
Hi, I'm glad that you're a happy beta customer, yes, USPS delivery times over
the weekend are a challenge, we are working on ways we can improve that.

------
Veelox
What I don't understand is why there is the monthly shipping subscription. As
someone who has free coffee at work and only drinks coffee at home on the
weekend it doesn't seem like it would be worth paying monthly shipping. I
would much prefer to be able to choose between the monthly cost and a per bag
cost.

~~~
lianaherrera
Yeah, thanks for your feedback! Would you pay for a set up fee if then you can
get per bag cost?

~~~
Veelox
Possibly, depends on what the fee was.

------
rohan_shah
Why don't you make a whole container with the weight scale at the bottom?
Smart IoT Coffee Container...?

------
thecolorblue
I don't think I would keep my coffee on the scale enough to make it accurate.
We keep our ground coffee in a tin but the tin will move around. It might be
better to put a electricity meter on the coffee maker and record when they
make coffee (and assume they always make a full pot).

------
pkoullick92
Love this product. Very warm feeling getting the "coffee is on the way!" Email
every few weeks :)

~~~
seizethecheese
Great to see a real customer chime in! Glad you're enjoying the service.

------
robotresearcher
I could see using this in a workshop with bins of small parts and components.
Make a DigiKey order when some combination of too-light bins occurs. Shipping
costs are relatively high with screws and spacers, etc, so bundling is a win.
And running out of something is bad for business.

------
VectorLock
Sounds like a fun weekend project to replicate this for a ton of other stuff
and not require a service.

~~~
seizethecheese
It's actually pretty hard to do the re-ordering system. Monitoring would be a
fun easy project, for sure!

------
askvictor
Nice idea and I would use it (if it were got coffee and available in
Australia, which presumably it isn't), but my coffee beans live in the grinder
(which in my case is integrated into the whole espresso machine).

Perhaps partner with grinder or machine manufacturers?

------
tedmiston
The product looks awesome.

Can you add the processing type for all coffees? It looks like the exists,
it's just only shown for some. I really like naturally processed beans!

Edit: Just saw that I can filter by process. Thank you for building this
feature.

~~~
seizethecheese
Thanks! I also love natural processed coffees.

If the filter isn't working, you can find a product that is naturally
processed (CMD+F "natural") and click on the word "natural". Hopefully that'll
activate it. If not, email me and I'll help send a link.

~~~
tedmiston
Whoops, meant to say *the field exists

I meant to say that there are a few listed which don't have the processing
method in the their fields. I went through the signup process on my iPad but
now on my phone am not finding a way back into the coffee browser to give you
example links.

------
Grustaf
I love startup parody as much as the next guy, but this is taking it a bit too
far.

------
tedmcory77
I have about 2 extra years of toilet paper from Amazon because of the broken
“subscribe and save” option. This is a great idea; coffee seems like a great
initial market, curious what the 2nd and 3rd products end up being.

------
graaben
Love the idea! Slightly off topic, but what was your experience applying
for/going through YC as a husband and wife team? I've heard that VC's are
reluctant to invest out of fear of interpersonal issues.

~~~
lianaherrera
The only time we told YC about our relationship was during the application on
the question of "how do we know each other" but other than that, no issue at
all. They have been very welcoming and respectful. I can’t complain at all.

------
yeahitslikethat
Could you make it possible to find the right coffee to begin with by entering
some parameters and and then suggesting the coffee I'll like best?

Even reading through the options of roasters in this comment thread is
overwhelming.

~~~
seizethecheese
We definitely get it! We've been focusing on the re-ordering rather than the
coffee experience, but we plan to do more here.

Let me know what you like and I can make a recommendation.

------
tareqak
Congratulations! I have a similar idea, but more for refilling a particular
glass or mug with a given beverage before it becomes empty (because reaching
the end makes me feel sad now and then :P).

~~~
seizethecheese
How would the refill be delivered to the mug?

~~~
tareqak
The scale is a lot smaller :P : imagine a single-cup coffee machine with a
scale where the cup sits all at your desk. If you remove the brewing
functionality with a desktop-sized tank and a dispenser system, then you have
something that would work for any beverage. There is no delivery beyond what
the appliance would provide (tank to cup). My other inspiration for this idea
was the Norse myth of Thor and drinking horn connected to the sea [0].

[0] [http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/pre04.htm](http://www.sacred-
texts.com/neu/pre/pre04.htm) (pp 63-64, 67)

------
alphagrep12345
I had a friend hack a prototype for the exact same concept in our undergrad
years. This was done as a course project and he discarded it later. I've
always felt it was a good idea though.

~~~
seizethecheese
That's cool!

------
jcims
I think meds might be a useful application of this tech, problem is the
restocking. You could maybe partner with CVS or Walgreens to do the
integration and help pay for hardware.

