How to start a coffee roasting business

Roasting capacity is measured by green batch size — the weight of unroasted beans a machine takes per batch. The right size depends on whether you're learning, selling at a market on weekends, or supplying cafes.

• Home / hobby roaster — an air roaster or small drum (roughly 100–500 g per batch). Cheap, plug-in, and ideal for learning to profile and for selling tiny test batches at a market. Too slow to supply wholesale.
• Tabletop / sample commercial roaster — a 500 g to ~1.2 kg drum roaster (for example an Aillio Bullet or a 1 kg shop roaster). The realistic entry point for a "nano-roastery": enough to fill retail bags and small wholesale orders, with proper drum control for repeatable profiles.
• Shop roaster (5 kg and up) — a commercial drum roaster for serious retail and wholesale volume. Higher cost, three-phase power and an exhaust/afterburner are common requirements, and it usually lives in a dedicated space.
• Co-roasting / rent roaster time — many cities have shared roasteries that rent machine time by the hour. Near-zero equipment cost, no facility build-out, and a fast, low-risk way to validate demand before buying a machine.

Most people who turn roasting into a business either start by renting time at a shared roastery or buy a ~1 kg tabletop roaster, then move up to a 5 kg+ machine once wholesale demand is proven. The comparison table above lays out the trade-offs.

Beyond the ordinary business setup, coffee carries food-business obligations that vary by state — verify the specifics with your state department of agriculture or health before you sell:

• A business structure. Coffee roasters commonly start as a sole proprietorship or a single-member LLC for liability separation. The SBA's guide to choosing a business structure (opens in new tab) is a good starting point, and you can apply for a free EIN from the IRS (opens in new tab).
• A licensed production space. In many (and likely most) states, food production must happen in an inspected commercial kitchen or registered food facility — not a home kitchen. A shared commercial kitchen or co-roasting space is the common low-cost route. Cottage food laws (which let some foods be made at home) often don't cover roasted coffee, and rules vary widely — confirm with your state.
• FDA food facility registration. Facilities that manufacture, process, pack, or hold food for U.S. sale generally must register with the FDA and renew biennially; retail establishments selling directly to consumers may be exempt (the requirement is set out in 21 U.S. Code § 350d (food facility registration) (opens in new tab)). Search the FDA's site for "food facility registration" to reach its current registration portal, and check your own situation.
• FDA-compliant labels. Packaged coffee needs a statement of identity, net weight, your business name and address, and an ingredient statement (and allergen statement if applicable). Roast date or a "best by" date is standard practice for freshness. These requirements are codified in 21 CFR Part 101 (food labeling rules) (opens in new tab); the FDA's plain-language Food Labeling Guide (search FDA.gov) is a useful summary.
• A state sales-tax permit in states that levy sales tax (most do). Marketplaces and your own store have different collection rules — verify your state's.

Don't over-build at this stage: forming an LLC and buying accounting software before any sales is a common waste. A separate business checking account on day one is enough — but the production space and labeling are not optional, so price them in from the start.

Green coffee is sold by origin, process, grade, and lot, in bag sizes from a few pounds up to full export bags (often ~30–70 kg). For a new roaster, buy small and buy variety before committing to volume.

• Importers and green sellers. Specialty importers and green-coffee sellers (for example Sweet Maria's (opens in new tab) for small lots, or larger importers such as Royal Coffee / Café Imports for full bags) publish origin, process, cupping notes, and price per pound. Many offer sample-sized bags so you can roast and taste before buying a full lot.
• Buy for the season. Green coffee is an agricultural product with harvest seasons and freshness windows — green keeps far longer than roasted, but it's not infinite. Buy what you can roast through in a reasonable window rather than over-stocking a coffee that fades.
• Track every lot. Record each green lot's cost per pound, origin, and arrival so you can calculate true cost per roasted bag after roast loss — the basis for accurate per-bag pricing.

Plan for roast loss from the start: beans shed moisture and chaff during roasting, typically losing about 12–20% of their green weight (a widely cited range among specialty roasters) — lighter roasts lose less, darker roasts more, with medium roasts commonly around 15–18%. At a 16% loss a pound of green yields only about 0.84 lb of roasted coffee, so measure the loss on your own machine and build it into both your green purchasing and your pricing.

Roasting transforms green coffee through heat over time. The roast profile — how temperature and airflow change across the roast, and where you end it — determines flavor. Your job is to find a profile you like and roast it the same way every time.

Log every roast

Roast logging software turns roasting from guesswork into a repeatable recipe. Artisan (opens in new tab) is a free, open-source roast logger that records the temperature curve and your events (its optional artisan.plus cloud service adds paid features); Cropster (opens in new tab) is the paid industry standard once you scale. Record charge temperature, the curve, first crack, drop time and temperature, and green-to-roasted weight (your roast loss) for every batch.

Cup your results

Cupping is the standardized tasting method roasters use to evaluate coffee objectively. Cup your roasts against each other and across days to judge consistency, dial in profiles, and catch defects before a customer does. A simple cupping log — scores and tasting notes per batch — becomes your quality record.

Build repeatable recipes

Once a profile is dialed in, treat it as a recipe: the green lot, charge weight, target curve, and drop point. Reproducing that recipe batch after batch is what lets you sell a named coffee that tastes the same in March and June — and it's exactly the kind of production record a tool like Ardent Seller is built to hold (step 8).

