A lot of green coffee gets to the United States by truck to a port, by ship, and by truck again, and three documents travel with it: a bill of lading, an FDA prior notice, and a customs entry. The deadline for one of them is set in federal rule and it is exact. Prior notice for food arriving by water has to reach FDA no less than 8 hours before the ship gets to the port of arrival. A lot reaches a US warehouse anywhere from 30 to 60 or more days after it departs, by Royal Coffee's published account, and then needs 10 to 15 more days on this side before anybody can buy it.
What happens between the mill gate and the ship?
The coffee leaves the mill in bags and travels by truck to the nearest ocean port, sometimes hundreds of miles. At the port it is checked by the relevant authorities and loaded onto a vessel with hundreds of other shipments heading the same direction. After a stop or two at other ports it arrives, and a truck takes it to a warehouse to be unloaded and inventoried. That route is set out on Cafe Imports' shipping page, by an importer who runs it.
None of that is specific to coffee. A container of machine parts moves the same way. What is specific to food starts with the paperwork.
Which documents travel with the coffee?
Three, and each one does a different job.
The bill of lading is the one most people think of as a shipping receipt. In customs terms it is proof of who is entitled to bring the coffee in: 19 CFR 141.11 lists a bill of lading, presented by the holder and properly endorsed, as evidence of the right to make entry.
The FDA prior notice is the food one. Any person with knowledge of the required information may submit it, and it goes in electronically, either through Customs and Border Protection's ABI/ACE/ITDS or through FDA's own Prior Notice System Interface. The deadline is set by how the food is traveling, and the rule is short enough to read straight through. By road it is 2 hours, by rail 4, by air 4, and by water 8. Green coffee crossing an ocean is the 8-hour case, and the clock runs to arrival at the port rather than to release.
Then the entry itself. Customs and Border Protection requires entry documents within 15 calendar days of the date a shipment arrives, filed by the importer of record, which is a named party answerable for the duties and for whether the shipment met the rest of the law.
How long does it actually take?
Longer than the ocean crossing, and the second half is the part that catches people out. Royal Coffee publishes both numbers: depending on the lane, a lot reaches their warehouse anywhere from 30 to 60 or more days after departure, and after port arrival containers still need 10 to 15 days for customs clearance, drayage to the warehouse, devanning, sampling and cup approval before the lot is released for sale.
So a coffee can be in the country and still not be for sale. Cafe Imports puts the same window at a week or two once a coffee is at dock, and is direct about what moves those dates: space on ocean carriers, congestion at ports, weather, and trouble at origin such as a mill breakdown or no trucks to be had.
Who brought in the coffee Inheritance roasts?
Four companies, and we have bought through one or another of them since October 2023. Sweet Maria's came first, because they break lots down into single-digit pounds. Genuine Origin followed in February 2024, selling out of centralized US warehousing. Unravel Merchants in August 2024, packing vacuum-sealed micro-lots. Yellow Rooster in September 2024, who warehouse in Florida and will put a pallet, a half bag or a small freight shipment on a truck, which is the last leg a Pensacola roastery actually touches. Each sells in a different format, and the format is most of what decides how much green coffee you have to buy at once.
We are not importers. Our name is not on any of these filings, and when another brand roasts at the Lab we will not source or bring in their green either, which is written into how toll roasting works here. A roaster who buys direct takes all of it on instead, and that trade is most of what direct trade coffee actually is. The date a lot cleared customs is a date we are given, not one we filed.
Inheritance Coffee, Pensacola. El Salvador Finca San Luis is on the shelf now, and it reached Pensacola the way everything above describes. We roast to order on Wednesdays and grind it to your brewer at no charge.
