Spilling the Beans on Vigilante’s Coffee Subscription

If you dig great coffee and are local to the area, you know that Vigilante Coffee is the OG of DC specialty coffee. Like Drake, Chris Vigilante (Vigilante’s namesake) started from the bottom, honing his craft roasting small batches of specialty & sustainably-sourced coffee beans in the basement of a DC row house. Fast forward to today and you’ll find Chris, co-owner Ashley Bodine and the Vigilante team brewing and selling their award-winning, sustainably-sourced specialty coffee right here in Prince George’s County at the coffeeshop’s beloved Hyattsville and College Park locations.

Vigilante Coffee Subscription

But what if you can’t make it to Vigilante for your coffee fix as often as you’d like? Or what if you don’t live near the area at all but crave a cup of the milk chocolate-y, juicy, Capim Seco coffee you enjoyed during your recent DC visit? Or what if, like now, you do indeed live near Vigilante Coffee but current circumstances are keeping you and your favorite coffee apart?

Do you give in and drink that muck that Aunty Cheryl gave you for Xmas three years ago, all the while solemnly wondering if she’ll ever get your name right? Maybe. But we’re here to tell you that there is another way. A way that will get you amazing, top notch coffee beans delivered straight to your front door in a way that also helps support this local small business whose coffee, community and vibes you love so much.

We’re talking about Vigilante Coffee’s subscription service! Vigilante graciously offered to try this service and now we’re here to spill the beans on all of it!

Vigilante’s Coffee Club or Create Your Own

Vigilante’s Coffee subscription has two easy options to choose from: The Coffee Club or Select Your Own. The Coffee Club / Single Origin selection suited us best as it gave us an opportunity to try out a variety of coffees from around the world every two weeks (the right frequency for 1-2 coffee drinkers).

Supporting Coffee Farmers

Our subscription kicked off soon thereafter with a bag of “Gloria” coffee beans delivered straight to our front door in a fully recyclable box. (In keeping with its environmentally sustainable practices, the coffee bag is also biodegradable.) Gloria hails from Mexico and promised tasting notes of honey and caramel with “flowery aromatics.”

Also included in the box was a color postcard detailing how and why these particular coffee beans became a part of the Vigilante family. Initially, I figured the postcard to be a fair amount of standard marketing material (read: not very useful). I was wrong.

With these postcards, I learned so much about what went into making the coffee that I was about to enjoy. I learned about how producer Gloria Carrizosa first started as a coffee picker on other farms and then went into business for herself as a way to provide more for her family.

Gloria’s meticulous harvesting process caught the attention of Chris Vigilante, who personally visits each farm and hand-selects the coffees that ultimately land on Vigilante’s shelves. Today, Vigilante is the only roaster in the world to sell Gloria’s award-winning coffee. All this story in one cup of coffee!

Sustainably, Ethically-Sourced Coffee

Our next shipment arrived like clockwork two weeks later; this time, a bag of coffee beans from Suke Quto (Ethiopia). I was excited to read the postcard and learn about how this coffee came to be a part of the Vigilante family. Turns out, Tesfaye – the founder of Suke Quto – “had a dream to develop environmentally friendly coffee and sustain the local community with a consistent income based on high quality specialty coffee. After a bushfire, he worked to conserve the forest by distributing coffee and shade tree seedlings amongst the local community.”

Prior to the postcards, I never thought much about coffee beyond how it tastes. Now, Vigilante’s postcards have got me all in my feelings, elevating my coffee from a simple drink to a meaningful experience I’m chuffed to be a part of.

Get Started with Your Subscription

Getting started with a Vigilante Coffee subscription is tre easy. Go to this page here and either “Create Your Own” subscription (where you select the coffee) or the “Coffee Club” option, where a different selection of the best beans are sent to you with each order. (This is the option we chose, single origin.)

We like to make our coffee via french press, so we opted to have the beans delivered whole though know you can also opt to have them grinded to your liking.

Previously, we would make our own coffee on the weekends. Now, brewing our own coffee is a morning ritual that all of us partake in. The kiddos measure out the beans and love watching the clock count down from 4 minutes to the time when mommy will start speaking like a human again. 😉

Vigilante Coffee Subscription Tips

• If you don’t yet have a favorite coffee or just like the excitement that comes with trying out new coffees, select the Coffee Club / Single Origin option.
• If you order the two bags a month option, you’ll pass the $25 threshold and get free shipping!
• The half-caff is so very worth it. As someone who likes her coffee but can get jittery after too much, this blend is perfect and sooo much better than decaf.

So for the price of what you would pay for a bag of decent specialty coffee beans at say Whole Foods (not talking about Allegro; you can keep that dirty secret to yourself), you can have a bag of ethically and sustainably sourced coffee beans, hand-selected by Chris Vigilante himself, packaged in an environmentally responsible way and delivered right to your front door – even if that’s in Vermont – all while supporting a local small business who we all love and want to see thrive to infinity and beyond! Get to it and subscribe today, Route 1!

*  Photos courtesy of Vlad Tchompalov | Vigilante Coffee (except for the very homemade looking ones – those are all Route One Fun! 😉

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. We received a courtesy coffee subscription from Vigilante Coffee Co., in exchange for our honest review. All opinions expressed here are our own.