~~~
oftenwrong
PillPack solves the same problem more elegantly. They pack meds in accordance
with one's prescribed schedule and dosage. Zero-effort, always there when you
need it, no measuring, no counting, no sorting.

~~~
jcims
Wasn't aware of that, looks like a nice program. I was pretty deep into some
local efforts around opiod abuse and something like this could be instrumental
in helping prevent meds pilfering by other people in the household.

------
gubbrora
I think the bag should screw into the scale with a twist or two. Current
design to precarious. Don't make me remember to check bag did not slide off.

~~~
seizethecheese
Cool idea! Right now we're trying to keep the hardware as simple as possible.

~~~
karthikb
Velcro?

------
primitivesuave
Just signed up! What you sold me on was the fresh coffee- the smart scale to
me is just an added plus (and an excellent conversation piece).

------
bbourn
Love what you guys are doing, we’re doing something similar via the trash can,
we should chat!!! Brandon[at]GarbiCan.com

------
brianbreslin
Does this require me to have it always plugged in? Could you make me an alexa
skill? I have an alexa in my kitchen already.

~~~
lianaherrera
No, the scale last for up to 1 year on a single battery charge and we're
working on improving that. We might do an Alexa skill in the future.

~~~
brianbreslin
Is this hardware for the sake of hardware? I think this would be more useful
in industrial or commercial use (bakeries?) rather than home use. If I run out
of coffee, I go to starbucks on my way to work and order on instacart or go by
grocery store on my way home.

------
donkeyd
This reminds me of Juicero. It seems to be solving a problem that only exists
in the Bay area.

~~~
teej
Every office with a kitchen and a coffee maker in the world needs to deal with
reordering supplies. This doesn't seem massively overpriced nor massively
over-engineered. It's basically a scale that auto-presses a dash button for
you.

~~~
donkeyd
A bag of coffee lasts about a day or 2 in our office. Half of it goes into the
coffee machine. Leaving it on a scale to show that it's gone seems to have no
added benefit over ordering 12 bags every month and increasing the order if it
proves too little. We have under 20 employees using the office daily, so
having any more would make a scale especially useless. At home a bag last over
a week. If I get 4 at a time, I only need to order them once a month-ish. This
product won't make much sense in either of these cases. Also, in the
Netherlands there are plenty coffee subscriptions for businesses, adding a
scale won't make that much of a difference. I stick with my point that it
solves a purely SV problem like Juicero did, it makes no sense to me at scale.
(Pun not intended.)

~~~
kkarakk
you just spent a minute typing out a list of problems that could be solved by
their product? stocking,having to vary orders based on usage(that you can't
track but very well could with this product)

also juicero didn't "make" juice it just pushed it out of a bag into a glass,
this is doing actual analytics and inventory management.

------
marco77
I'm always running out of coffee and I like to try all different kinds. I'm in
for the beta test.

------
77yy77yy
Smart move to secure .com beforehand.

~~~
rconti
Easier to remember than bttmlss.com or bottomless.commerce or some such thing,
that's for sure :D

------
edoo
You could make generic jars with longitudinal light detection strips to
determine the fill level.

~~~
seizethecheese
Is a strip cheaper than a load cell?

~~~
edoo
Good question, probably not. One other idea I had was a little light sensing
pebble that acts like a dash button. When it is exposed in your pile of goods
it adds it to your shopping list for approval.

------
ryanwaggoner
First reaction: this is brilliant. So stupidly simple that I can’t believe no
one has done it.

------
copernicussw
Awesome idea and product! Liana and Michael bright my day with Bottomless
every single day!

------
FailMore
What are your views on the environmental impact of regular deliveries for
small goods?

------
_lessthan0
Wow, this is such a boring idea

------
pepelondono
Kuddos for this great concept and best of lucks! We were almost batch partners
;)

~~~
seizethecheese
Thank you. We were accepted on our third application. Keep grinding!

------
trt808
I always keep my coffee beans in the freezer after opening the bag :/

~~~
greenpizza13
You shouldn't freeze your beans. You can get a container which allows the
beans to degas at a constant rate, which keeps them fresher for longer on your
counter. Good beans don't deserve the freezer.

