A coffee co-packer roasts and packs coffee for a brand, in one of two ways. A toll roaster roasts your green coffee to your profile and packs it in your bags, for a fee a pound; a private label roaster buys the green, roasts it and sells you finished bags with your label, for a price a bag. Coffee is low-risk to make, so the rules are light, but freshness isn't: a minimum run that takes two months to sell is two months of coffee getting older. In the example below, a small roastery selling 1,500 twelve-ounce bags a month pays $6.66 a bag roasting itself on a small roaster, $6.51 with a toll roaster, and $6.53 from a private label roaster. Below is what each kind does, what the rules ask, freshness and minimums, three quotes, and a free calculator.
The short version
- Toll roasting: your green coffee, their roaster and packing line, a fee a pound or a bag.
- Private label: their green, roast and packing, your label, a price a bag.
- Minimums are often set by the roaster's batch size and a run's worth of bags.
- Freshness sets a ceiling on the run: roast close to when it sells.
- A roaster is a food facility, registered with FDA; one packing coffee sold as organic is certified, with few exemptions.
- Agree on the roast profile, the roast loss, degassing, the bags and the valve before the first run.
- TaroStack keeps track of your green coffee and bags at the roaster, by lot, as a site of its own. More below.
Toll roasting or private label
| Toll roasting | Private label | |
|---|---|---|
| Green coffee | Yours, bought and shipped to the roaster | Theirs |
| Roast profile | Yours, matched by the roaster | Theirs, or a version of yours |
| Price | A fee a pound or a bag, plus your green and bags | One price a bag, all in |
| Control | Your sourcing, your origins, your story | Less: their beans, their blends |
| Cash | You buy green coffee ahead | You pay for finished bags |
Toll roasting suits a roaster that has outgrown its own machine and wants to keep its sourcing; private label suits a brand that doesn't roast at all and sells on its name. What the business side of roasting looks like is in coffee roasting business plan.
What the rules ask
Every facility that manufactures, processes, packs or holds food for US consumption registers with FDA, unless exempt (21 CFR 1.225); a roaster that packs for others isn't exempt. If your bags will say organic, each operation that handles the coffee, the roaster included, has to be certified (7 CFR 205.100), unless it's exempt, for example with $5,000 or less of organic sales a year (7 CFR 205.101). A toll roaster that isn't certified can't roast your organic coffee for an organic label, so ask first. This is general information, not legal advice. How organic records work is in organic certification record keeping.
Freshness and minimums
A roaster's minimum often follows its batch size: a 30-kilo roaster wants runs of a few hundred pounds, not 40. Roasted coffee is at its best for weeks, not months, so a run that takes two months to sell starts its last weeks on the shelf older than you'd like. Order runs that sell within about a month, and put the roast date on the bag. Agree on how long the coffee degasses before packing, and on the one-way valve, so bags don't puff.
Three quotes compared
Pali Roasting Co., a made-up small-batch roastery on Oʻahu I use in these examples, sells about 1,500 twelve-ounce bags a month and has outgrown its used 2-kilo roaster. A bag takes 0.88 pound of green coffee at $5 a pound, $4.41, for 12 ounces roasted after a 15% roast loss:
| Roast it yourself | Toll roaster | Private label roaster | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Run you'd order | 300 | 1,500 | 3,000 |
| Minimum run | none | 667 (500 lb) | 3,000 |
| Good bags | 297 | 1,485 | 3,000 |
| Setup, or roastery time | $160 | $100 | none |
| Fee, or your own labor, a bag | $1.10 | $1.25 | $6.40 all in |
| Green coffee a bag | $4.41 | $4.41 | included |
| Valve bag and label | $0.55 | $0.55 | included |
| Freight a run | $0 | $250 | $400 |
| Run cost | $1,978 | $9,665 | $19,600 |
| Months to sell the run | 0.2 | 1.0 | 2.0 |
| Cost a good bag | $6.66 | $6.51 | $6.53 |
The three cost about the same a bag; the differences are elsewhere. Roasting itself, five days a month on a small roaster, keeps everything fresh and costs the most hours. The toll roaster saves 15 cents a bag and those days, and keeps Pali's own green coffee and profiles. The private label roaster costs about the same, but its 3,000-bag minimum is two months of sales, and its beans aren't Pali's. For Pali, whose story is its sourcing, toll roasting fits. How quotes compare more generally is in co-packer vs commercial kitchen.
Get the calculator
Download the coffee co-packer quote calculator. One column for each quote and one for roasting it yourself: type the run you'd order, the minimum, the loss, the setup, the fee or your labor, green coffee, bags, freight and storage, and the run's cost, the months it takes to sell at your sales a month, the cost of each good bag and the cash out before it sells fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Green coffee from four origins, some at your shop and some at the toll roaster, bags and labels in two places, and roasted lots with dates going to cafés and online orders. A spreadsheet can't say how much Kona green is at the roaster, which roast date a café got, or when to order the next sacks.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps track of your green coffee and bags at the roaster, by lot, as a site of its own.
The roaster as a site. The toll roaster's premises can be a site, so the green coffee and bags you send are a transfer, shown in transit until they arrive, and what's on their shelves is counted as yours. More than one site is on Standard at $99 a month.
Roasts as batches. Each roast is a batch that takes its green coffee off stock by the pound and records the green lot it used, with how much came out after the roast loss, so a bag's roast date and origin lot are on record. Buying green by the sack and selling by the bag is the units' job.
Green coffee on time. Each origin comes up on the reorder list in days of cover, with the importer's lead time, so the next sacks land before the roaster's slot. How a roaster keeps its inventory is in coffee roaster inventory spreadsheet.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Green coffee at the roaster | Ask them | Stock at their site |
| Roast loss on a batch | Worked out now and then | Good weight on every roast |
| Which green lot a café's bag came from | Unknown | Lot recorded on the roast |
| When to order the next sacks | When it's low | Reorder list in days of cover |
Sites, transfers, batches and lots are on Standard at $99 a month for more than one site. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.