In 2015, I pulled my first shot on bar in a shop about the size of a car space, tucked in the Waratah Arcade in Engadine. I hired a crew of mates who'd never worked hospitality a day in their lives. We got a lot wrong. But we got one thing right early: we made coffee for people we actually knew, in a place we actually came from.

Almost 10 years later we're roasting our own beans, running multiple venues, and supplying cafés across Sydney. The scale changed. The idea didn't.

Which is why the Founders One Hundred exists.

WHAT IS IT

F100 is a subscription for 100 people in 2233 and 2234.

Here's what a founder gets:

• 1kg of Heavy Weight, every month or fortnight. Roasted fresh, not pulled off a shelf.
• 20% off, locked for life. Not for a year. For as long as you hold the spot.
• $10 on a gift card, every month. Loaded automatically. Spend it in-store on whatever you like - it's yours whether you use it or not.
• Hand-delivered. Our team drives it to your door. Not a courier. Not a satchel jammed in your letterbox.
• First access to every drop, before it goes public.

WHY IT'S CAPPED

The honest answer: because we can't do this properly at scale, and we'd rather do it properly.

Every bag is roasted to order. We deliver them ourselves - that's a real person in a real car covering real streets in 2233 and 2234. The second that list runs past a couple of hundred homes, the thing that makes it good stops being possible. It becomes logistics. It becomes a warehouse. It becomes the exact kind of faceless subscription box we built this to be the opposite of.

There's a second reason, and I'll be straight about it: the 20% lifetime lock is expensive. It's a permanent line through our margin on every founder, forever. We can afford to give that to 200 households that truly back us and want to see us succeed. We can't afford to give it to the internet.

HOW TO BECOME A FOUNDER

Grab your spot directly at https://steambrotherscoffee.com.au/products/f100

If you've been buying coffee off us since the arcade days, this one's built for you. And if you've never set foot in one of our shops, it's a decent way to find out whether we're any good.

Either way - 100 per suburb. Then we close it.

Aleks