Wholesale Coffee for Cafes and Coffee Shops

This page is for cafes and coffee shops buying coffee every week and putting it on a machine in front of paying customers. You are the one wholesale buyer whose staff tastes a change in a coffee before anybody tells them about it, and that changes what a roaster owes you. Our wholesale coffee program covers what an account includes and how it starts.

Two coffee programs on one bar

A cafe is not buying one coffee. You are buying an espresso and a batch brew, two separate decisions that happen to arrive in the same delivery.

Espresso has to survive nine bars of pressure and then six to eight ounces of steamed milk. A washed Kenya that reads as blackcurrant in a V60 can read thin and sharp under milk, and your latte drinkers will tell you so by ordering something else. Batch brew has the opposite job: drunk black by somebody who asked for a plain coffee, held in a server, and still pleasant when the last cup leaves the pot.

Most shops we supply settle on one coffee for the machine, one for the batch brewer, and a rotating third sold as a feature by the cup and by the bag. Our lineup runs light to dark and is mostly single origin, on the coffee collection.

What a cafe orders, and in which bag

Here is the shape. A shop selling 120 espresso drinks a day at a 19 gram dose uses about five pounds a day, so thirty to thirty-five pounds a week. Four 1.5 gallon batches of drip at a standard ratio is another three pounds a day, twenty a week. Call it fifty pounds a week across both programs.

We bag in 250g, 2lb and 5lb, and the detail nobody mentions is hopper size. Most commercial hoppers hold one to two and a half pounds, so a 2lb bag is a hopper fill and a 5lb bag is a supply bag you decant from. Single dose shops take 5lb for the lower cost per pound. Shops where a closer tops the hopper prefer 2lb, because a half empty 5lb bag left open on a shelf is stale coffee with extra steps.

250g is your retail format, and bags for resale sit in the same catalog as the coffee you brew, so your shelf and your hopper are one account and one delivery. If you want that bag to carry your name rather than ours, that is private label, and it is worth asking us about rather than assuming either answer.

Now let us talk you out of one of our own benefits. We grind free to any brewer, which is a genuine advantage for churches, offices and restaurants. For you it usually is not. Coffee ground on Wednesday forty minutes away is worse on your bar than coffee ground on your own burrs thirty seconds before the shot. Take whole bean for espresso.

Where cafe coffee programs quietly go wrong

The first failure is a profile that moves without an announcement. A roaster adjusts a curve or rotates to a new lot behind the same coffee name, the bag looks identical, and your opener spends three days chasing the grinder wondering what they broke. You pay for that in labor and wasted product. We grade roast color with an Agtron on every batch as standing practice. Lots do rotate eventually, because a harvest is finite, and you should hear that from us before the bag lands.

The second failure costs more and gets discussed less. You discover your roaster is also your competitor. Ask that early, of every roaster you talk to, including us.

Our position: we do not operate a coffee shop and we are not going to open one across the street from you. We do sell retail online, and our mobile coffee cart works events around the region, so we are not invisible in your market either. Retail on this site is $18 for a 250g bag, which is the number to have in front of you when you price our coffee on your own shelf.

The third is dial-in cost, and it is the reason we would rather hold a coffee you approved than surprise you with a better one. Swapping your espresso four times a year is a real line item, not a rounding error.

Grinders, hoppers and the people standing behind them

Two grinders is the floor once you carry decaf, and a third for batch brew if you have the counter. Decaf through the espresso grinder means a purge on every order, which is either wasted coffee or a decaf that is not decaf, and neither is a story you want a guest repeating. There are two decaf single origins in our lineup at the moment, so decaf does not have to be the tired bag at the back of the shelf.

Your staff is also why we can send you a coffee that asks for attention. A barista who reads a shot time and moves a burr is a different customer from a volunteer or a line cook, so we do not have to flatten a coffee to make it safe for your bar. It cuts both ways: your dial-in is only as good as your most recent hire, which is why an arrival schedule you can plan around is worth more than it looks on paper.

How pricing works for a cafe account

Pricing is set per account and shows up inside your B2B account after approval. Four things shape it: monthly volume, formats, whether you sit inside the forty mile delivery radius or ship, and how predictable your order rhythm is. The note specific to a cafe is that your brewed coffee and your resale bags count as one volume rather than two small ones, which works in your favor.

Retail here is $18 for a 250g bag and $117 for a 5lb bag, quoted only so you have a scale to think against. Your number comes with approval, after one conversation about volume and what you brew on.

Questions cafe owners ask

Will you change the roast profile without telling us?

Holding a profile is the job, and Agtron grading on every batch is how we check it rather than trusting our memory of last month. Lots do rotate when a harvest runs out, and you should hear that from us before the bag arrives. If a roaster cannot tell you how they verify roast color, that is your answer.

How much coffee does dialing in a new espresso cost us?

Fifteen to thirty shots to land it plus milk drinks to confirm it holds, so 300 to 600 grams at a 19 gram dose, and closer to a full 2lb bag once you add the following week's corrections. Budget it as a real cost and an argument for keeping a coffee rather than rotating for novelty.

Do you compete with our shop by selling retail in our market?

We do not run a coffee shop, so we are not selling drinks against you. We do sell retail bags online and our coffee cart works regional events, which you should weigh honestly. Published retail here is $18 for a 250g bag, a reference point for your own shelf price.

Will you train our baristas on a new coffee?

Ask during your first conversation. Training and bar work are part of what we do for shops we consult on, so it is a fair request, but it is not bundled into every wholesale account and we would rather agree it out loud than let you assume it.

Which bag size fits our grinder hopper?

2lb, for most bars. Commercial hoppers hold one to two and a half pounds, so a 2lb bag is one clean fill with nothing left open. Take 5lb if you single dose or decant into a sealed container, and 250g for the retail shelf.

Put our coffee on your bar

If the bar you are equipping sits in a hotel lobby rather than on a street corner, our hotel coffee supplier page describes that operation instead. Otherwise: tell us what you pull shots on, what you brew batch on, and what you go through in a month. Apply for a wholesale account and we will start with the espresso decision.