Christopher Bean Coffee Company

Christopher Bean Coffee Company sells flavored beans, pods and K-cups out of New Smyrna Beach, Florida, mostly through online orders and a subscription program. The product list is what you'd expect: Amaretto pods, Kona beans, flavored K-cups, fruit-flavored coffees. The product, though, is not the issue worth flagging.

The issue is the shipping and the subscription. Multiple customers report two to three week delays between order and delivery, with shipping labels created weeks before the package moves. That label-creation-without-shipment pattern is a tell that an operation is struggling with fulfillment and not getting ahead of it with customers. There is no proactive notice when delays happen. You wait, and the tracking doesn't update.

The subscription program has its own problem. Customers signing up for the auto-renew discount have come out the back end paying more than month-to-month buyers, which is the opposite of how a subscription discount is supposed to work. Read the fine print, and if you do subscribe, watch the billing carefully.

There's also a 2013 local-news story about the owners that some customers say they wish they had searched for before ordering. Look it up if you're considering a large order.

If you want flavored pods, don't need them quickly, and are comfortable paying retail rather than fishing for subscription savings, the order will eventually arrive. If you need coffee in a week, source elsewhere.