Match Made Coffee 2024: Coffee & Cookies, A Perfect Pair
We chat with Alex Moen, Co-Founder of California-based Match Made Coffee, and learn how he and his sister became the trendsetters of coffee and cookie pairing.
What inspired Match Made Coffee?
Match Made Coffee was launched in 2016 by my sister and me, so it is very much a family-run business. We are both coffee lovers and realized that coffee was starting to follow a similar trajectory to that of wine and craft beer, in terms of pairing and diversity. Wine was being flavor-paired with cheese and chocolate, and we wanted to get ahead of the game with coffee. After several trials, pairing it with cookies turned out to be the crowd favorite.
Can you tell us a little about how Match Made Coffee works?
Match Made Coffee started as a once-a-month subscription box.
Each year, we pair twelve craft coffees with twelve gourmet cookies, which mutually enhance each other’s flavors. The coffee is packaged in a 4 oz pouch – enough for two, three, or even four pots, depending on how you brew your coffee and how strong you make it.
You also get two of the same flavored cookie. The idea is to be able to share the experience with a loved one.
We now offer the option to buy the coffee separately as well. Once a customer has chosen their preferred coffee, they can purchase it in bigger quantities, whenever they like.
Coffee and cookie pairing is quite a novel idea. Do you have any competitors in the market?
Throughout the four years we’ve been involved in this business, I have not come across anyone that pairs coffee with cookies, although there are a few coffee joints out there offering coffee and chocolate pairings, which is a popular combination.
What makes your coffee different from companies like Nespresso or Starbucks?
We offer a very different experience to Starbucks or Nespresso. Starbucks is a multi-billion dollar company, which offers good coffee but it’s standardized all over the world. Starbucks only offers three coffees and it's what is added to it that changes the flavor, not where the coffee is sourced from.
Nespresso is similar although it offers a larger variety of flavors, some of which are even artificial. It’s also single usage, which works out to be fairly expensive.
We try to make our coffee experience an international one, and a little more unique.
We look for a range of different roasts and are avid adventurers when it comes to finding new and exciting flavors of nuts, berries, or cocoa.
Needless to say, we look for organic and sustainable coffees. We actively seek out small craft coffees to see what’s out there and to understand emerging trends. After much deliberation, we have curated a solid twelve blends that we rotate at any given time.
Is the coffee and cookie pairing the new “wine and dine” experience?
I consider coffee and cookie pairings to be the morning version of “wine and dine.” Many of our customers come together for a brunch or lunch where they savor our unique blend of flavors, just as you would sit down and enjoy some wine and cheese at the end of a long day.
Who is your main target audience?
It was only once we started interviewing our customers that we realized many of them were giving the coffee and cookies subscription as a gift. It’s genuinely a unique experience.
Coffee can be used in so many different ways. Some people need it to get going in the morning or to get themselves pepped up for work. We strive to provide our customers with a mini-vacation, albeit in the middle of the day. We want them to take some time-out and really enjoy that coffee, either alone or with a loved one. That's how we stand out from the rest.
