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A microlot separation from Kenya might be sold for
over $6/lb. However, our Brazilian Eagle, a great clean
sweet consistent neutral base to any blend can trade
under $2/lb depending on the market. I like to make
conservative estimates when projecting the potential
future revenue of my roasting company. Therefore, I
would recommend using an input of $4/lb for cost of
green coffee. Obviously this cost will fluctuate from
coffee to coffee, but I believe it is a safe price averaged
estimate that should only prove your business more
profitable in practice. And, it gives us a nice round
number to use going forward.

Sales, Margins and Profit

The thing I would be most anxious about when
starting a roasting empire is who I am actually selling
coffee to. You may be familiar selling to friends and
family but the sales cycle and interactions are different
Startup and Operating Costs for wholesale accounts that depend on on-time delivery,
and sometimes retro-active delivery. Unless you are
When talking about taking the plunge, we are talk- planning on opening a retail space with heavy foot
ing about selecting and purchasing a roaster, investing traffic, a wholesale account is going to be critical to in-
in some sort of packaging and packaging equipment, creasing your roast volumes. While the margins won’t
finding the right space, and selecting the right green be as exciting as selling brewed coffee direct to consum-
coffee. Of course, depending on your model, retail ver- ers, a couple nice wholesale accounts will keep business
sus wholesale, these costs can quickly inflate to include consistent from the get go and keep the roaster (and
all of your bar and brewing equipment. The build out lights) running. The thing to keep in mind is that whole-
and roasting equipment is your single largest expense. sale accounts will depend on your reliability. When
The cost of roasters can range greatly, and good work I was working in a sales role at a roaster, I would
horse production roasters with 12Kg+ capacity are receive calls on the weekend requesting an immediate
likely to climb into the mid to high five figures. The delivery, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to serve coffee
thing to keep in mind with roasters is your ability to for brunch. With wholesale accounts, you become the
grow. I would literally be roasting all day on a hot air on-call go-to problem solver. Once you have organized
popcorn popper to produce the same volume as a single and projected the volumes of your whole-
roast cycle on a 12Kg roaster. sale accounts, it will make it
As someone intimately familiar with the costs of easier for you to plan ahead
green coffee, I probably field more questions about this in your own green coffee
part of a roaster’s business than anything else. I watch procurement.
the C market daily to see where the price of coffee is
trading. The market impacts the price of many coffees
on our website. So, the same coffee you purchased last
month may very well be a completely different price
(higher or lower) the next time you are ready to make
a purchase.
As an importer, the most common question we
receive is the cost of green coffee. Our standard response
is, as a specialty importer, the coffee we sell trades at a
premium over the C market which can be found on the
upper right-hand corner of our website. However, the
price can vary greatly. Threat of frost in Brazil can drive
the price up and institutional selling can force a drop.

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