The entire product range, as listed
House Blend
$16.00
Dark Roast
$16.00
Decaf
$16.00
Three products. Two facts each. One price.
We searched the rendered page for any country, cooperative, altitude, process or varietal. Zero matches, and zero tasting notes. When every bag costs the same and none of them says where it grew, the roaster has priced itself as a commodity and told the buyer nothing that would justify otherwise.
Origin facts per bag
Farm, altitude, process, varietal
Distinct prices
Every bag was $16.00 before
Wholesale accounts named
The book existed; the site never mentioned it
The shop: from three identical bags to named lots
Before
House Blend, Dark Roast, Decaf. A name, a stock photograph and $16.00, three times over.
After
Each lot carries its farm, altitude, process and varietal, and the price varies with what is in the bag.
On a phone
Origin, altitude and tasting notes stay on the same screen as the price, at phone width as well as on desktop.
The opening: from a template to a roastery
Before
A cup on a table, a free-shipping bar, and copy that would work unchanged for a candle shop.
After
A roast journal: what is on the bench this week, where it came from, and who grew it.
The identity
Built from nothing, because there was nothing to revise.
Volta had a logo from a marketplace and a theme from a store. This is the only engagement in this set where the brand did not exist before the site did.
Great coffee, delivered
Brown, a sans, and a headline that names a category rather than a roaster. Nothing here could only be Volta.
This week on the bench
A serif with a printed feel, warm paper, and one copper. The system is built to hold a changing roster of lots rather than three permanent products.
You cannot charge specialty prices while describing a commodity.
Volta was already buying good coffee and roasting it well. The gap was entirely in what the site was willing to say about it. The outcome figures at the top of this document come from the client's own reporting rather than from our measurement.
The explorations
Three directions were designed. One shipped.
Each was built as a full working page, not a mood board, so the choice was made against real type, real spacing and real interaction. All three are shown here, with the reason the two that lost did not ship.
Roast Journal
warm editorial · serif · origins + bestseller feature
Puts origin, altitude and process next to the price, which is the asymmetry the old shop never closed.
Open full page ↗Dark Roast
moody + cinematic · Playfair · gold accents, community grid
Looked like a wine label and buried the origin detail underneath the mood.
Open full page ↗Daily Grind
bold modern commerce · Archivo + mono · tasting-notes ticker
The tasting-notes ticker moved the one piece of information the buyer came for faster than it could be read.
Open full page ↗In context
