To price a 12-ounce bag of coffee you add up its full cost first: the green coffee, after roast loss by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the valve bag and label, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one bag costs you. Then set the price so that, after card and selling fees, it leaves the margin you want: price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate). For a 12-ounce bag of a Colombian that costs $8.95 to make, a 50% margin after 3% fees means $19.04, rounded up to $19.25. Coffee loses about 15% of its weight in the roaster, so 15 pounds of green fills 17 bags, not 20. Wholesale to cafés is a different price, set so it still covers the full cost with something left. In the example below, an Oregon roaster prices its retail bags and a café's order.
The short version
- Full cost = green coffee a bag + your time + bag and label + overhead.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate).
- Count your time at a real hourly rate, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
- Divide the green cost by what comes out of the roaster, not what went in.
- Each origin has its own green price; price each on its own.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each bag from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a bag's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Green coffee | The batch's cost ÷ bags a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ bags × your hourly rate |
| Valve bag and label | Per bag |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the bags you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
What a roastery looks like over a year is in coffee roasting business plan, and the first steps in how to start a coffee roasting business.
An example: a 12-ounce bag of a Colombian
Driftwood Coffee Roasters, a made-up roaster in Bend, Oregon, roasts 15 pounds of green coffee into 12.75 pounds, 17 twelve-ounce bags:
| Green coffee | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Green coffee | 15 lb | $97.50 |
| A batch | $97.50 |
| A bag | Cost |
|---|---|
| Green coffee, $97.50 ÷ 17 | $5.74 |
| Time, 90 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 17 | $1.76 |
| Valve bag and label | $0.85 |
| Overhead | $0.60 |
| Full cost | $8.95 |
At a 50% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $8.95 ÷ 0.47 = $19.04, so $19.25. At $19.25 a bag, each leaves $9.72. It had been asking $18, which leaves $8.51, and moved to $19.25. A café asked for coffee at $12.00 a 12-ounce equivalent, which leaves $2.69, and buys it in 5-pound bags that save the valve bag. Priced on 15 pounds instead of the 12.75 that came out, each bag would look 86 cents cheaper than it is. The license a roaster needs is in coffee roasting license.
Get the calculator
Download the coffee price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's green coffee, amounts and costs, the bags it makes, the hands-on minutes, the bag and overhead, your hourly rate, card fees and the margin you want; the full cost, the price for your margin rounded up, and what a wholesale price and a test price leave fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The calculator prices a bag on paper. Green coffee bought in three lots at three prices, and roast loss that changes with each origin, change what each bag really cost.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each bag from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each bag is a recipe, with unit conversion from the case or sack to the gram.
True cost from the batch. Each batch takes ingredients at their real cost, from the deliveries they came from, so a price rise shows up in the next batch.
Price creep. A price-creep report per supplier shows which ingredient is quietly costing more.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| What a bag costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Roast loss on each batch | Guessed | Input and output on each batch |
| An ingredient creeping up | Noticed at tax time | A price-creep report |
| Whether wholesale still pays | A guess | Margins on real cost |
Recipes, batches and true cost are on every plan, from $49 a month. 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.