More than 20 years ago, the Valmorbida family started a coffee company with a single origin and a single goal: to supply Melbourne with premium, perfectly roasted coffee.
From those modest beginnings, DC Coffee grew and grew. Today, you can find their coffee in cafes, Coles supermarkets, and in the homes of tasteful amateur baristas across Australia.
As their proud packaging supplier, the Abbe team caught up with Rob to chat about the journey so far and how great packaging helps them to tell their brand story and communicate their values.
DC Coffee was born in Melbourne in 2002. Can you tell us a little about the company and its ethos?
Already established as a leader in the food service industry, the Valmorbida family saw an opportunity to supply Melbourne with premium coffee. With that, Caffe Ducale was born and a state-of-the-art roasting facility was soon established in Preston.
We quickly grew across the country and grew our team of passionate coffee professionals. In 2009, as Melbourne’s coffee industry began being recognised as one of the best in the world, we rebranded from Ducale Coffee to DC Coffee and updated our blends to have a stronger focus on specialty coffee.
As a business, we do everything with an ethical approach. From our fair trade coffees, relationships with farmers at origin, an ethical supply chain to supporting grassroots community programs and emerging artists, we’re in it for good.
Your specialty coffee bags and packaging are renowned for their vivid colours and brilliant artwork by local artists. How would you describe the DC Coffee style?
The DC Coffee style is as creative as the people who are fuelled by our coffee. We’ve always been fascinated by the connection between coffee and creativity. Every bag of DC Coffee is a combination of our farmers, roasters, artists and experts expressing themselves through their craft. And we quickly realised that our bags and packaging were a unique opportunity to showcase not only our own personality and values, but those of all the people who get joy out of what we do.
To stand out in an increasingly competitive market and combine our passion for coffee with our passion for the arts, we teamed up with local artists to create bag and packaging artwork which really resonated with the creative community. Soon, some of Melbourne’s best-loved cafes were displaying DC coffee as artwork on their shelves.
What role does great packaging play for your company?
Our brand is our DNA. It influences how we speak, how we behave and how we communicate with our customers. In today’s world, your brand isn’t just your logo. It’s a set of human experiences that occur in different places.
The DC Coffee brand is about helping our customers to find daily connection through creative expression, art and culture. We know that our customers like our coffee because it helps them fuel their expression, sparking moments of curiosity and fun. They value our authenticity and our ethics. Plus, they know it tastes awesome, every time.
We were very conscious that every element of our brand needed to be in harmony. There can’t be any gap between what our brand promises our customers and what the experience is actually like for them. As far as we were concerned, every part of our brand mattered. And of course, packaging is a core part of the experience our customers enjoy. In many ways, it’s the first part of their interaction with us. And we all know how many chances you get to make a first impression!
How did your work with Abbe begin? What were your particular needs that needed addressing?
We knew our cardboard packaging was a great opportunity for us to elevate the experience we provided for our customers, but we weren’t getting as much value from it as we could.
Our team asked our suppliers if they could recommend any locally-based packaging providers. Without hesitation, Abbe was put forward as a trusted partner that shared our values, and we could easily work with. We were really struck by how quickly that supplier recommended Abbe!
We needed a local supplier that understood the demands of fast-moving retail goods and also could support our vision and values. Our industry and the way we work means we have lots of short-term projects, and quick turnaround times are the norm. We quickly found that’s where Abbe really excels.
DC Coffee recently introduced international shipping using some stunning custom mailing boxes for your products. Can you tell us about the experience of designing and producing those?
DC Coffee currently uses four different packaging boxes, all featuring custom artwork by local designers. So, they all have a different look and feel. But they’re all manufactured and printed by Abbe.
We wanted our packaging boxes to be visually appealing, vibrant and full of colour to stand out from the crowd and reflect our brand. Whenever one of our customers receives one of our parcels, we want them to know it’s a DC Coffee package. We want them to tell their friends about our coffee and the packages our coffee comes in.
Just like our diverse coffee blends, we’re always aiming to appeal to many different individual tastes and styles. We deliver specialty quality in the cup, backed by authentic stories which provide our customers with moments of cultural connection and individual expression.
What do you appreciate most about working with Abbe?
There are already so many things to worry about every day, so we really value having strong relationships with our suppliers. Knowing that we can completely trust Abbe is great peace of mind.
When we are bringing new products to market, we can automatically assume that Abbe can meet our requirements. That’s how much we trust them. Everything we have asked for and every project we have explored has been met with a proactive attitude and enthusiasm that adds to our momentum.
Customer experience with our products is imperative. We want our customers to be amazed by every touch point – so that when they finally drink our coffee, it’s a total experience. Our packaging is just as important as the product inside. Even if it’s just a shipper in the mail, it must be awesome because that’s what we’re promising. Abbe understands this. It’s never a battle to get them to deliver high-quality products.
Are there plans for more of those beautiful packaging designs?
Absolutely! We are always keen to work with Abbe on bringing our packaging designs and creative concepts to life.
