Freshness nobody can see
Roast date is the roaster’s biggest advantage, and most stores bury it on the bag.
Design study · E-commerce
Fernhollow Coffee Roasters
Brand and online store for a small-batch roaster, built to turn one-off orders into subscribers who never run out.
- Project
- Design study
- Sector
- Food and drink · specialty coffee
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
- Year
- 2026
- Services
- Brand identity, Website Design, Email and SMS
Overview.
Fernhollow is a brand and online store for a small-batch coffee roaster in Brunswick, Melbourne. We built it to show how we help a direct-to-consumer brand turn a first order into a subscription, without discounting its way there.
The challenge.
Small roasters sell a better product than the supermarket and charge for it, but online they compete with marketplaces and big brands that outspend them. A first order is expensive to win, so the business lives or dies on whether the customer comes back.
Subscriptions as an afterthought
Repeat orders pay the bills, yet subscribing is often a separate app with its own checkout.
One-off buyers who drift
Without a reason to come back, a happy first customer orders from someone else next time.
Our approach.
Foundation first, in this order, so each step makes the next one work harder.
Position
Freshness as the promise: roasted on Monday, at the door by Thursday, said on every page.
Identity
A fern mark and a warm, bookish serif that feels like a neighbourhood roastery, not a commodity.
Store
Coffee named by taste, not origin codes, with one tap to add or subscribe.
Subscriptions
Coffee, grind and frequency in three steps, with pause, skip and swap built in.
Retention
Emails timed to when the bag runs out, with brew tips and next week’s roast.
What we built.
01
Identity
A fern frond inside a roundel, a characterful serif and a palette taken from the roastery: espresso, crema and clay.
FernhollowCoffee Roasters
FernhollowCoffee Roasters
- Espresso#2A1D17
- Clay#B95A31
- Fern#3F6B4A
- Crema#E8D6BF
- Oat#F5EFE6
- Ink#1B1411
AaYoung SerifHeadlines, coffee names and prices
AaWork SansTasting notes, cart and checkout
02
Freshness on the first screen
The roast date is the headline and the product. A live “roasted 3 days ago” note sits next to the bags.
- Roast-to-door promise in the headline
- Free delivery on subscriptions, stated up front
- Pause or skip any time, to lower the risk of subscribing
03
Coffee named by taste
Each coffee leads with how it tastes, then where it’s from, so a new customer can choose without knowing origins.
04
A subscription in three steps
Coffee, grind, how often. The saving and free delivery show as the customer chooses, not at checkout.
05
Made for ordering on a phone
Most reorders happen on a phone. Add to cart and the subscription builder are designed for a thumb.
How we’d measure it.
A design study has no results to report. On a live project, these are the numbers in the monthly report, measured against the starting baseline.
- Share of first orders that become subscriptions within 30 days
- Subscriber retention at three and six months, and the main reasons for pausing
- Revenue per customer over 12 months, from orders and subscriptions together
- Opens and reorders from the “bag running out” emails
- Cost of winning a first order, by channel
Your project could be next.
Start with a free audit, then see exactly what we’d build and in what order.
Free audit firstNo obligationPlain-English results