The number most roasters get wrong first
A 40-pound green coffee charge drops to roughly 34–35 roasted pounds at the end of a medium roast. That 12–15% weight loss — roast shrinkage — is free product you gave away if you forgot to account for it. Pricing wholesale coffee without baking shrinkage into your cost-per-pound is the single most common margin leak in small roasteries, and it compounds fast once you're moving a few hundred pounds a week to cafe accounts.
This guide walks through the full cost build, the wholesale discount structure cafes actually expect, and the QC habits that let you defend your price with confidence.
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Build your true cost per roasted pound
Start with a clean cost stack before you ever think about margin:
1. Green coffee landed cost
Landed cost includes the FOB price, freight, import duties, and any warehouse handling. For a specialty single-origin from Ethiopia or Colombia in 2026, you might pay $4.50–$7.00/lb green depending on harvest year, relationship, and lot size. Direct-trade relationships often run $0.50–$1.50 above commodity, but the quality and story support the downstream retail price.
Divide landed cost by your expected roasted yield to get the base cost per roasted pound:
> Example: $5.20/lb green ÷ 0.86 yield (14% shrinkage) = $6.05/lb roasted
2. Roast labor
Time your roast cycles honestly. A 20–25 minute roast on a 15-kilo drum, factoring in cool-down, log entry, and cleanup, typically runs 45–60 minutes of labor per charge. At a $22–$28/hr all-in labor rate (including payroll burden — do not use your bare wage rate), a 15-kilo charge costs $16–$28 in labor. Spread that over 13 roasted pounds and you're adding $1.25–$2.15/lb in labor alone before packaging.
3. Packaging
A kraft valve bag with degassing valve in the 12-oz or 1-lb format costs $0.45–$0.80 per unit depending on minimum order quantity. For wholesale, many roasters ship in 5-lb or 12-lb bags at $1.20–$2.50 per bag. Per roasted pound, packaging typically lands at $0.35–$0.70 depending on format and supplier.
4. Overhead allocation
Propane or natural gas, machine maintenance, label printing, and facilities. A reasonable overhead allocation for a small roastery doing 500–2,000 lbs/month runs $0.50–$1.20/lb roasted. Track your actual utility bills per charge and allocate honestly — many roasters underestimate this by half.
Putting it together:
| Cost component | Per roasted pound | |---|---| | Green (with shrinkage) | $6.05 | | Labor | $1.75 | | Packaging (5-lb bag) | $0.50 | | Overhead | $0.80 | | Total cost | $9.10 |
This is your floor. Every wholesale price must clear it.
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Setting your retail anchor, then discounting to wholesale
The industry standard wholesale discount for cafe accounts sits at 40–50% off retail. That is the range cafes budget for when they're evaluating a new roaster relationship. A 45% wholesale discount on a $22/lb retail bag puts wholesale at $12.10/lb. Against a $9.10 cost, that's a $3.00 gross margin — roughly 25% gross margin on wholesale.
That 25% sounds thin, but it works at volume with predictable recurring orders. The mistake is pricing wholesale off a retail price you haven't validated in the market. If your retail is aspirational rather than actual, the math collapses.
Typical 2026 price ranges for specialty micro-roasters (US market):
- Retail 12-oz bag: $18–$28 for single-origin specialty
- Wholesale 5-lb: $50–$75 (equivalent to $10–$15/lb)
- Minimum order: 10–20 lbs per delivery, or $150–$200 minimum invoice
Do not offer spot wholesale pricing below $10.50/lb unless your green costs are genuinely lower than average — and verify that claim with your roast logs, not your gut.
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Why your roast log is a pricing document
Every roast log entry — charge weight, first crack time, drop weight, development time ratio (DTR), Agtron score — is cost data, not just quality data.
Shrinkage variance matters. A 12% shrinkage profile versus a 15% profile on the same green lot is a $0.40/lb difference in cost at $5/lb green. If you're running multiple roast profiles across your SKU lineup, your cost per roasted pound differs by profile. Pricing all your coffees off a single shrinkage assumption will misprice your darker or lighter roasts.
