What price do coffee roasters pay for green coffee?

Question by JJ: What price do coffee roasters pay for green coffee?
I know this would vary depending on the quality but just looking for a rough figure for Kenya AA and ABs.

Thanks


Best answer:

Answer by GOV
It doesn't just depend on the quality, but also on the quantity. I roast in small batches at home and get my coffee from sweetmarias.com for $ 5 - $ 6 per pound. The largest quantities they offer through their website are 20lb bags, which come out to roughly $ 4 - $ 5 per pound. According to their website (1), these are suitable for "small commercial roasters".

Sweet Maria's doesn't currently offer any Kenya AA or ABs, but according to the September 27, 2007 archive from archive.org (2), a 20lb bag of Kenya AA Nyeri - Karatina went for $ 86.24, which comes out to $ 4.31 per pound. A one-pound bag for home roasters was $ 5.60.

So small commercial roasters can get Kenya AA for about $ 4.31 per pound in 20lb bags. My guess is that even large roasting companies can't do much better than about $ 3/lb, maybe approaching $ 2/lb if they are buying very large quantities directly from the farm. But that's an extrapolation based on the $ 4.31 figure, feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Keep in mind that commercially roasting coffee is a time-consuming process that requires skilled and experienced workers and expensive equipment. You also need to go through a certain amount of coffee, fine-tuning the process and cupping (tasting the coffee) to find just the right roast for a specific batch of green coffee. Finally, coffee loses roughly 15% of its weight during the roasting process (the darker it's roasted, the more it loses) (3). In other words, for every 5 pounds of coffee a roaster wants to sell, they must purchase and roast 6 pounds of green coffee (not counting what's wasted during the fine-tuning/cupping process). My point is that the $ 12-$ 15 price of most commercially roasted coffee seems quite reasonable.

If you're interested in roasting at home, Sweet Maria's (see (1)) has everything you need, from the roasters to a huge selection of green beans. I got the i-Roast 2 from them a few months ago and I love it.

Give your answer to this question below!