“My names Paul and I’m a faddy man”. There. I said it. (in fact if you read this post about progression I talk about some of my past ideas) but in this post I’m going to talk about the array of subscription services which are available and tempting for a faddy fella like myself.
Remember hipsters? The guys with tattoos, big beards that dressed like lumberjacks? The ironic t-shirts and a love of the 90’s. Film cameras, Walkmans and VHS were all briefly brought kicking and screaming back into vogue for a while. By the way, I’m writing this a little tongue in cheek as I have a big beard, am wearing a checked shirt, have a collection of film cameras and somewhere I have a walkman in a draw but that’s beside the point. A by-product of the hipster monument was a bigger interest in food, coffee and craft beers. Given the theme of this blog, again my tongue is firmly in my cheek.
For a while I was HUGELY into coffee, I even had a “cool” coffee story which looking back on it really wasn’t that cool at all. I used to blend different types of coffee beans to try and create a interesting blend. This is where I was first introduced to subscription services. I discovered a company called Pact Coffee. (by the way this isn’t a sponsored post and these aren’t affiliate links or anything). You get to select what type of coffee you like, how you brew – cafetière, stove top etc – and for about £8 they send you a bag once a month until you tell them to stop. I did this for a while and stopped when the coffee fad passed me by. Now I’m a lot more laid back about coffee and I’m content to pick up a bag of whatever when I’m shopping. I’m fairly sure that the coffee fad will come around again at some point and when it does I’ll probably set up a new plan. No doubt there will be a blog post about it when I do.
Beer. I do like beer. I especially like craft beers and IPA-types so I was really happy when I saw an advert from a company called Beer52. (this is one of those invite links If you sign up through this I get some free beer and you get 50% off and some free beer). Beer 52 had a offer where you just pay for postage (around £5) and you get a case of 8 different beers sent to you. So for a fiver I thought I’d give it a go. My case arrived and it contained 8 beers – 2 bottles and 6 cans, A couple of bags of snacks and magazine to read. The beers range from German larger to Porter style beers. The other half and I sampled some last night and we were both impressed. I’m going to be honest here and the £27 a month fee for this seems a bit steep, works out at about £3.30 a can but you get some snacks and a magazine with the added bonus of not having to go to the shop so I think I’m going to keep this subscription going for a bit.
But the thing about this kind of service is that you don’t do them to save money – I could get 8 beers for a lot cheaper than £27 if I went to a super market – but its the fun of discovering new tastes. I would usually just buy a few of the same beer but this way I get to experience new flavours, discover potential unknown favourite’s and possibly even uncover a new faddy rabbit hole to dive into. Porter- type beers I’m looking at you.
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