Evie Chapman Blogger: Nice Package: Brandywine Coffee Roasters In Wilmington, Delaware

Brandywine Coffee Roasters is a young company from Wilmington, Delaware. They have been roasting for two years and have an impressive selection of coffee—all with custom illustrations done by local Delaware artist and resident screenprinter Todd Purse. These colorful packages are all lovingly screenprinted by hand and worthy of framing. We talked to Todd Purse digitally to find out more.

As told to Sprudge by Todd Purse.

Tell us a bit about Brandywine Coffee Roasters!

Brandywine Coffee Roasters is a relatively new specialty coffee roasting company in Wilmington, Delaware. We have five employees including the owner who has run cafes in Delaware since the early 90’s and decided to get into roasting about two years ago. We take pride to artfully source the best coffees we can find around the world and build strong relationships with producers, importers, and everyone else in all the small steps along the way. After selecting this little pieces of art, we take time to carefully dial in a profile that highlights the complexity and awesomeness that exists naturally in the coffee. Lastly, we want each of these individual works of art to live in a package that has as much thought and creativity put into it as the handling of the coffee.

When did the coffee package design debut?

This is the packaging we launched the company with about two years ago, the illustrations and printing technique has grown and really found the groove over the last few months, but this is pretty much exactly how we started.

Who designed the art on the bag?

I design all the bags and manage our in-house screen printing shop where we hand print every retail bag we sell. I’m a Delaware local artist that have lived and work with here my whole life.

What coffee information do you share on the package?

On the packing we try to make sure all the basic details are included (altitude, varietal, producer, origin, processing, and tasting notes) as well as some small facts from the producers/regions these coffees are grown.

What’s the motivation behind that?

We like to make sure that all the traceable information is easily available to our consumers so they can have a clearer picture of what goes into making the coffee we share with you so special. But we don’t want to overload anyone with to much information either, so we try to strike a balance highlighting what is special about each individual coffee.

Where is the bag manufactured?

We work with a local paper company that we had a relationship with before the roasting operation started. They source our coffee bags from Dow Summit. We had to try several bags to find one that we could do the hand printing we wanted to do and luckily these were the perfect fit.

Tell us about the wax seal!

The Brandywine Valley and its history of illustration is a huge inspiration to us. The wax seal was a way to tie our usually more modern bags to the old world aesthetic preserved in the Brandywine.

Is the package recyclable/compostable?

We are actually looking to convert to a more recyclable option right now, we are working with some samples to see how the printing will hold up on them. Our current bags are made from eco-friendly FSC certified Kraft Paper.