Open Your Coffee Store Online
Opening an online coffee store is far easier and affordable than a brick-and-mortar coffee business. You can have an online store up in a matter of minutes.
Shopify is a good example of this. Their platform is really easy to use. You dont need to have a technical background to create your store.
They already have a payment gateway in place so that you can begin selling your coffee right away. You can also connect your store to Stripe.
Here are some coffee stores that run their online business on the Shopify platform:
How To Sell Coffee Online
The majority of coffee drinkers brew coffee at home. Which means theres a big group of consumers out there looking for a convenient and reliable way to buy coffee from the comfort of their couch. Your online store could be that solution!
If you havent already set up an ecommerce store, thats okay. We can help with that too. Check out our complete guide for how to start an online store.
We cover everything from analyzing the marketplace, to legal requirements, choosing an ecommerce platform, branding, marketing, tracking analytics, and more. Its a step-by-step checklist of what you need to do to get your online store up and running.
Once youre set up online, and you know you want to carry coffee products in your ecommerce store the real question becomes,How do I start selling them?
Theres more than one way to sell wholesale coffee online. As an entrepreneur, youll need to determine which method works best for your business.
Lets go over the three most common retail models for coffee product resellers bulk buying, Fulfillment by Amazon, and our favorite dropshipping.
How Do Coffee Roasters Make Money
Selling coffee is a competitive business and as a roaster you will need to have a good product to set yourself apart from the competition.
Then you will have some options to make money selling coffee.
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How Do You Make Money Selling Coffee
You make money by ensuring your revenue exceeds your costs, which is what’s commonly known as a “profit margin”.
Your profit margin will be a function of the revenue from sales of your coffee minus the investment in equipment, staff, and “raw materials” .
If you’re selling coffee from home, through online channels primarily, than your prices and sales need to add up to more than the cost of getting/making the roaster coffee beans, storing and shipping them, and whatever budget you put into your advertising.
Buying Coffee In Bulk For Resale
With this model, you pay wholesale prices for a large volume of coffee products. And since youre buying in large quantities, you might be able to negotiate a better wholesale price with your supplier.
However, youre then responsible for storing, packing, and shipping the orders to your customers. Which means youll need to have access to warehouse or storage space, as well as the resources required for shipping and handling.
And some coffee products are temperature sensitive and require refrigeration. So when you think about where and how to store them, youll need to factor temperature into the equation.
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Determine Who To Choose As Your Coffee Supplier
Choosing the right coffee supplier is essential to the success of your online coffee business. Your supplier determines how your coffee tastes and impacts the quality of service you can provide your customers. Here are a few things to look for in your coffee supplier.
- Quality coffee. If you want your coffee to sell, it has to taste good. A great supplier will provide high-quality coffee that fits your roasting and flavor specifications.
- Quick turns. Delivering products quickly will keep your customers happy, but to do so, you must have a supplier with fast turnaround times. Your supplier should fill your orders quickly, so you never keep your customers waiting for their favorite roast.
- Low minimums. When you are just getting started in the coffee business, you need a supplier with low minimums so you can afford to get your business up and running without breaking the bank.
- Outstanding service. If your coffee supplier cares about your success, they will give you high-quality customer service. Look for a supplier that is willing to adjust to your companys needs and provide coffee you are proud to sell.
Joes Garage Coffee is a leading private-label coffee supplier that can help you start selling coffee from home. Our low minimums make it easy to hop into the industry, while our fast turns keep your customers satisfied. Our licensed Q-Grader can match any roast profile, and our team of private label experts will ensure your coffee beans are the highest quality.
What Are The Startup Costs Of A Home Coffee Roasting Business
If youre considering businesses with low startup costs, a home-based coffee roasting business will be among the most affordable businesses to start. Depending on your particular setup, you can begin for as little as $1,500 or less. Heres a breakdown of the various startup costs that youll need to cover.
- Packaging Supplies – Scale, Large Containers, Bags & Labels, Shipping Supplies
- Propane for the Grill
- Payment Processing System
- Website
To roast coffee at commercial volumes on a budget, youll need a grill to provide the heat, and a steel drum to rotate the beans above the heat. You can get a gas grill that will do the job for under $200 at your local hardware store, and a kit to convert your grill into a coffee roaster. Our kits start at $650 for a 6 lb drum, $730 for an 8 lb drum and $865 for a 12 lb drum. Cooling the roasted coffee quickly will ensure that you produce a quality product that doesnt taste burnt. If youre willing to DIY a cooling solution, some boards and a screen built around a box fan will do the trick for around $50. If you want a more ready-to-go solution, our coolers start at $425. Green coffee can be ordered in bulk bags weighing between 100 and 125 lbs starting around $2.00 per lb. The remaining startup costs, excluding a website, make up the remaining $1500 you need to get started with your new business.