DTR and drop temp affect yield consistency. A roast dropped 10 seconds early loses less weight but can come out underdeveloped. A roast extended past your target DTR loses more. Track actual drop weights per charge and recalculate your running average yield quarterly. Most operators who do this find their real shrinkage runs 1–2% higher than what they assumed at setup.
The Agtron/cupping connection. Wholesale accounts that reorder reliably are buying consistency as much as flavor. If your roast-to-roast Agtron scores drift by more than ±3 points, you will get complaints and eventually churn. Cupping every production lot before it ships isn't just QC — it's account retention. Losing a 20-lb/week cafe account costs you roughly $500–$700/month in revenue. A cupping session takes 45 minutes.
The Micro-Roastery Operations Kit includes a roast log template linked to a green forecast engine and wholesale order tracker, so shrinkage, yield, and cost-per-pound update automatically as you log each charge. The math stays live instead of living in a stale spreadsheet you update once a quarter.
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Tiered pricing and account minimums
Not all wholesale is the same. A coffee shop taking 30 lbs/week has more leverage than one taking 5 lbs/month. Build a simple tier structure:
- Tier 1 (Founding/High-Volume): 40+ lbs/week, 48% off retail, free delivery within service radius
- Tier 2 (Standard Cafe): 15–39 lbs/week, 44% off retail, delivery included above $200/order
- Tier 3 (Small Account): under 15 lbs/week, 40% off retail, $150 minimum or surcharge applies
Publish your minimums. Roasters who don't enforce minimums end up running $75 deliveries to accounts that cost more to service than they generate. The math here is brutal: a 10-lb/week account at $11/lb wholesale generates $110/week gross, or roughly $27 gross margin. A 30-minute delivery round-trip at loaded labor cost eats $11–$14 of that. You're netting $13–$16 on a weekly basis before any account management or invoicing time.
Minimum order enforcement is not rude — it's the difference between a sustainable wholesale program and a program that bleeds you on small accounts while your roasting capacity fills up.
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The mistakes that erode margin in year one
Quoting off green cost alone. The most common error. Green is 55–65% of your roasted cost, not 100% of it. Pricing on green alone and adding a flat markup leaves labor and overhead uncompensated.
Ignoring seasonal green cost swings. Coffee futures and spot prices move. A $0.80/lb increase in green cost that you don't pass through within 60–90 days will compress your margin by 8–10 percentage points. Build a green cost review into your pricing cycle — at minimum quarterly, ideally monthly.
Underpricing to win the account, planning to raise later. Cafes budget based on what they've been paying. A roaster who comes in at $9.50/lb to win the business and then tries to raise to $12.00/lb six months later loses the account half the time. Start at your real price.
Not tracking shrinkage per origin. A washed Kenyan might run 13% shrinkage on your drum. A natural Ethiopian might run 11%. Price them differently if the green cost is similar — the yield difference moves the final cost meaningfully.
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Running the forecast
Wholesale accounts create predictable demand if you manage them actively. A green coffee forecast built off your confirmed account volumes — plus a buffer for new account acquisition — lets you buy in larger quantities at lower per-pound prices.
Example: 3 cafe accounts at 25 lbs/week average = 75 lbs/week roasted, or ~325 lbs/month. At 14% shrinkage, you need ~378 lbs/month green. Order in 60-bag increments (about 5,500 lbs) and your landed cost per pound drops materially versus spot buying in 150-lb minimums.
The Micro-Roastery Operations Kit includes a green forecast engine that pulls from your wholesale account volumes and projects 90-day green purchasing needs by origin, which is the input your importer or direct-trade partner needs to reserve allocation. The gear bundle pairs this with setup guides for roast log integration if you're starting from scratch.
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What to charge: a working benchmark
For a US-based specialty micro-roastery in 2026, a defensible wholesale price for a quality single-origin sits between $11.50–$14.50/lb for standard cafe accounts, depending on:
- Green cost and origin (naturals from high-demand origins command more)
- Your established retail price point
- Volume tier of the account
- Whether you provide barista training or brewing support as part of the relationship
Blends built around commodity-adjacent components can wholesale for $9.50–$11.00/lb and still maintain 28–32% gross margin if your green is well-sourced and your shrinkage is managed tightly.
The operators who price confidently are the ones who know their actual numbers. Build the model, log every roast, and revisit the math every quarter.