Founded in Melbourne in 2014, Thieves Coffee was built on a simple mission: to share the joy of specialty Australian coffee with the world. Through carefully curated monthly subscription boxes – each highlighting a different specialty Australian coffee roaster – they empower customers to act as their own baristas and craft the perfect brew at home; while also providing a platform for local roasters to share their unique coffee blends with the world.  

What started out as a simple operation – a warehouse and some Excel spreadsheets, averaging 600 orders a month – has rapidly grown to become the largest coffee subscription business in Australia, delivering over 5,000 subscription boxes to homes across the country.

Grinding away: from manual spreadsheets to slick operations

But success didn’t come overnight. The grind (no pun intended) came first. 
 

“We started with manual spreadsheets, and it was very time consuming. We had 5-6 staff who would spend an entire day once a month, picking and packing roughly 600 orders. It was unsustainable.”

Patrick Zhang, Director, Thieves Coffee

That inefficiency soon crept into other areas of the business. The ability to only fulfil orders once a month meant one customer might be left waiting 30 days from the time they ordered to the time the coffee box arrived on their doorstep, while another might only have to wait for 1 day, depending on which time of the month they ordered.

With the goal to reduce overheads, deliver a consistent customer experience and get more coffee boxes into the hands of their customers, Thieves Coffee partnered with ShipStation in 2019. The impact was immediate: dispatch times dropped to 1–2 days – with select orders fulfilled in under 24 hours – processing an average of 170 orders a day with a core team of just two full-time employees.

The ability to dispatch orders on a daily basis, soon became a huge selling point for the growing coffee subscription business, giving customers the flexibility to sign up and order customised subscription boxes at any time during the month and have them delivered within 48 hours. It also allowed Thieves Coffee to diversify their offerings, which included a “buy now, send later” subscription for coffee packs purchased as a gift. Any orders tagged as a gift are automatically held for up to 30 days and dispatched at a time of the customer’s choosing.

“The ability to provide our customers with more customisable and flexible coffee subscription options has been a game changer for us,” Zhang explained. “That is thanks to ShipStation’s auto-tagging capabilities and automation rules making this possible.”

The time savings have also been substantial. With roughly 70% of their orders coming from regular customers vs 30% of customers who might order a coffee box as a one-off, that equates to roughly 3,800 regular orders a month. With an average of 1-2 minutes saved per order by replacing manual data entry with automation, it has saved Thieves Coffee up to 100 hours of manual work per quarter. 


Brewing the perfect combination of automations


Much like perfecting a specialty blend, Thieves Coffee relies on ShipStation’s automation rules to maintain smooth, efficient operations.

They keep their core operations lean with five coffee SKUs making up about 90% of sales, and utilise over 50 automations to streamline their fulfilment.

They run 12 standard presets for all their orders based on package size, weight and shipping method. This saves warehouse staff from manually weighting, measuring and entering the dimensions of each package, equating to 60 seconds per package, or 83 hours of labour saved every month.

Batch packing also enables the team to get orders out the door quicker. By filtering orders via automated tags (e.g., ‘1kg espresso bags’), staff can isolate targeted order groups and print shipping labels in bulk in a few clicks. 

“Automations have been a real game changer for us. Our workflows are essentially ‘touchless.’ By automating the most-time consuming parts of the fulfilment process, we can run a very lean team and still process a high volume of shipments that we would have otherwise struggled with.”

Patrick Zhang, Director, Thieves Coffee

ShipStation’s split shipping functionality and order age alerts also keep operations running smoothly and customers happy. Split shipping allows orders to be scheduled up to 30 days out or split when vendor inventory is delayed, ensuring partial orders reach customers promptly.

Meanwhile, order age alerts highlight weekend orders or delayed shipments for priority handling. Automated, branded tracking notifications keep customers informed at every stage, significantly reducing support enquiries.

“No news is good news – our support tickets dropped dramatically because the fulfilment process is so reliable,” Zhang said.

Delivering the joy of coffee to the masses

With their fulfilment operations running smoothly, the sky is the limit for Thieves Coffee, and they are only just getting started!

“We have exciting brand collaborations on the horizon, enhancements to our gift offerings, and plans to open a few cafes in the New Year. With ShipStation making it easier to get our coffee products in the hands of our customers, we can focus our full attention on scaling the business,” Zhang concluded.

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