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A Breakdown Of Coffee Roasting Profit Margins
Lets cut to the chase: theres good research that demonstrates that coffee roasters are more profitable than coffee shops, on average.
The 2017 Specialty Coffee Association financial benchmark for roasters and cafesthe largest study of its kindgave the North American industry much-needed clarity into key financial averages. Heres what the study found:
| Roaster Wholesaler | |
| 11.92% | 6.86% |
Well dive deeper into the numbers, like average startup and green coffee costs, but lets review a few initial takeaways first.
- Coffee retailers have a solid average gross margin on each item sold , but the added expenses of operating a retail location make it the least profitable business model of the bunch .
- Roaster retailers roast and serve their own brand of coffee, naturally giving them the highest gross margin on each item sold and a relatively high profit margin .
- Wholesale-focused roasters have the lowest gross margin , but they also experience significantly higher sales due to large, frequent, and long-term customer relationships.
- At the end of the day, roasters who offer both wholesale and retail locations fared the best when it comes to business profit marginsby a wide marginat 11.92%.
These findings confirm the intuition of most coffee business owners, and are probably not too surprising. For the coffee shop that wants to keep growing, starting to roast coffee is a natural next step.
Also Read: Why Coffee Shops Should Start Roasting Coffee In-House
Low Cost Ideas To Start A Coffee Business
Love coffee? You can make money with your knowledge and expertise of coffee. Its a popular beverage and there is a large market for enterprising people to leave their mark. Massive as the potential of this business is, there is a lot of hard work and effort involved. There are no shortcuts, and get-rich-quick schemes dont work.
Here are some low-cost ideas to consider for your coffee business.
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Selling Coffee Online From Home:
The Best Low-Cost Way To Start a Coffee Business
While there are some greatlow-cost ideas to start a coffee shop, many people run up against an overwhelming coffee shop startup budget.
We believe that selling coffee online from home may be a great alternative for those interested in lower-cost business opportunities.
Whether you want to change careers, start a new side-hustle, create a part-time job, or share your passion for coffee, selling coffee can be fun and rewarding.
If you want to start selling coffee from home but arent sure where to start, follow the following tips for creating your coffee business online below.
Starting A Food Selling Business
Ontario’s food sellers give consumers the opportunity to enjoy their food purchases in a variety of locations. Food selling is commonly organized into two groups – food retail and foodservice. While food stores tend to sell pre-packaged food and foodservice outlets tend to be locations where food is served as a meal, these separations are blurring.
Restaurants now sell consumers their favourite sauces and dressings from beside the cash register and retail stores sell prepared meals from a “hot & fresh” counter.
Different rules apply to these different retail activities. So when you start a food selling business, it’s important to see which rules apply to you.
For food retailers: Ontario is home to over 12,000 food retailers. This includes:
- convenience stores
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How To Sell Coffee On Amazon
Amazon is interesting because its actually really hard to do well in.
Amazon SEO is amazing, but because Amazons algorithm is based on total sales, then you need to jumpstart it with outside traffic. Luckily, if youve done everything else, you already have an audience ready to buy more coffee from you.
As you can tell, the secret to learning how to sell coffee online is to leverage your assets.
The same goes for Amazon.
You can then pair your outside traffic with some Amazon PPC. As long as you have a strong, SEO-optimized listing, then its only a matter of time before your coffee starts ranking. And when that happens, then get ready to deliver on a ton of sales.
Danavir Sarria
Start Developing Your Website Content
Your website content is critical to your success.
Imagine for a moment if I had only a simple title at the top of this article? With nothing to read or look at would you stay on this page too long?
Nope.
When you sell your coffee from home or online through your website, people will want to see pictures. They also want to read about you, your business, and of course, your coffee!
Customers also want to hear your story. They want to see what your coffee will look like. The quality of your packaging, your logo are important. Use your text and pictures to describe your products to your customers.
Determine what the front page of your website will look like. What will you say to new or returning visitors?
If you dont have your coffee beans yet, consider getting your own packaging and labeling together and start taking pictures of the bags.
It’s no secret that your presentation is important. Ask yourself, would you buy from yourself?
And if not, why?
