Who is behind ‘Ozgreens’?
Does it cost anything to join?
How do I purchase on this site?
What happens if a bag is fully allocated when I try to select an option?
How is the price of the coffee determined?
What are the freight options?
Can I pick beans up to save shipping costs?
How are the beans packaged?
How do you choose the green beans you offer?
How are the quantities in the bean offers worked out?
Can I suggest green beans I would like to be offered?
What is the relationship with the ‘GreenGuys’?
What is an RSS feed and what use is it?
Who is behind ‘Ozgreens’?
Ozgreens started in 2004 as a split from a Melbourne based group. Three people started it: Alan, Gary and Neil. Alan is based in Queensland and now has his own roastery and cafe. Gary and Neil are both based in or near Sydney.
Ozgreens is run on a non-profit basis, and any member is free to source quality green beans and promote a ‘bean offer’ of those beans. In practice, most of the beans are cupped and sourced by Neil & Gary, who have developed a very good working relationship with a major importer and wholesaler of specialty coffee.
Does it cost anything to join?
It doesn’t cost anything to register as a member of Ozgreens, and never will. When you register, you have the option to indicate whether you want to receive occasional emails advising of bean offers. If you choose ‘no’, then you will virtually never hear from us!
Your details will never be sold, lent or otherwise used for anything but the purpose of advising/supplying you with green coffee beans through this site, or of related activities.
How do I purchase on this site?
You purchase coffee by selecting a quantity from a bean offer. If you have not previously purchased coffee from Ozgreens you must register by providing a valid email, delivery address and contact number before your order is accepted. Your order is confirmed by an email and then an invoice later, requesting payment by direct deposit.
People who have previously registered simply need to log-in to participate in a bean offer.
One change from the previous method of buying beans is that you can only choose one amount for your bean purchase, not multiples as you could on the Yahoo site.
What happens if a bag is fully allocated when I try to select an option?
Orders are placed on a first-come-first-served basis. If there is only a single bag of coffee available and your request cannot be filled you will be notified of this via email. If there is sufficient demand for a second bag of a popular coffee we will first check on availability and price before confirming or changing the price before sending you an invoice requesting payment.
How is the price of the coffee determined?
Our starting price is the cost to us from the supplier, plus any delivery cost to us, plus packaging costs, plus any other costs in running Ozgreens.
Our costs will vary depending on the number of bags involved in a single (or combined) offer. The prices charged in the invoice may differ slightly from those shown for the poll on the web site but the overall pricing objective is to minimise overheads and therefore achieve the lowest possible pricing.
What are the freight options?
Ozgreens uses two main ways of shipping beans that you purchase:
Australia Post 3Kg satchel at current cost
This can be delivered anywhere in Australia, and is an economical option for amount up to 3Kg
Fastway A2 5Kg satchel at current cost
A speedy way to ship up to 5Kg, but Fastways doesn’t cover all areas with their satchel service. This also has the advantage of being traceable through the Fastway website.
Australia Post Parcel Post
For amount more than 5Kg that the Fastway satchel network doesn’t cover, we will ship by Australia Post parcel post.
This will need to be calculated on a case by case basis, and will be itemised in the invoice you are sent after you have selected your quantity.
Please note: All beans sent by Australia Post are sent at the buyers risk.
It has only happened once or twice, but if beans are not delivered or go missing in the post, Ozgreens does not take responsibility for replacing those beans.
Packaging Costs
We add a $1.70 flat rate per order for each origin. This covers the calico bags we ship in, labelling, and other miscellaneous costs.
Can I pick beans up to save shipping costs?
Absolutely. Neil is based at Springwood in the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney, and beans can be picked up from there if you are passing by. For beans that we offer in conjunction with Greenguys, pick up would be available in Melbourne.
How are the beans packaged?
We use calico bags for packaging all our green beans.
These serve as excellent storage bags while you use the beans, and a robust means of transporting the beans. Each bag will hold up to 5Kg of greens (with a couple of exceptions).
How do you choose the green beans you offer?
We maintain close contact with our suppliers to ensure we know about what beans are available and the schedules for new arrivals. We request samples of those that interest us or that are recommended and do a tasting of those samples. You can view a listing beans that we are currently tasting in the sidebar.
Sometimes, it’s not possible to obtain a sample, but our contact in the supplier will warmly recommend a particular coffee.
Our rules in selecting coffees are that we only offer coffees we have tasted, know very well, or come strongly recommended by our supplier. Using this approach means we are very seldom disappointed!
How are the quantities in the bean offers worked out?
We try to offer a range of purchase quantities to suit most people. Some prefer to only take a kilo of a bean they are not sure about (although that can make the bean-to-freight cost pretty high)
We’ve also try to tie the quantities offered to the common shipping values (3Kg for an Australia Post satchel, 5Kg for a Fastway satchel), which are the most convenient freight methods for us.
For some rarer or more expensive coffees, or where only a few kilos are available, there may be just one fixed amount offered, in order to share the beans around.
If you are keen to try or purchase beans between bean offers here, Neil has a number of origins available through his coffee blog, Ministry Grounds
Can I suggest green beans I would like to be offered?
Yes you can, but the final choice depends on price, availability and our confidence that there is sufficient demand to account for a complete bag.
What is the relationship with the ‘GreenGuys’?
GreenGuys is a Melbourne based group with very similar objectives to Ozgreens. We are cooperating with the GreenGuys wherever possible in sourcing and distribution and sharing resources. This web site is a good example of that growing relationship, as most of the code behind the Members section was written by a GreenGuy (Thanks Ed!).
What is an RSS feed and what use is it?
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It is a way to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, and other content to a wide number of people. It can be read by programs that organize those headlines and notices for easy reading.
What problem does RSS solve?
Most people are interested in many websites whose content changes on an unpredictable schedule. Ozgreens is a good example of that. Repeatedly checking a website to see if there is any new content can be very tedious.
Email notification of changes was an early solution to this problem. Unfortunately, when you receive email notifications from multiple websites they are usually disorganized and can get overwhelming, and are often mistaken for spam.
RSS is a better way to be notified of new and changed content. Notifications of changes to multiple websites are handled easily, and the results are presented to you well organized and distinct from email.
How does RSS work?
RSS works by having the website author maintain a list of notifications on their website in a standard way. This list of notifications is called an “RSS Feed” (See the sidebar on most pages at Ozgreens).
People who are interested in finding out the latest posts or changes can check this list.
Special programs called “RSS aggregators” have been developed that automatically access the RSS feeds of websites you care about on your behalf and organize the results for you. Even more conveniently, a number of modern browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 (currently near release).
There is also an excellent web-based RSS aggregator called Bloglines for those who don’t wish to install a special app.
The details of how to subscribe to the Ozgreens RSS feed will depend on how you choose to read you RSS feeds. With IE7 and Firefox, it’s simply a case of clicking on the RSS icon ( 
) when viewing the Ozgreens home page. With Bloglines or other aggregators, it may mean cutting and pasting the URL of the RSS feed links on the Ozgreens page.
If you require help setting the RSS feeds up, don’t hesitate to contact Neil.
