Green beans bought by the bag and sold by the ounce, with a roast date on every one.
How the work runs
Green coffee arrives in bags under a contract, and every roast takes a good part of its weight off the lot before the beans go into a bin, a blend or a retail bag. The schedule comes from this week's wholesale and web orders rather than a forecast, and the roast date printed on the bag is a promise the customer reads. Most of the planning question is how much green to pull and from which lot. Most of the money question is what a roasted kilo really cost once the shrink is counted.
What makes or breaks it
- Green lots that lose weight. A roast has to take its green weight off the lot it came from and put the roasted weight somewhere, or the stock count drifts within a week.
- A roast plan built from open orders. Tomorrow's roasts come from the orders due, netted against roasted stock that is still fresh enough to ship.
- Blends and packaging as recipes. A house blend is three or four roasts in a ratio, and a 12 oz bag is coffee plus a bag plus a label. We treat both as bills of materials whatever the vendor calls them, because the stock math is the same.
- Cost per roasted kilo. Green at contract price, the weight lost in the drum, and the hour somebody stood at the roaster. Put those on the batch and the wholesale price list stops being a guess.
Where people get caught out
Picking a tool that counts coffee only once. Green in bags, roasted in bins, packed on the shelf: the same lot sits in three states with three weights and three values. Plenty of roasters keep roasted stock in the software and green on a whiteboard. That works until a customer asks which lot went into last month's bag.