In short: Over the Fence reads your rival roasters’ shops for you. The coffees that matter most to you are read every day for price and stock. Every other page is read every week, so new lots, subscription changes, shipping offers and holiday gifts show up as changes. Each finding links to the page it came from.
What rival roasters change
We read four well-known US roasters’ own shops on October 4, 2026 to see what moves in this market. Five things stood out.
New coffees arrive every few weeks. Verve listed three new coffees on September 30. Intelligentsia added two Special Selections in September, and Onyx added two coffees in August. A new lot from the same country as your bestseller is the change most worth knowing about.
Small lots sell out. On October 4, Counter Culture showed 7 of the 37 items in its coffee collection as sold out, nearly all of them single-farm lots. A rival’s sell-out on a coffee like yours is a window for you. Their restock closes it.
Free-shipping minimums all differ, and they move. Counter Culture’s top bar said free shipping from $30, Verve’s from $35 and Intelligentsia’s cart from $49. Verve was also running free shipping on every order until October 4. Between $30 and $49 is the price of another bag, and a shopper choosing between two roasters notices.
Subscriptions are offered on very different terms. Counter Culture took 10% off blends. Onyx took 5%. Intelligentsia offered free shipping on subscription orders instead of a discount. Verve’s “Subscribe & Save” carried no discount on the pages we read. Delivery choices ran from weekly to every 8 weeks.
Holiday starts in early October. Counter Culture’s holiday gift guide was already live with 33 items. Onyx was taking pre-orders for its 2026 Advent calendar at $189. If you sell gift sets, you want to see theirs before you price yours.
The four roasters, side by side
Read from each roaster’s own shop on October 4, 2026, whole bean, in US dollars. A dash means it wasn’t on the pages we read.
| Counter Culture | Onyx Coffee Lab | Intelligentsia | Verve | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| House blend | Hologram, 12 oz, $20 | Monarch, 10 oz, $21.50 | House Blend, 12 oz, $17.50 | Sermon, 12 oz, $22 |
| Decaf | Slow Motion, 12 oz, $20 | Colombia Inzá, 10 oz, $24.50 | Organic Decaf House, 12 oz, $18.50 | Swiss Water Decaf, 12 oz, $22 |
| Subscription offer | 10% off blends | 5% off | Free shipping | No discount stated |
| Free shipping from | $30 | – | $49 | $35 |
| Sold out that day | 7 coffees | 1 coffee | None | A 125 g instant only |
| Newest coffees | – | 2 added in August | 2 added in September | 3 added September 30 |
The same reading done every day for the coffees on your list, and every week for the rest, is what we do for you.
What your shoppers search for
These are US monthly searches from Google’s own figures, read through DataForSEO on October 4, 2026. They’re the searches where you and your rivals compete for the same shopper.
| Search | US searches a month, 12-month average |
|---|---|
| espresso beans | 27,100 |
| whole bean coffee | 9,900 |
| single origin coffee | 9,900 |
| coffee subscription | 9,900 |
| fresh roasted coffee | 8,100 |
| decaf coffee beans | 8,100 |
| light roast coffee beans | 5,400 |
| coffee gift set | 2,900 |
| best coffee subscription | 2,400 |
| coffee subscription gift | 2,400 |
| coffee of the month club | 1,900 |
| coffee sampler | 1,300 |
The averages hide the season. “Coffee subscription gift” was searched about 880 times in the US in October 2025, 3,600 in November and 14,800 in December. “Coffee gift set” went from 1,600 to 14,800 over the same months. Advertisers bid about $10.49 a click on “coffee subscription gift”, the most of any search here. Where you rank for it in November matters far more than where you rank in June.
We track where you and each rival rank for your searches every week. On Growth and Scale we also show which sites Google’s AI Overviews cite for them. Starter tracks 100 searches per site, Growth 200 and Scale 300.
See your competitors this week
Type your address. We find the sites that turn up next to yours in Google, in your country and language, and read them every week.
3 days free, then from $49 a month. Cancel any time.
Promotions on the homepage
Many offers never touch a product’s price. A free-shipping window, a mystery bundle or “15% off your first order” lives in a banner. Every day we read the top of each rival’s homepage the way a browser shows it and note each offer, its code if there is one and how long it has run.
Setting it up for a roastery
- Type your shop’s address. We work out that you sell coffee, and in which country.
- Check the rivals we suggest. We suggest the shops that turn up beside yours in Google. Add the roasters your customers mention, even when they don’t rank.
- Fill your daily list. We pick the rival coffees closest to yours. Swap in the ones you watch by hand today: their house blend, their decaf, the single origins from your countries.
- Set the alert. By default a price move of 10% or more, a sell-out or a restock on your daily list reaches you the day we see it.
- Read the Monday email. Three findings at most, each with its reason and the page it came from. The dashboard keeps the rest.
What we don’t do
- We don’t see sales. We can tell you a rival sold out of a coffee. We can’t tell you how many bags they sold, and we won’t guess.
- We don’t read behind logins. No wholesale lists, no member prices, nothing at checkout.
- We don’t reprice your shop. We report and you decide.
- We aren’t minute by minute. Your daily list is read once a day and everything else once a week. A sale that lasts an hour can slip past.
What it costs
Every plan starts with 3 days free, and you can cancel any time from your dashboard.
| Plan | Price | Rival roasters per site | Coffees read daily | Pages read per shop, weekly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $49 a month | 3 | 10 | 500 |
| Growth | $119 a month | 6 | 25 | 2,000 |
| Scale | $249 a month | 12 | 50 | 8,000 |
Your whole team is included on every plan. The four roasters we read listed between 29 and 37 items in their coffee collections on October 4, 2026, so even Starter’s 500 pages a week leaves room for each rival’s journal and brew guides.