There are two kinds of soccer mornings. There's the one where you're up before sunrise for a Premier League kickoff an ocean away, mug in hand before the rest of the house has stirred. And there's the one we're all living this summer: dragging into work a little wrecked because you stayed up for the back half of a World Cup night you couldn't pull yourself away from.
Either way, there's coffee involved. There's always coffee involved.
If you know that feeling, the lucky shirt and the group chat and the friends you only seem to see when there's a match on, then you already understand Bueno Coffee Club. It's coffee made for soccer fans by people who love this game as much as we do, built for the early kickoffs, the late nights, and everything in between.
And here's the part worth waking up for: right now, every bag of Bueno is a shot at winning $1,000 to throw at whatever soccer dream you want. A trip to a host city, kits for the whole crew, the gear that's been sitting in your cart for a year. We'll get to the how in a minute. First, the story.
We don't put The18's name behind just anything, but Bueno gets it, and it's launching during the biggest summer this sport has ever had on American soil. We partnered with them because, frankly, we wish we'd thought of it first.
What is Bueno Coffee Club?
Here's the idea, and it's a good one.
Every soccer fan already knows what it feels like to belong to something. Ask the American Outlaws, 30,000-plus members who pay their dues, get a welcome kit in the mail, carry a membership card, and pack the same dive bars in every city to roar on the national team. Ask anyone who's spent two hours in an Arsenal pub before kickoff, scarf on, working through the same songs they sing every week. Ask a Boca or a Corinthians supporter who'll tell you, with a straight face, that following their club sits somewhere close to sacred. The crest, the scarf, the card in your wallet, the people standing next to you: that's the good stuff. That's the part that has nothing to do with the 90 minutes.
Bueno's founding question was simple: why can't a coffee work like that?
So Bueno Coffee Club isn't built to be a bag of beans. It's built to be a membership. The coffee is where it starts. The rest is the vision they're building toward: the kind of soccer swag you'd actually wear, a Bueno jersey worth pulling on, members-only drops and giveaways, the feeling of being a card-carrying member of something made for fans like you. It's early days, and the club is still growing into all of it. But the direction is clear: this is built to feel less like a coffee subscription and more like joining the club.
OK, but is the coffee actually good?
Fair question. A club is only as good as the thing it's built around, and nobody's joining anything for mediocre coffee.
Good news, and there's a bit of poetry to it. Some of the best coffee on earth grows in the high-altitude highlands of Latin America. So does some of the best soccer on earth. Colombia's national team isn't nicknamed Los Cafeteros, "The Coffee Growers," by accident. The same regions that breathe the game also grow the beans. Coffee and soccer have shared a home this whole time. Bueno just made it official.
And the sourcing holds up. Bueno buys directly from small farms in Nicaragua and Colombia, no middlemen, and pays growers above market rate so farming families can stay whole and keep investing in their land. Only the top 3% of specialty-grade beans make the cut, the kind that score 83-plus in professional cupping. Small batches. Roasted fresh. The kind of standard you can taste.
Which is exactly why the move this summer is simple: get a bag in your hands. The membership perks are the long game. Right now, the whole point is just letting you taste it, because once you do, the rest sells itself. It's a little like trying to explain the World Cup to someone who's never watched. You can talk all day. They won't get it until they've felt it.
The first release: Matchday
The flagship is called Matchday, and it was built for this exact summer.
Football isn't really 90 minutes. It's the hours before kickoff: the lineup drop, the group chat, the lucky jersey, the walk to the pub. The little rituals that make a matchday feel different from every other day on the calendar. Matchday the blend was made for those moments.
It's a medium Nicaraguan roast, specialty-grade and 84 points, that drinks bold and balanced, with rich chocolate, a brown-sugar sweetness, and a smooth finish. Strong enough for an early kickoff. Smooth enough to ride out extra time. Whether you're watching from the stands, the couch, or your corner spot at the bar, it's built to be part of the ritual.
Get in the game now
Here's the part worth paying attention to.
You don't buy a season ticket before you've ever been to a match. You show up, you take it in, and if it grabs you, you come back. A bag of Bueno works the same way. Grab one, see if it's your thing, and if it is, the club's right there waiting: three bags a month, the full membership.
Get in now and you're a founding member, in at the very start, before the supporters group is fully built out. And remember that $1,000 we mentioned? Here's how it works: every bag you buy is an entry to win it, free to spend on whatever you want. Dream up the shopping list. Matching kits for the whole crew, a trip to a host city, the soccer splurge you'd never normally make. Your call.
Grab a bag, get your shot at the $1,000, and become a founding member at buenocoffeeclub.com.
And follow along while you're at it: @buenocoffeeclub is where the club lives between matches.
Why we're in
The reason we drag ourselves up for early kickoffs, the reason we've built what we've built here at The18, is the same reason this one was easy to say yes to: we love this game, and we love the people who love it the way we do. A coffee brand that gets that, one built to pull fans together instead of just selling them something, is one we're proud to help kick off.
Welcome to the club.
Join Bueno Coffee Club → buenocoffeeclub.com
