Ninety Three Million Miles, One Bag, Every Layer

A Philosophical Position About Where Coffee Comes From

Most coffee packaging solves a logistics problem: identify the origin, list the tasting notes, fit the label. Blanchard's Coffee's new project, Ninety Three Million, starts somewhere else entirely.

We're about ninety three million miles from the sun, give or take a few million depending on the time of year. Close enough to keep us warm. Far enough not to cook us. So far it's the only place we've found coffee. The whole galaxy, and it's just us.

Drew Dayberry, Project Lead

That's the concept. Not a harvest, not a lot size, not a seasonal release. A philosophical position about where coffee comes from and who makes it possible, as detailed in Sprudge's coverage of the project.

Beyond Farm-to-Cup

The phrase farm to cup has become specialty coffee's default shorthand for transparency. But anyone who has spent time behind a bar knows the line is messier than that.

Cofermentation (a process where coffee cherries ferment alongside other fruits or yeasts to develop new flavour compounds) doesn't fit on a label. Neither does the decision a producer made three years ago to plant a strange variety nobody else wanted. Neither does the roaster's choice to drop the batch fifteen seconds earlier than the profile suggested.

It's not farm to cup, it's so much more nuanced than that. Techniques at origin, at the mill, at the roastery, then finally the person brewing it. Each step adds a layer.

Drew Dayberry

In Sofia, roasters like Aroma Coffee understand this layering intimately. With an SCA Roastery Diploma and a commitment to roasting from green beans, their approach treats the roastery as a creative station, not a final checkpoint.

One Year, One Bag

The project took a full year from concept to roasted coffee in a bag. Kiersten Marshall, the design lead, synthesised the entire philosophy into a single bag and a single sticker.

That was the whole point. One bag, one sticker. It means we can launch on our own timeline, at whatever size the lot calls for.

Drew Dayberry

The relationships came first. The aesthetics followed.

Clouds, Numbers, Layers

Look at the bag and you see clouds. Look closer and you see number clouds floating through the design. The team describes it as A Beautiful Mind, but coffee.

There are as many layers in the design as there are in a coffee.

Drew Dayberry

The visual layers mirror the conceptual ones. For details that won't fit on a label, there's a QR code. Scan it and you get the full origin story: the cofermentation technique, the producer's name, the process specifics.

We don't want to dumb the process down to fit a label. We'd rather celebrate all that creativity where there's room for it.

Drew Dayberry

What This Model Unlocks

The traditional specialty coffee release depends on lot size. A roaster finds an exceptional coffee, buys what they can, designs packaging, and hopes the harvest is big enough to justify the investment. When the lot is small, the story often goes untold.

Ninety Three Million inverts that constraint. One bag, one sticker, any lot size.

Out on farms all over this small world, growers are pulling the best they can out of a harvest that only gives so much. Some years are good, some are bad, and nobody promises you a harvest. A few of them are forging their own paths anyway. Cofermentation, interesting processes, secret techniques, strange varieties. Those are the ones we're celebrating.

Drew Dayberry

The coffees are available at 93000000.net. The more interesting question: what happens when packaging becomes a platform for storytelling rather than just product identification?