Freshly roasted coffee degasses — it releases carbon dioxide for several days. That drives two packaging realities:

• One-way valve bags. Coffee bags use a degassing valve that lets CO2 escape without letting oxygen in. Sealing fresh coffee in a non-valve bag can swell or burst it; leaving it open lets it go stale. Valve bags (with a heat-sealer or zip closure) are the standard.
• Rest before you sell or brew. Most roasters rest beans about 1–3 days (roughly 24–72 hours) after roasting before packing or brewing, so the coffee settles — some specialty espresso is rested longer. Whole bean keeps far longer than pre-ground — selling whole bean (and grinding to order) protects freshness and is the specialty norm.

Common bag sizes are 12 oz (340 g) for retail and 2 lb / 5 lb for wholesale and subscriptions. Label per the FDA rules from step 2, and add a roast date — specialty buyers look for it. Packaging cost (bag + label + valve) is a real per-unit line item: build it into your price in step 6, not as an afterthought.

Start from the true cost of a roasted bag, then set retail and wholesale prices on top of it.

What a 12 oz bag actually costs

• Green coffee, adjusted for roast loss. Green prices vary widely by origin and grade — specialty green is often listed around $8–$12/lb at sellers like Sweet Maria's. A 12 oz roasted bag weighs 0.75 lb; at a ~16% roast loss you need 0.75 ÷ 0.84 = ~0.89 lb of green to fill it. At $8/lb that's about $7.14 in green — not the $6.00 the unadjusted weight suggests. Roast loss is the number most beginners miss; verify current green prices with your supplier.
• Packaging: valve bag + label, roughly $0.30–$0.80.
• Labor and roasting overhead: your time roasting, cupping, and packing, plus power and machine wear, amortized per bag. This adds up faster than beginners expect — a small tabletop roaster fills even a modest order only across many back-to-back batches — so track your actual minutes per bag at your machine's batch size and pay yourself a real hourly rate.

As a rough illustration, a specialty 12 oz retail bag commonly seen among U.S. specialty micro-roasters sells in the $14–$22 range (verify against comparable roasters near you); wholesale to cafes is typically priced per pound at a meaningful discount to retail (cafes need room to mark it up), which is why wholesale demands tight cost control and volume to be worth it. The two channels have very different math:

• Retail bags — best margin per bag, but you drive every sale and absorb marketing and shipping.
• Wholesale — lower margin per pound, but predictable repeat orders that keep a roaster busy. Build a simple line sheet with wholesale price, case sizes, and lead time.
• Subscriptions — recurring revenue and predictable roasting volume; a strong fit once you have a few reliable coffees.

Run the yield and pricing calculators below on your own green cost, roast loss, and packaging before setting a price — the figures above are illustrative and shift with origin, roast level, and bag size.

The common starting channels for a new roastery:

• Your own online store (Shopify / Squarespace) — full margin and control, and the natural home for a subscription. You drive every visitor, so it pairs best with local and social traffic. Subscriptions on your own store are the highest-value channel once you have repeat customers.
• Farmers markets and local events — direct sales, instant feedback, and brand-building with samples. Booth fees and weekend time are the cost; great for finding your first regulars.
• Wholesale to cafes, restaurants, and offices — the volume channel for many roasters. Lower per-pound margin, but predictable repeat orders. Expect to provide samples and sometimes brew training.
• Local grocers and bottle shops — shelf placement with repeat reorders, usually at wholesale or consignment terms.
• Marketplaces (Amazon, Etsy) — reach, but with fees and freshness/shipping-speed challenges for a perishable product. Specialty buyers typically expect fresh coffee, so it works best for roasters who can roast-to-ship within about 2–3 days and keep total roast-to-delivery under roughly 7–10 days; if your fulfillment can't hit that, defer it. Usually a later, secondary channel.

A common opening combination is a Shopify store plus local farmers markets (online margin plus in-person discovery), then layering wholesale once your roasting is consistent and you can reliably hit volume. Whatever the mix, you'll need to track stock and cost across all of it — the next step.

For a couple of coffees a spreadsheet is fine. Past that, the math gets brittle in ways specific to roasting:

• You buy green by the pound but sell roasted by the bag — and roast loss means the conversion isn't one-to-one, so manual cost-per-bag math drifts.
• One green lot becomes multiple roasted SKUs (12 oz, 2 lb, 5 lb; whole vs ground) and a spreadsheet stops tracking which is actually in stock.
• A wholesale order ships and you forget to deduct the green; you over-promise a single-origin that just ran out.
• Green prices change between lots, and your true COGS quietly moves with them.
• Tax time arrives and you can't tell the IRS what the coffee you sold actually cost to produce.

A rough heuristic: once you're past a handful of coffees, selling on more than one channel, or running wholesale accounts, dedicated software starts to pay for itself. Ardent Seller is built for exactly this — track green lots by cost and weight, model each roast as a production batch that converts green to roasted (capturing your roast loss), see true cost per bag across every size, and reconcile retail and wholesale sales. The Tools section below covers the full range from free spreadsheets up.

Keep two tax items separate: sales tax (collection rules vary by channel and state) and income tax (roasting profit goes on Schedule C; quarterly estimated taxes via Form 1040-ES are required once you expect to owe $1,000+ for the year).