Make your website and packaging as professional and clean as possible. Today, it’s easier and cheaper to look just as professional as more established companies. Invest in the time and money to look good.
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Ways To Make Money Selling Coffee Online And Offline
by Saeed – Last Updated February 15, 2017
Whether you want to work from home selling coffee or want to sell coffee on the streets, this is a business that can have very loyal customers. Just ask Starbucks!
People love their coffee and they show it with their money by paying crazy amounts like $18 for a cup of coffee.
This is one of the few businesses that you can charge outrageously different amounts for the exact same product.
Thats one of those things that makes starting a coffee business very attractive for a lot of entrepreneurs.
Wanna start your own business of selling coffee?
Here are a few ways to go about doing it:
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Buy A Mobile Vehicle & Equipment
There are suitable vehicles out there for all sorts of price ranges, from fully furnished horsebox trailers and Piaggios, to vans in desperate need of a renovation.
To get an idea of what vehicles are on the market currently, keep checking back on our Classified Area a free resource available to those looking to buy or sell a mobile catering vehicle. You can also download a handy Buying Guide by .
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Introduce Your Business And Tell Us Your Story: How Did You Decide On What To Sell And How Did You Source Your Products
When deciding to open a specialty coffee shop, we knew our product needed to be the highest quality we could get our hands on. We also wanted to choose from within the Canadian market. So we got to work! We started tasting coffees from all of the specialty coffee roasters in the country. From there we figured out who we got along with. If we were going to be corresponding with and working closely with a roaster – we really wanted to see eye to eye and get each other’s jokes.
After deciding on coffee, we needed pastries so naturally we went with the most reputable bakery in the city who also happen to be lovely people! To us relationships are just as important as quality, we like to work with people who are likeminded. Coffee is our thing. We wanted to and continue to focus on making coffee to the best of our ability. We bought top of the line equipment and source incredible coffee and then brew our hearts out. Coffee pairs well, and classically, with pastries. We wanted to leave that part to the baking experts so we source our pastries from a local bakery that does a bang-up job. They deliver them fresh every morning and we are confident that they are made with as much care as we make our coffee with.
Learn How To Roast Coffee Beans At Home
First, you need a roaster. You can use a hot-air popcorn popper, or even a cast-iron skillet on the stovetop but I recommend getting an air roaster that does it all for you and doesnt let you burn the beans . I use the entry-level Fresh Roast, which I bought from online retailer Sweet Marias for about $80, though I see that they now instead sell a new model starting at $109. Its cheap enough to pay for itself within a year, with the greatly reduced cost of beans, at least if you drink much coffee and buy high-quality beans. It also makes a very nice gift for a foodie or coffee houndIve bought two for friends, and were all still using them, without repair, several years later.
Of course, you can go for a higher-end Behmor for $300, which will give you more control, better roasts, and larger capacity, as I intend to eventually but its easy to try things out on the Fresh Roast for starters. You can move up to $1000 home roasters later, to go with your $1500 copper-plated espresso machine. Any of these will work when youre learning how to roast coffee beans at home.
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Who You Are Going To Sell Coffee To
Who will your online coffee customers be?
Will your customers buy your coffee from you primarily online? Will your customers be other coffee shop businesses, cafes, and small local grocery markets? Or a combination of both?
Fortunately, you can start small.
You can start with your friends, family, co-workers, and social media followers. After you feel proficient enough, you can offer your roasted coffee beans to your local coffee shop or even your local mini-market. From there, you can grow as large as you want.
You will most likely have two types of main customers:
- Individual customers and,
- Local coffee shops and restaurants.
Each of these groups has different needs for their coffee, so it will be essential to develop winning strategies to approach them and deliver exactly what they want.
Coffee shops and cafes will want larger orders of whole bean coffee. Coffee shops prefer whole bean coffees because they stay fresher longer. Once you grind up coffee, the shelf life of coffee begins to decrease quickly. Coffee shops could order 50 lbs. to 250 lbs. of coffee per week , so youll want to be prepared for that type of volume you need to ship out.
On the other hand, individual coffee customers will buy smaller bags ranging from one 12 oz. bag to 3 lbs. bags of coffee at a time.
Benefits Of Choosing Rk Drums For Your Coffee Roasting Business
If youre new to coffee roasting, thats completely fine. Well walk with you through the roasting process over the phone, coaching you on how to develop great roast profiles for the coffee you have. Well gladly pass on our expertise through personalized guidance from the team at RK Drums.
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