~~~
seizethecheese
I'd love this thread to become a debate on the merits of freezing beans :).

~~~
lukeHeuer
Sure, coffee roaster here. It's false that allowing beans to degas c02
preserves them indefinitely as the parent comment seems to imply. There is
however about a 10-hour window after roasting where degassing of c02 is so
vigorous it impedes oxidation. Freezing vacuum sealed coffee, both green and
roasted beans, will preserve it almost perfectly for years because freezing
decreases oxidation rates by more than 90% and slows the movement of
volatiles.[0] Enough people have documented and tested this and it's very
common for Cup of Excellence winning and other notable coffees to be stored
for extended periods of time this way. There are even cafes with reserves of
such coffee, you can walk in and they'll pull winners from years ago for you
to try. Scott Rao documents the research and resulting evidence of why it's
beneficial to freeze coffee in his book _The Coffee Roaster 's Companion_.[1]
It's just not economical at scale, or necessary. Green coffee is "fresh" for
about 9 months on average, most roasters go through specific lots of coffee
well before that window closes. The sad reality is that most roasted coffee is
well past its peak by the time it reaches the consumer.

You can conduct an at-home experiment yourself by finding a local roaster,
asking when their roast days are and if you can get some coffee from that
batch before it's allowed to rest. Seal and freeze a portion while keeping the
rest in a normal valve-release bag and compare after a week or two.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Coffee-Technology-Michael-
Sivetz/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Coffee-Technology-Michael-
Sivetz/dp/0870552694) [1] [https://www.amazon.com/Coffee-Roasters-Companion-
Scott-2014-...](https://www.amazon.com/Coffee-Roasters-Companion-
Scott-2014-05-04/dp/B01FGOH0AW)

------
michaelmu
Great idea and so many options as a business going forward! Just randomly was
listening to you on Invest Like the Best today. I have an Airbnb listing that
this service would be great for. Looking forward to hearing how your business
evolves and grows in the future!

~~~
lianaherrera
We were wondering whether this would be a good service for Airbnb listings, do
you offer coffee for your guests? Anytime I've been into Airbnbs, my biggest
complain is the bad coffee!

~~~
michaelmu
We do offer coffee but I agree, it's difficult to balance quality with
maintainability (low-cost, minimal supplies, easy cleanup etc). We currently
just use pre-ground drip coffee but I'm thinking about getting a grinder plus
bottomless for the beans. I don't even drink coffee so I find myself checking
reddit for reviews on grinders/coffee etc...

------
Waterluvian
I want this for:

\- when cat litter needs replacing (and refilling)

\- lawn mower gas

\- baby wipes. Diapers.

------
trynewideas
Fuck coffee, can you do this with booze? In bars?

~~~
lianaherrera
Absolutely! Also beer kegs! The sky is the limit.

------
Alexbouaziz1
That sounds awesome! Congrats on the launch -

------
snowwyy
Remind me of the amazon dash button.

~~~
seizethecheese
We are a Dash button that presses itself.

------
TheArcane
Plans de of launching in Canada?

------
kraig
you got 2 weeks to wait until april fools

------
titanix2
Yet another startup that throws tech at a non-issue. People buying cheap
coffee just do that when doing their groceries. And people buying expensive
ones are probably inclined to try new ones based on recommendations of their
local dedicated store. Congratulations, you removed chit-chat with the clerk,
smelling the different varieties of products, buying something unplanned, i.e.
what’s make interesting to go buying coffee.

To add insult to the injury you even charge for a monthly subscription, which
is quite expensive if you compare to any real service (Netflix, a vps vm,
iCloud storage, etc.)

~~~
hyperpape
I’m a big coffee fan, but my routine leaves me buying whatever is fresh from
Counter Culture at Whole Foods. I don’t make regular trips to a coffee shop,
because it doesn’t fit my schedule. If many of those roasters are decent, this
would give me more variety. And today I definitely end up running out of beans
at inconvenient times.

Price: I brew at home, and buy roughly two bags a month, typically $11-14/bag.

So I’d at least consider this.

~~~
benatkin
It sounds like you're closer to being able to find a use for this than many,
because you like to have the same brand of coffee.

Some coffee lovers like me like variety, not just within a brand, but across
brands.

~~~
hyperpape
It's not that I like to have the same roaster, it's that I typically only have
access to one high quality roaster that's fresh. When I go to a coffeeshop
that's downtown or another city, I often get different roasters. That's just
not my routine.

------
praneshp
Good luck!

A year and half ago I had to write down all the spices/ingredients we had and
how much was left, because we kept running out and finding out when cooking.
My wife and I discussed how a scale like this would be awesome!

Hope this works out!

~~~
lianaherrera
Thank you

------
fgoldberg
Have you thought about offering Matcha and Mate? I have been ordering "Mate
Powder" (I call it that way) to prepare Mate at home and cakes as well.

Taste really good and would love to use your service if you include them :)

~~~
lianaherrera
Hi, yes, we have thought about doing so. What company do you buy it from?

~~~
fgoldberg
It is a company which is still in Argentina and they ship. Let me find out the
nme and will send it to you. Do you have an email address?

------
Finnucane
So I need to buy a thing to take up more space on the counter to tell me
something I already know?

