Its common for home roasters to see themselves in business. Here are a few random thoughts…
“I need a big air roaster” “I need a big drum roaster” “I need a wall of home roasters”
If you ever find a used SonoFresco (Syd and Jerry, Coffee Kinetics) roaster super cheap, buy one of those. New, they are pricey, but they are terrific work horses for 1.25 pound batches that end at about a pound. Easy to fix, very little maintenance. Or consider BBQ roasting.
Home machines are intended for home use. You could run a number of Behmors or Gene Roasters simultaneously, but you’ve also got to factor what your time is worth. IF you can sell coffee at $30 a pound you should. If you can’t, then what’s it really worth for you to stand staring at a home machine for 20 minutes? What happens during the holidays when fifteen people all ask for a pound of beans. And do you really want to take money from friends?
Even though home roasting is super fun and great for small batches of a pot or so a day; find a shop that will roast 20 lbs at a time for you. It might cost .80 to 1.10 a pound for the service but roasting even 3 pounds an hour on multiple machines at home will be highly inconsistent, take all day, and eventually kill a home machine. Selecting that coffee, producing a sample and bagging it up after will be plenty of work for you. You’d still the coffee expert! but spend your time selling and reaching that 20 lb minimum asap.
The FIRST thing you need are orders- even before buying beans. If you can settle on a single coffee and know it well, sell the heck out of that first. Get 20 lbs roasted (you’ll wind up with about 17) and shop that around to hair dressers’, small mom n pop groceries, friends, farmers markets, tiny sandwich shops, and groups. Make them an offer they can’t refuse; because they will. You’re going up against, in the very best scenario, Trader Joe’s $4 a can whole beans. What your pitch to make them part with $15 or so?
The concept of custom roasting at home is appealing but there’s a LOT of competition out there where people are selling roasted coffee for almost the price of green. Whatever your concept is, its got to be a twist on what already works, and people will have got to know about it. Having orders and no roasted beans is a far better problem than having roasted beans and no orders. Sell first, roast after.
Keep it simple. Start with a single core coffee. Even that model it will be VERY difficult to get a business going. Yes, since you are a home roaster you can modify it with some additional components… but don’t go committing yourself to roasting 60 lbs of coffee because you suddenly need tens pounds each of your super cool Holiday blend. You also want your coffee to be FRESH. So get the orders first, roast, then deliver. Or you risk sitting on beans that are going stale.
If you want to make blends, think about dolling up the core coffee you’ve had roasted with small amounts of home roasted. That’s within reach.
Familiarity and consistency are your friends. If your customer liked a coffee, they’ll want it again. And again and again, you hope. Its familiarity and consistency that made Starbucks go from known to huge. If a coffee shop never had the same thing twice, or it was radically different than last time, they probably won’t get many repeat orders. If you can produce even ONE good roasted coffee over and over and over you’ll gain a following. Build on that. Question what practices will be sustainable. Keep them simple.
Simplicity is WAY hard enough.
Another approach is to start with BREWED coffee instead, and hit all those locations mentioned. A couple new / used air pots will cost about $30 each. Make the daily rounds swapping out 2.2 liters of awesome coffee at $1.50 a cup ( fifty 6 oz cups per pound minus supplies) vs trying to move roasted coffee by the pound. Sure. leave a few $5 half pounds of that batch on hand, but don’t plan on it flying off the shelf. Be very conservative with expectations. …Be VERY conservative with expectations.
You may need to make friends with a commercial kitchen to work out of if things get serious. DON’T go buying a kitchen!! just borrow one from a friend. Maybe cross market your coffee to pay for the space…
Learn from others… There are plenty of coffee businesses that no longer exist, simply because they spent more than they made. Those cheap air pots are available out there for a reason. Before you spend anything, think hard about what the net cash in pocket will be in the end. Think about scale… where do things begin to work? Where do they cease working?
… The Coffee Project STILL has stuff on the shelves from the very first home roasting kit produced in Spring 1997.
Listen to your significant other, your parents, people who have success in what THEY do. Listen to your mentors. Work it out on paper (really!) before you go spending. Take your expectations and cut them in half. Take your expected costs and double them. If its still a good idea, go for it!
Even at that, no matter how perfect the plan is, its still not perfect. Plan on a lot of misses before things start to work as first imagined. Have an escape plan too. There really is a LOT of value in taking a concept (buy low, sell high) and creating that whole virtual world on paper first.
Taking a hobby into being a business is a big deal. It’s doable, but it will take commitment and a lot of work.