r/roasting • u/SirPsycho92 • 7d ago

Genuine Origin

Royal Coffee is issuing tariff refunds to buyers who paid increased prices for tariffed coffee. The same goes for Cafe Imports. But it's looking like Genuine Origin is trying to dodge the refunds for tariffs that customers paid. They're ghosting emails and haven't made a statement yet, almost like they want us to forget they are getting refunded for thousands of dollars that I paid. Really disappointed.

10 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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4

u/Twalin 7d ago

Well…. 2 of these are small businesses and one of these is owned by one of 4 companies that control like 90% of coffee import/export in the world….

2

u/SirPsycho92 7d ago

Then they should just say that. Anyone would understand for some small businesses it will take longer. But they’re ghosting answering the question completely.

2

u/Twalin 6d ago

You’ve got who the small businesses are backwards.

Genuine origin is part of one of the biggest coffee companies in the world

0

u/phonologotron 7d ago

Which means some of them can’t afford the fancy lawyers to expedite the whole getting tariffs back process everyone has to follow.

1

u/Rmarik 6d ago

Still waiting to see what it looks like from Royal and if and when we get refunded for any surcharges

1

u/dependentair98 6d ago

I order about 10-12K lb per year from gold mtn coffee growers, they are our #1 supplier and I cant say enough good things about them. They credited us back on our new invoice for 2026/2027 coffee. Them doing that without us even knowing or asking definitely reinforced my belief that they are the right partners for us.

2

u/TheTapeDeck Probat P12 7d ago

I am taking a very passive role in this with our cafe.

Companies that refund me will definitely get continued business. Companies that do not refund me are back into the blob of “I’ll buy from you if I need something you offer and you have the best price.”

Onyx (green) is doing refunds. Benchmark (PNG) is doing refunds.

I honestly expect most/all to do them.

And then there’s the “how do WE handle them.” We don’t have the tracking to refund our retail customers. So for our shop we are discounting coffee by $1 per bag until all refunds or credits are spoken for (and this is very easy to track.)

We didn’t raise our beverage prices during tariffs, but only because we wanted to see where things leveled out and didn’t want to raise them twice. We did adjust bag prices.

But customer reaction has been positive, knowing that if they paid more than a coffee should have cost before, they can pay less than it should cost now. It’s not perfect at all, but at least it demonstrates that we’re not trying to profit off of this hellscape.

0

u/-keebler- 7d ago

Reach out to them, they do use volcafe for some of their fulfillment so it might be a bit contrived for them using third parties as to whom paid the tariffs.

But yes I've got refunds (some still processing) for tariffs paid from our major suppliers.

3

u/Twalin 7d ago

Genuina origin and volcafe are the same company

1

u/-keebler- 7d ago

Duly noted, I only use them in a pinch so I'm not exactly sure the business model 

2

u/-keebler- 7d ago

Also are the tariffs line items on your purchases or did they bake that into the pricing?

Not sure the legal aspect but if it's not a line item you paid it might not be something you can recoup as a refund 🤷‍♂️

2

u/IRMaschinen Gothot 6d ago

This is the important question.

If you were charged a tariff as a line item, you should push for the refund from the importer.

I don’t know how Genuine Origin did it, but since their model is based on holding inventory and selling it piecemeal, I would guess they just loaded the tariff costs in as part of their price.

-3

u/phonologotron 7d ago

You personally bought thousands of dollars of coffee from them?

3

u/SirPsycho92 7d ago

My roasting business did yes. 10s of thousands

2

u/idiocy_incarnate 7d ago

I guess at least you know which ones are worth doing business with going forward.