Last year we thought we were flogging a dead horse, but come on… Back to back wild years. But, we always look for the positives, the wins, the good stuff, the things we’ve done, the improvements we’ve made, the stuff we’re proud of. While it’s been a trying time, we’re pretty lucky to say, ‘we’re ok, we’re good, we’re solid. Bring on next year’.
Like we do each year, we’ve taken a little time to reflect on the milestones of the year past, and 2021 wasn’t without a few beauties to take straight to the pool room.
First of all, we’d like to acknowledge our cafe-owning, number-crunching, hospo-hero customers. We’re so proud to work with a diverse group of cafe operators running all across New Zealand and Australia. We’re proud of the mahi they’ve put in to get through what has been described —only a million times — as ‘unprecedented times’. You’ve been accepting, adaptive, resourceful, and hard working. We raise our mugs to you.
Now let’s talk coffee — we roasted over 600 tonnes of coffee, put coffee in a can (don’t worry New Zealand, it’s coming soon), put our Instant in a jar and added over 20 new coffees to our menu.
While the going was good, we wrapped up the Cheers Tour in NZ. 80+ stops across 8 weeks all around the North Island. If you saw us, said hello, or hosted us — thank you. It was grass roots, but so fun and so worth it. Since then, the caravan has been collecting a bit of bird shit parked up in the roastery carpark, but it’ll get a dust off and make an appearance in the dirty South early next year.
Aligned with our purpose of ‘Better Coffee for All’, we formed a relationship with Countdown, which now sees our coffee available in 117 stores across New Zealand. The result? Fresh premium quality that’s easily accessible.
Without a doubt, our biggest project of the year was the transition to our new paper recyclable packaging (in the midst of a pandemic nonetheless). It took bloody ages to get it here, but it’s now in use and we’re chuffed. This change was a massive (and necessary) step to help reduce our waste and to move to something easier for our customers to work with. This packaging transition saw the end of our Coffee Supreme Recycling Program, a partnership with TerraCycle that diverted 594,134 bags from landfill.
2021, also saw us launch our official partnership with the Mental Health Foundation of NZ. We often say great things can happen over a cup of coffee, including connecting with a friend or colleague and creating the space for conversations about their mental health and wellbeing. So, the partnership felt natural. To celebrate, we launched Nicaragua La Huella and 100% of the proceeds are donated to MFHNZ. Next year, we’ll launch a similar partnership in Australia.
We love coffee, but we also love other everyday stuff too. This year we made a cake with the Caker, a T-shirt with DEUS and one with Parrotdog, a mug and another T-shirt with Parlour (we like T-shirts). We launched a new range of our own T-shirts, a pen with Pilot, a pour over kit with Stanley and a flying disc made from recycled flying discs.
All in all, this year was actually pretty good. But, to say we’re excited for next year, is an understatement. Naturally, we’ll be here sourcing, roasting and sending coffee to you. 2022 will also have some milestones dotted throughout it — we’ll be celebrating our 20th birthday in Australia and cutting the ribbon on our new in Sydney, too. We’ll probably make a few new t-shirts too. Maybe even some socks.
Thank you for choosing Supreme, we couldn’t do it without you.
