Restaurant Coffee Supplier

In most restaurants coffee is the last thing a guest tastes and the cheapest thing on the check. It gets bought on price, brewed on the machine nobody descales, and poured by a server closing out at nine. That is the whole problem, and fixing it costs less than any owner expects. Our wholesale coffee program covers accounts, formats and delivery.

The last thing they taste sets the review

A guest spends two hours with your food and leaves on a cup of coffee that nobody in the building thought about this week.

The arithmetic makes the case better than any argument. A cup takes roughly 21 to 23 grams and a pound is 454 grams, so a pound is about 20 cups, and every dollar of difference in what you pay per pound works out to about five cents a cup. Five cents, on the item that decides whether a guest says the meal was good or says the meal was good and the coffee was a surprise.

Run it against a price. A 5lb bag at our published retail of $117 is about 100 cups, a shade over a dollar a cup, and a wholesale account sits below retail. Put an example menu price of $3.50 beside it, a figure invented for illustration rather than quoted from anywhere, and the item clears two thirds margin before labor. Buying the cheapest coffee available saves cents and costs you the last thirty seconds of the meal.

One coffee, one decaf, and how much you actually go through

Most restaurants need two coffees: one regular, one decaf, both ground to your brewer, on a rhythm matching your covers.

The volume is smaller than owners guess. A 90 seat room turning 120 covers where a quarter take coffee is 30 cups, about 660 grams, a pound and a half a night. Six nights is nine or ten pounds a week, and brunch can double a day on its own. So a typical dinner house is one or two 5lb bags a week.

Decaf is where the format decision inverts. Decaf runs maybe 15 to 20 percent of after dinner orders, five or six cups a night, barely a pound a week, so a 5lb bag takes over a month to empty. Take 2lb on decaf even though the cost per pound is higher, because a bag sitting open five weeks costs you more in flat coffee than you saved on format. There are two decaf single origins in our lineup right now, and the guest who orders decaf notices faster than the one who orders regular.

Grinding is the part of our program that earns its keep here. You almost certainly have no grinder, no counter space for one, and no reason to buy one. Tell us the make of your brewer and we grind to it at no charge, so what arrives goes straight into a filter.

The holding pot undoes everything upstream of it

Brewed coffee is good for about thirty minutes on a burner and about an hour in an insulated server. After that the burner keeps cooking it and the flavor goes flat, then bitter. A restaurant brewing a full batch at five is pouring four hour old coffee at nine, and nine is when the tables that order coffee actually order it.

Three fixes, none involving a change of supplier. Brew half batches after eight. Use a thermal server instead of glass on a hot plate. Write the brew time on the pot and dump on the clock instead of when it looks low.

Then there is the machine. A restaurant brewer is usually the least maintained equipment in the building: a sprayhead partly blocked so water channels through one spot, no descale in two years, and a brew temperature well under the 195 to 205 degree range that extracts coffee properly. Cool water under-extracts, and under-extracted coffee is sour and thin whoever roasted it. If your brewer is out of temperature spec, changing roasters will not fix your coffee, and we would rather say that than sell you beans about to be wasted.

Wash the pots and the brew basket with something other than water: coffee oils go rancid on stainless, and a clean coffee poured into a dirty pot tastes like the pot.

Your brewer and the server working it at nine o'clock

Nobody on your floor is a barista and nobody should have to be. The coffee has to be right when it is made by a server with six tables who has coffee as item fourteen on a closing list.

So design it out. One filter, one dose portioned by weight into a labeled container, one water setting, one card above the brewer. A level two tablespoon scoop is about 10 grams and the same scoop heaped is nearer 14, a 40 percent difference in strength produced by two people who each believe they used one scoop.

Espresso deserves a blunt answer. If nobody on staff pulls shots regularly, a manual machine will produce bad espresso most nights and an expensive one will produce it faster. A French press brought to the table beats mediocre espresso at a fraction of the equipment cost.

Cost per cup and what moves your price

Pricing is set per account and appears in your B2B account after approval. Four inputs move it: monthly volume, whether you take 2lb or 5lb bags, whether you sit inside the forty mile delivery radius or ship, and how steady your ordering is.

Retail on this site is $18 for a 250g bag and $117 for a 5lb bag, quoted only as a scale for the arithmetic above. A wholesale account sits below retail, and how far below is what your volume and format decide. Your number comes with approval, after one conversation about covers and your brewer.

Questions restaurant owners ask

What does a cup of coffee actually cost us?

Work from the grams. A 12 ounce cup takes 21 to 23 grams and a pound is 454 grams, so a pound is about 20 cups and a 5lb bag about 100. At our published retail of $117 for 5lb that is a little over a dollar a cup, and wholesale sits below retail. Every dollar of difference in price per pound is about five cents a cup.

How long can a brewed batch sit before it hurts us?

About thirty minutes on a burner, about an hour in an insulated server. A batch brewed at five and poured at nine is the most common reason a restaurant's coffee is bad, and no roaster can supply around it. Brew smaller batches later in service and dump on a timer rather than by eye.

Is your decaf worth serving?

There are two decaf single origins in our lineup at the moment, chosen the same way the rest of it is. The bigger risk on your side is age rather than quality: order decaf in 2lb bags even though 5lb is cheaper per pound, because your decaf volume means a large bag sits open over a month.

Can a server make it right at nine at night?

Only if you take the judgment out of it. Pre-portion the dose by weight, keep one recipe card above the brewer, and use a thermal server so the batch is not sitting on heat. A level scoop and a heaped scoop differ by 40 percent, which is most of what guests taste at the end of a night.

How much coffee does a restaurant our size go through?

A 90 seat dinner house doing 120 covers with a quarter taking coffee is roughly a pound and a half a night, nine or ten pounds a week, more with brunch. That usually means one or two 5lb bags of regular and a 2lb of decaf. Send us your covers and your brewer and we will size the first order rather than guess.

Fix the last cup of the meal

If your restaurant runs a genuine espresso bar in the mornings with somebody behind it, read wholesale coffee for cafes and coffee shops instead. Otherwise this takes one conversation: your covers, your brewer, and whether you want the coffee ground. Apply for a wholesale account and we will start with the decaf, since that is usually the fastest thing to improve.