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really notice it, let alone discuss its impact on coffee. busy making ends meet. Sponsorships and memberships
However, after the episode was released, Harper sudden- are the two most common ways coffee podcasts keep
ly saw conversations happening around his community themselves alive. For example, Filter Stories’ business
about adjusting the volume of cafe stereos or modifying model primarily is sponsorships. The podcast collaborates
cafe spaces to dampen noise. “It’s interesting how quick- with coffee companies who would both assist with a
ly I see everybody around me kind of rethinking and story and also want to create free educational content.
reshaping their thoughts on the matter,” he said. However, according to Harper, it is a difficult model
Whether doing it all for free or making it a business, because to make it happen, he devotes a lot of time to
no matter conducting it as various interviews or pursuing getting sponsors interested, and then negotiating the
high-quality documentaries, coffee folks are all using their partnership. For others like I’M NOT A BARISTA, it is a
own ways to contribute to the community to make it a purer version of support. Micky shared that the start-up
better place. And podcasts have become a powerful me- capital for his podcast came from a coffee equipment
dium to conquer the mission. company called LilyDrip, only because the brand shares
the same value with him and wants to help.
David And Goliath: The Coffee Podcast Besides sponsorship, membership is customary for
Business coffee podcasts to keep their projects going. For Boss
Barista, the podcast adapted a paid subscription model
“But also, frankly, there are only so many episodes through the newsletter. However, with spendings like
I can make in a year. I’m limited,” said Harper when hosting platforms, taxes, and production fees, the rest
telling me the challenges he is now facing with his podcast. generally goes to upkeep.
“It’s hard to scale what I create. If I want to scale it, I need Even though it is a struggle for many coffee podcasts,
money. And how much is enough money? Even though it has potential. Taking the Chinese podcast Tipsy Proof as
the whole podcast market is big, coffee media is a small an example, it covers topics from wine and beer to coffee,
industry.” tea, chocolates, and more. It tries all interesting forms,
What Harper said is true, as many interviewees have not limited to interviews, analyses of Drops of Gods – a
confessed that the market for coffee podcasts is still small, Japanese comic book about wine, as well as documentaries
and it might take years for it to grow. Micky told me in and more. The two-year-old food & drink and lifestyle
the interview that even though he hopes to reach a wid- podcast has already attracted big cheese such as the Chi-
er audience, the backstage stage of his podcast shows that nese e-commerce giant T-mall by Alibaba as well as RED,
most of his listeners are still people in the industry. There
are people who are interested in coffee, but they might
not necessarily want to dive into it. “You might drink
Starbucks every day, but that doesn’t mean you want to
know more about specialty coffee through a podcast.”
Said Micky.
According to recent podcast reports by Nielsen
and BuzzSprout, the most popular podcast genres in-
clude history, comedy, true crime and news. Food and
drink is not the favored choice for most podcast listen-
ers, let alone the coffee podcast under the segments. However, before the
Some of my interviewees shared with me their average
volume for each episode, and most well-performed ones boom comes, the
are hardly surpassing 10,000. Even though the overall
podcast market is big, it doesn’t mean that everyone biggest challenge
can get a piece of the cake.
The relatively small scale of the market means few- for most coffee
er business opportunities. Almost all interviewees told
me that their podcasts get spread mainly and only through podcast hosts is to
word of mouth. Sometimes it is through the guests on
their podcast. Other times, it is through friends and peo- avoid the so-called
ple they know in the industry.
And for many coffee podcasts, they are also still “pod-fade”.

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