We Read All 141 of Our Reviews. Here's What Actually Stood Out.
Not the star rating. The actual words people used, unprompted, before we asked them to say anything.
Real customer data
We went back through every single review Allways Coffee has ever received on Judge.me. All 141 of them, going back to the first one in January 2022. We weren't looking for the star rating, we already knew that (it's 5.0, which is nice, but not that interesting on its own). We were looking for the words people actually used when nobody was coaching them.
Some of it was exactly what you'd expect. Some of it wasn't. And one thing came up often enough that we need to correct it properly, in public, rather than just quietly editing a metafield and hoping nobody notices.
What people talk about, unprompted
Nobody asked these people to mention any of this. These are just the words that kept showing up.
That last one is the useful bit. We put a fair amount of effort into brand storytelling, roaster background, the whole "supporting the local scene" pitch. Turns out that's not really what people are telling other people about. What they're telling other people about is that a real person answered their question, and that the coffee is genuinely local and genuinely different each time. Good to know. Saves us writing more paragraphs nobody asked for.
What people actually said
Is Allways Coffee packaging compostable?
Short answer: we can't promise that, and we should have corrected it sooner.
Going through the reviews, we noticed something. A handful of customers described our packaging as "eco-friendly," "biodegradable," or "compostable." We never said that. But it's been sitting there in genuine, well-meaning reviews, and those reviews show up on our own product pages. So functionally, our site has been making a claim we never actually confirmed.
We actually used to be zero-waste
This isn't us dodging the question. Early on, Allways ran as a genuinely zero-waste subscription. We packed every order ourselves, so we controlled the packaging end to end and could stand behind that claim properly.
Since then, the model changed. Each fortnight's roaster now ships directly, which is what lets us actually rotate through fourteen independent SA roasters instead of just repacking one roaster's beans under our own label. That's a trade-off we made on purpose, because it means fresher coffee and real variety. But it also means we lost central control over packaging, since each roaster uses whatever they normally ship in. Some of it may be compostable or recyclable, some may not, and we haven't audited every roaster to say for certain.
So the old claim doesn't hold anymore, and we'd rather say that plainly than let a few kind reviews keep saying it for us. If packaging specifics matter to you, ask before you subscribe and we'll tell you exactly what that fortnight's roaster uses.
A different local roaster, every fortnight
No story required. Just fresh coffee from independent Adelaide roasters, matched to how you brew, shipped Australia-wide.
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