← Coffee roaster margin calculator
Most small roasters price a bag by looking at the shop down the road. The number that should come first is what a bag costs you, and the part people miss is that you pay for coffee that evaporates. Here is the arithmetic for a 12 oz bag, and the same figures are in the free calculator.
| Step | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Green coffee | $5.10 per lb | $5.10 |
| Roast loss 15% | 5.10 / 0.85 | $6.00 per roasted lb |
| Labor and gas | 0.40 + 0.10 | $6.50 per roasted lb |
| 12 oz of coffee | 6.50 × 12 / 16 | $4.88 |
| Bag, label and valve | $0.90 | |
| Card fees at $16 | 2.9% + $0.30 | $0.76 |
| Profit on a $16 bag | 16 − 4.88 − 0.90 − 0.76 | $9.46 (59.1%) |
Add $5.50 of postage that the customer does not pay for and the same bag earns about $3.96. Wholesale at $9.60 with no postage and no card fee earns $3.82 a bag, close to that, which is why it pays to look at profit per roasted pound and per roasting hour rather than at margin alone.
If a cheap Brazil scores 82 and an Ethiopia scores 89, a mix averages between them. The calculator checks every blend in 5% steps for the cheapest one that still meets your target score, and tells you how much green to weigh out for the batch.
Every roasted pound needs more than a pound of green. At 15% loss, $5.10 green becomes $6.00 per roasted pound before anything else is added.
It depends on profit per roasting hour, not margin alone. A lower-priced wholesale bag can still earn well when it costs almost nothing to ship and sell, and a retail bag that needs shipping and a payment fee can earn less than it looks.
Yes, when a cheap coffee and a high-scoring coffee average to the target. The optimizer finds the cheapest such mix and shows the saving.