A green coffee offer sheet is a list of lots an importer or exporter has available to sell, each one priced against that day's futures market plus a fixed differential. Getting one in your inbox feels like an offer in the ordinary sense, something you can simply accept. It isn't. Every line on the sheet is still open to the same market that priced it, and nothing about receiving the sheet, or even replying that you want a specific lot, fixes a number you owe. That happens at a separate, later step, one the sheet itself never describes.
What Actually Shows Up on a Line
Green Coffee Collective's glossary calls an offer sheet "the primary commercial interface between green coffee sellers and buyers," and it lists what a line typically carries: origin, region, farm or cooperative, processing method, varietal, altitude, harvest date, cupping score, flavor notes, preparation standard, packaging, quantity available, and price, usually quoted FOB, CIF, or ex-warehouse. That's a complete inventory of what you're looking at. It says nothing about what happens after you've read it.
Why the Price on the Sheet Isn't the Price You'll Pay
Brian Truong's explainer for Copan Trade breaks the price column into its two parts: the New York coffee futures contract on the day you're reading it, plus a differential the importer has already fixed for that specific lot. Truong calls the resulting number a "price indication," which is the right word for it. We've written separately about what a coffee differential actually is, and about how it can sit a dollar or more away from the benchmark depending on the lot. The differential is fixed. The futures leg underneath it is not, so the number printed on the sheet keeps moving until someone stops it.
Neither source says when that stopping happens, or what you actually owe once you've said yes to a line. That's the part a buyer needs to know, and it's the part we get asked about most.
What Saying Yes to a Line Actually Commits You To
Replying to an offer sheet is not placing an order, even on a sheet with your name at the top. What we're agreeing to when we tell a seller we want a specific lot is a quantity against that lot, not yet a number. The price gets fixed, or priced in trade language, at a separate moment when both sides agree to lock the futures leg against that day's market, and it's that locking moment that actually binds us, not the day we first said yes. Before the lock, either side can walk, and the lot can go to someone else who locks first. A sheet with a dozen lots on it is really a dozen invitations to start that second conversation, not a dozen coffees already spoken for.
Why We Still Cup the Sample Before We Confirm Anything
A cupping score on the sheet is the seller's own number, taken on their table, not ours. Before we confirm a line, we ask for the actual sample, the same way we described in how we get a green coffee sample, and we cup it ourselves before we agree to a price. That costs us time, especially on a forward-contracted lot, where the sample doesn't always land until weeks after the sheet does, and a faster buyer who skipped that step can lock the same lot while we're still waiting on a courier. We've lost lots that way. We still wait, because a sheet's cupping score tells us what the seller tasted, not what we will.
What This Looked Like on One of Our Own Lines
Our El Salvador Finca San Luis came to us on a sheet the same way: a lot, a score of 86.8, and a price indication built on that week's futures contract. What we actually locked was $7.45 a pound for the green coffee, plus $0.36 a pound in transportation, a number that hasn't moved since, regardless of where the futures contract has gone in the weeks since we fixed it. That's the same locking moment we laid out in our piece on the coffee differential, looked at from the buyer's side of the sheet instead of the seller's. A sheet also states a minimum quantity per lot, which is its own separate commitment, one we've covered on its own in how much green coffee you have to buy at once.
Taste the lot we locked off a sheet like this one. Our El Salvador Finca San Luis cups at 86.8 and ships whole-bean or ground to order, roasted in Pensacola every Wednesday.
