If the budding barista doesn’t start with actually good coffee, none of the rest of this guide will amount to a hill of beans. The problem is, most store-bought coffee you’d pick up for a gift basket, care package, etc., is already past peak freshness. So just skip the middle man and buy them a freshly roasted micro-batch from Roasting Plant Coffee—a Lower East Side New York roaster with a patented, automated Javabot system that pulls together on-demand blends via pneumatic tubes, then roasts them on the spot for shipping. This assures what arrives at the door—whether it’s a single bag of the rich, redolent, decadently chocolatey house blend or dynamic single-origin samplings as part of Roasting Plant’s subscription service—is a never-stale, constantly satisfying staple in your house.