Hi - Muhammad and Ali here.
We're writing this from the roastery in Ajax, Ontario, where we've roasted every bag of coffee for every customer of ours since we started RoastPlan. Today is the first week we're shipping subscriptions outside of our usual Sunday hand-delivery radius. Bags are going out across Canada to people we've never met in cities we've never delivered to. It's a little strange, after years of personally driving routes through Whitby and Pickering on Sunday mornings, to be putting our coffee in a courier's hands for the first time.
This post exists because we figured the people who already trust us — and the people who are about to — deserve a straight account of why we did this, what we're keeping, and what we're not.
What's not changing
If you live in Ajax, Whitby, or Pickering, your coffee still arrives free, same-day, every Sunday. Not "for now." Not "while supplies last." Same-day Sunday hand-delivery is the heart of what we built and it isn't going anywhere. The expansion does not cost local customers anything — not the day, not the price, not the freshness, not the personal touch. If anything, growing the customer base helps us invest more in keeping the local experience exactly the way you like it.
Same goes for the broader GTA — Toronto, Markham, Richmond Hill, Scarborough, North York, East York, Oshawa. Same-day Sunday delivery, same small distance-based fee. Nothing has changed for you.
Why we held off on shipping for so long
We thought about it for years, and we didn't do it for years.
The pitch is the same one every coffee subscription company gives you — "fresh roasted, delivered to your door, anywhere." But we'd already seen what most of those subscriptions actually deliver. Coffee that's a month old by the time you brew it. Coffee that was roasted on a schedule built around shipping convenience, not flavour. Coffee that's "fresh" in the legal sense and stale in the cup.
We didn't want to be one more company quietly doing that. So instead of shipping, we stayed local and turned customers away. Vancouver. Montreal. Halifax. Calgary. People we genuinely wanted to serve, but we couldn't figure out how to ship coffee that would still be good when it arrived. So we said no.
This is a hard thing to admit publicly, but: we said no to a lot of business we wanted, for a lot of years, because we didn't want to compromise on freshness. That decision cost us — financially, and emotionally too. There's a particular kind of frustration in turning away a thoughtful coffee person in Vancouver who clearly understood what we were trying to do.
What changed
Two things, both unglamorous.
First, the courier networks in Canada got faster. Five years ago, shipping a parcel from Ajax to Vancouver was a 5-7 business day affair, sometimes longer. Today, with the right carrier and the right routing, it's 3-4 business days reliably. That moved the math from "won't work" to "maybe works." Then we tested it ourselves for months — sending parcels to friends across the country, asking them to taste blind, asking them to be honest. The verdict was: the coffee held up. The freshness window we cared about was inside the carrier's transit time.
Second, we figured out how to keep the same Saturday-roast cadence for shipping orders. We weren't willing to roast on a different day for our shipping customers — the local Sunday delivery is built around the Saturday roast, and changing that would have meant degrading the local experience to enable the shipping one. The breakthrough was realizing we could roast everything Saturday, deliver locally Sunday, and dispatch standard-shipping packages Monday morning. One cycle, two delivery models, no compromise.
Your beans, if you're a new standard-shipping customer in Vancouver: roasted Saturday, dispatched Monday, in your hands Wednesday or Thursday. That's 4-5 days post-roast on arrival. Right at the start of the rest window when whole beans are at their best. You'll have 2-3 weeks of peak flavour to work with.
That's the experience we're willing to put our names on.
What this means for you, depending on where you live
If you're in Ajax, Whitby, or Pickering: nothing changes. Free same-day Sunday delivery, same as it's always been. We see your name on the route sheet every week. We're glad you're here.
If you're in the broader GTA (Toronto, Markham, Richmond Hill, Scarborough, North York, East York, Oshawa): you have two delivery options now. Same-day Sunday delivery with a small distance-based fee — same as before — or free standard shipping when your order subtotal is $60 or more. If your basket fits the threshold, you can skip the fee entirely. You pick.
If you're anywhere else in Canada: welcome. Standard shipping arrives in 2-4 business days from our Monday dispatch. Free on orders over $60. We've been waiting to meet you.
A few honest things about what to expect
The first cycle is the strangest. Your subscription kicks in on the next Saturday roast after signup. You'll get a confirmation when the order is placed and a tracking link when it dispatches. The waiting feels longer than it is — most people are surprised when the package shows up faster than they expected.
Standard shipping isn't same-day. We won't pretend it is. If you've been a same-day customer and you're moving outside our zone, your delivery experience is going to feel different. Still fresh, still custom-roasted to your spec, still our coffee — but in a sealed bag inside a corrugated box, dropped off by a courier who doesn't know you. We try to make up the difference with everything else (the customization, the freshness math, the responsiveness when something goes wrong) but we won't pretend the parcel-courier model has the same warmth as a Sunday hand-off.
You can still change anything until Saturday 10 AM. Same cutoff for everyone, regardless of delivery method. Pick your roast level, your grind, your quantity, your frequency, your address — all editable until the deadline.
If something arrives wrong, we fix it. Damaged in transit, wrong order, lost package — write to us at hello@roastplan.com. We'll replace, refund, or reship without making you fight for it. We're a small team, we read every email, and we can't afford the kind of customer experience you'd expect from a faceless brand. The good kind of can't-afford.
Why we're telling you all this
A blog post like this is unusual. Most companies announce expansions with a press-release voice and a smiling stock photo. We're doing it as a letter because the people reading this fall into one of two buckets: customers we already have, or customers we're about to. Both groups deserve to know who we are and what we're actually doing.
If you've been with us — thank you. None of this happens without you. We're not expanding because we got tired of the local thing; we're expanding because we got good enough at it to start carefully sharing it with more people.
If you're new and reading this from somewhere we never used to ship — welcome. Build your plan whenever you're ready. There's no commitment, no minimum cycle count, no fees to leave. We'd rather you stay because the coffee is right than because you're stuck.
We're going to be at the roastery Saturday morning, like we are every Saturday. Your beans (or maybe your first beans) will be roasted there, by us. Then we'll get them to you the best way we know how.
Talk soon,
— Muhammad Saqlain & Ali Raza
Co-founders, RoastAroma
