Kaldi's 2023 Year in Review

New bags, a merger, new cafes. Different in their scope, but all created with the same love of coffee and service that drives us every year. 

As another year draws to an end, we like to look back and celebrate all the moments that brought us joy. Some made us proud, some were learning moments, but all were only possible because of your support. 2023 was an action packed year, filled with familiar and new faces, old relationships made stronger and new friendships forged.

As we begin planning and looking forward to 2024 with excitement, we hope you’ll look back with us fondly as we pick some of our favorite memories from the past year.

This time last year, we were looking forward to two big events: the arrival of our 3thiopia blend and the inaugural STLSC season kicking off in the spring. We tend to see everything through the lens of coffee around the roastery, so there was palpable excitement at being the official coffee of Saint Louis’s brand new MLS team. As our 3thiopia made its customary late January launch, our sales team and trainers worked to get the cafe at STLSC’s Pavilion store ready for opening day. Meanwhile, our marketing team was dreaming up a promotion unlike we’d ever put into action.

The Game Day Club Tumbler was so successful that we sold out 3 batches of this tumbler that gets you free drip coffee on STLSC game days. We can’t wait to see all the tumblers coming through our doors as STL City SC game days kick off again this coming spring.

Spring always puts a twinkle in our eye, as March 14th lets us put a spotlight on our hometown of Saint Louis, while April 1st gives us a chance to “launch” a fun gag on social media. 314 Day saw a custom sleeve and a limited release Fleur de Lis Blend.

Kaldi's Coffee and Gioia's Deli "Hot Salami Blend"

On April Fool’s Day, we collaborated with Gioia’s to send up coffee blends, with our new “Hot Salami Blend,” which was tempting enough to elicit a few “where can I buy this?” emails. 

In Saint Louis, we opened our first cafe in Saint Charles, celebrating the drive-thru’s opening with a ribbon cutting and giveaways. And we also entered the final build phase of our cafe in Washington University’s Neuroscience Research Building cafe, just minutes from our Roastery, which opened a few months later.

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Our new cafe in the NRB at the Wash U. Med Center

 

Summer brought the extremes of both exciting and harrowing news from close business partners. Honolulu Coffee Company, part of our brand family, supplies Kona Coffee for our Amerikona Blend from their farm on the Big Island each year. This year, they sent urgent word of the Lahaina disaster as it unfolded on Maui. Our team in Saint Louis leapt into action, creating a donation campaign, activating the “round-up” donation feature on our cafe registers for the first time, and fundraising for our co-workers on Maui who lost their homes to the fire. We also immediately created a coffee blend — Kokua Lahaina — directing all profits to the fund.

Across all of our brands, we raised over $40,000 for our team, and sent emergency supplies to Maui, while donating to local relief organizations on the ground as well.

On the mainland, we announced our merger with long time friends, Dancing Goats Coffee. We’ve known and loved the owners and operations of Dancing Goats for decades, and their presence in the Pacific Northwest and Atlanta dovetails perfectly with our Atlanta cafes and Saint Louis headquarters.

Dancing Goats Cafe at Ponce City Market in Atlanta

The year’s been a learning experience as our teams have worked more and more closely, traveling to each other's locations and having weekly calls in a mutually educational relationship.

The Baked Maple Pumpkin Latte 

Fall and Winter bring some of our most cherished releases of the year, as the Baked Maple Pumpkin Latte signals the beginning of the festive season. This year, we celebrated our favorite holiday, National Coffee Day, with a special release we called the Irrational Coffee Day Blend.

Irrational Coffee Day Blend

Why the name? It was a flavor packed blend of 7 different coffees with wildly different processing methods from our long time friends at Gold Mountain Coffee in Nicaragua, blended with a prized Colombia Gesha from long time producing partners, the Imbachi family.

 

The coffees included another excellent coffee from our friends in Nicaragua at Gold Mountain Coffee, this time a mix of Caturra and Bourbon varieties from the farm of Don Roger and Isabel. Everyone who pre-ordered Spooky received a special 3oz pouch of the Nicaragua as a stand-alone bonus.

A tribute to the original, historical coffee blend Mocha Java, our ‘Tis the Season features a Sumatran and an Ethiopian coffee, wrapped in custom packaging from the Firecracker Press. This year's packaging reflects the many homes and places that make up our community, all being brought together by coffee. 

Coffee is our passion, but drinking coffee alone is a lesser pursuit than sharing it with someone. The relationships we’ve built over the years, from coffee producers to our teams in Hawaii to every one of you who walk through our doors daily give our days meaning, fill us with joy, and drive us to pursue quality in everything we do. Creating new blends to share with you, collaborating with old friends to bring a smile to your lips, and forging new partnerships as we work to make the future that little bit better, all of these things make our 2023 a broad success.

We’ve got more great things in store for 2024 and can’t wait to see you in the new year.