Coffee through the letterbox, and the one thing we haven't measured yet

What "letterbox friendly" actually means

Two things can happen when a bag of coffee reaches your address. It goes through the door and lands on the mat, or it doesn't, and someone has to be there to take it. The card, the depot, the redelivery slot and the Saturday morning drive all follow from that one difference.

Royal Mail price post by format, not by what is inside it. Letters, Large Letters and parcels are separate formats with separate limits, and an item stays a Large Letter only while it sits inside a maximum length, width, thickness and weight. Thickness is the limit that tends to decide it, in our reading. A bag of coffee is not long and it is not heavy by postal standards. It is the depth of the bag once it is filled, and once the valve has done its work, that pushes an item out of the format and into a parcel.

We are not printing the limits on this page. Royal Mail publish the current maximum length, width, thickness and weight for a Large Letter themselves, they revise them, and a page like this one goes stale the day they do. Read them at the source and measure against those, not against us.

One thing worth being clear about. Large Letter is a postal pricing format. It is not a promise about your front door. A 1930s hardwood door, a uPVC replacement, a communal entrance with a bank of slots, and a landlord's flap with two brushes and a draught excluder in it are four different apertures. An item can sit comfortably inside the format and still not clear a particular slot.

Why 250g, and what the size is actually doing

Nobody invented 250g for letterboxes. At a 15g dose a 250g bag is sixteen cups and change, which means the last cup in the bag is still reasonably close to the roast date printed on the front.

It is also, as far as we can tell, about the largest amount of roasted coffee that can go in a valved bag and still stand a chance of staying inside the Large Letter limits once the bag, the label and the air are counted. Go up to 500g or a kilo and you are posting a parcel, whatever the bag looks like flat.

So the size is doing two jobs at once. It is enough coffee to be worth posting without being more than a household gets through in a few weeks, and it is the amount the post will take cheaply. That is why so much UK coffee is sold in 250g bags, and why you will not see a kilo described as letterbox friendly.

Why this matters more if you sleep in the daytime

Delivery is attempted at 11:40. You went to bed at 08:15 after a run of nights, so you are three hours into seven. Either the knock doesn't wake you, or it does and you don't get down the stairs in time. The card goes through the door. You find it at 17:00. The delivery office shut at 13:00 and you are back on at 18:00 tomorrow.

For anyone on a normal week that costs an evening. On nights it costs you sleep or it costs you the parcel, and the sleep usually wins.

That is the whole reason this page exists. None of it is an argument that the coffee is better. It is an argument about whether the coffee arrives without anyone having to be awake.

How to stop losing deliveries when you sleep days

None of this needs you to buy anything from us. Most of it takes one afternoon and then holds for years.

• Measure your own letterplate once. Open the flap, measure the height of the opening and its width, and save both numbers in your phone under "letterbox". Height is usually the number that decides it. After that you can read anyone's "letterbox friendly" claim against a measurement instead of hoping.
• Set a safe place or a nominated neighbour with the carrier, not with the shop. Retailers pass on an address. Carriers hold the standing preference, so set it with them and check which options they currently offer, because carriers change them.
• Put a note on the door that says what you want done, not why. "Please post. Do not knock." Nobody needs to know your rota.
• Ask before you have anything sent to the station. Some services do not accept personal post at a work address, and a station kitchen is not a post room. Check the local policy first rather than after.
• Read the delivery day on the tracking, not the dispatch day. A 48-hour service is counted by the carrier's own rules rather than by two days on a calendar, so read their current service description before you count.
• If you share a communal entrance, find out where post actually ends up before anything is sent to you. A hall table, a concierge desk and an unlocked lobby are three different problems.

What we've measured, and what we haven't

We have not measured a finished, filled pack against the Large Letter format. That measurement is an outstanding job on our list. It has not happened because there is no finished, filled pack yet. Nothing is roasted, nothing has shipped, and every order on this site is a pre-order.

So here is what this page does not say. It does not say our bag will go through your letterbox. It says the 250g pack is designed to go through a letterbox, which is a statement about the size we chose and why we chose it, and nothing beyond that.

When we have measured one, we will publish the filled pack's length, width and depth, its weight, the date it was measured and the format limits it was measured against. If it clears the format we will say so with the numbers next to it. If it doesn't, we will say that instead, the packs will go as parcels, and this page will change before anyone orders on the strength of it.

The kit is a separate matter and always will be. A flask, a hoodie, a beanie, a cap or a mug is a parcel. Those are made to order rather than held in stock, the dispatch window goes on the kit pages once the supplier lead time is agreed, and nothing about them goes through a door.

How an order gets to you

Free UK delivery on every order while we launch. UK addresses only for now. The intention is a tracked 48-hour service with no signature needed, and the delivery page will name the exact service before the first dispatch.

Everything on the site is a pre-order. You pay now, then we buy the green through a UK importer and roast in the UK in small batches. Cancel any time before it ships for a full refund, no reason needed, and the cancellation rights you have after delivery are set out on the delivery page.

The roast date will be printed on the front of every bag, with a 12-month best-before. Both will be labelled, so neither can be mistaken for the other.

Every ten 250g bags sold send 250g to a UK emergency services station kitchen. Forty bags send a full kilo. One in ten is a target we hold as volume grows, not a ceiling we stop at, so selling past the plan does not stop the tenth bag. Credits build up and ship in consolidated runs once a station's share reaches 4kg, addressed to the station. The counter reads zero as at 4 August 2026 and stays at zero until the first bag ships.

Two blends are in the first roast. The rest follow, and the decaf is not roasting at launch, so it is not on sale and we are not taking money for it.

• Blue Light Blend, 250g£16.50

  Medium-dark house blend. The roast brief asks for something that goes flat rather than sour if it sits on a hotplate, and we will publish how it actually behaves once it has been roasted and tasted.

• Graveyard Blend, 250g£16.50

  Dark roast, specified at 15% robusta by weight of green coffee before roasting, and that will be declared on the pack.

• Coffee Club, ten 250g bags£140

  £14 a bag, a one-off run rather than a rolling subscription, and an eleventh is credited to a station you name.

• Handover Blend and First Call Blend£15.50 and £16.50

  Not in the first roast, so you cannot order either yet, and we would rather say that here than let you find out at the checkout.