How to find customers for your coffee or tea store
Coffee and tea drinkers love asking for recommendations: a low-acid roast for a sensitive stomach, a decaf that tastes like the real thing, a loose-leaf gift for a tea lover.
This page shows where coffee and tea buyers ask, the words they use, when demand peaks, and how to reply so it does not feel like an ad.
Where coffee and tea buyers ask
| Where | What people ask for |
|---|---|
| r/Coffee and r/espresso | Bean and roaster recommendations |
| r/tea | Loose-leaf, matcha and gift questions |
| r/GiftIdeas | Coffee and tea gifts for the holidays |
| Facebook groups for coffee lovers and home baristas | "Which beans should I try" posts |
Read each community's rules before you reply. Most allow helpful answers from sellers but remove plain links and copy-paste ads.
What a buyer's post looks like
These are typical of the posts you are looking for. Each one names a need, and often a budget or a deadline:
Typical post
"Looking for a low-acid coffee that doesn't upset my stomach. Medium roast ideally."
Typical post
"Any decaf beans that actually taste good? Ordering online."
Typical post
"Want to get my dad a loose-leaf tea sampler for Christmas, any small shops?"
Search phrases that find them
Paste these into Google, then sort or filter by the past week so you only see posts that are still open:
"low acid coffee" recommend"decaf" beans "recommend" site:reddit.com"tea sampler" gift "recommend""where to buy" matcha
On Reddit itself, search your product word plus "recommend" or "looking for" and sort by New. Our guide on finding buying-intent posts has more phrases.
When demand peaks
Gift season, colder months, and January (people switching to decaf or trying something new).
How to reply
- Answer the question first. Give a real recommendation, even if it is general advice.
- Say you make or sell it. Being open about it builds trust, and most communities expect it.
- Add a detail that helps them decide: a price, a size, how long delivery takes.
- Reply from your own account, and only to posts that are recent and still open.
Example reply
"Hi! Darker roasts and beans from lower altitudes tend to be gentler on the stomach. Our Brazilian medium-dark is the one people with acid issues reorder most. Happy to suggest a grind for your setup."
Skip the searching
Doing this by hand takes an hour or more a day. Lead Harbour does it for you: paste your coffee or tea store link and it finds recent public posts from people asking for what you sell, checks each one is a real buyer, and writes a reply like the one above. You send it yourself from your own account.
Talk to other store owners
Our Discord server is where store owners share what works: which posts convert, how they word replies, and what to avoid. Free to join, and you can ask us anything there.
Common questions
Where do coffee buyers ask for recommendations?
r/Coffee, r/espresso and r/tea on Reddit, public Facebook groups for home baristas, and gift subreddits in the run-up to the holidays.
Does Lead Harbour work for coffee roasters and tea shops?
Yes. If you sell beans, pods, loose-leaf tea or accessories online, Lead Harbour finds people asking for them.
How does Lead Harbour find coffee and tea buyers?
Paste your store link and Lead Harbour reads what you sell, then searches public posts on Reddit, Facebook, Quora and forums for people asking for it. Sellers, ads and old posts are filtered out, and each lead comes with a reply you send yourself. Your first 5 buyers cost $1.
Find coffee and tea buyers for $1
Paste your store link and see 5 people asking for what you sell, each with a reply ready to send. Refunded if we find fewer than 5.
Get 5 buyers for $1