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by 3am 4697 days ago
Sorry, maybe I missed it, but will you be doing the roasting or will the supplier?

Why not work with small roasters instead of direct?

1 comments

We will be importing the beans directly to the US & then working with small roasters in certain geographic locations to roast the beans before we ship it out.
Why? Before I roasted my own beans, I was pretty much interested in the output of a specific local roaster. They source the beans, choose a specific roasting profile, are there to answer questions and guide my choices, take feedback (the Costa Rican was under/over roasted for my taste, and so on). That is the kind of relationship and connection I want, if I want one at all.

That is all being replaced with some content on a website, roasted by some person you select, with beans that you select? Sorry, I doubt you are as good at bean selection as the roaster you are bring the beans to. I could be wrong about that, but I'm trying to give input as a huge coffee nerd, and a potential customer. I just don't care about a blog and pictures about where my beans came from. And then I think about the economics of it. You are acting as a middle man, meaning you need to get paid. I surely don't want to pay you to do selection that my own local roaster already does very well. I don't see any value in what you are offering.

That probably seems very negative and "snipe"y, but I think you are going to dump a ton of time and money into something that really isn't going to be successful.

Edit: as I said, I now roast my own coffee. I buy from Sweet Marias. If, for some reason, I hunger for knowledge about the source of my beans (and, I stress that I don't), I can just go to their website and read about it for free. For example: http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee/full-description/bolivia

Sounds like the smartest way to do it. Good luck! I hope you can carve out a decent niche for highly specialized varietals (something that an independent roaster might not feel like he can clear 60kg of). If you do it right, you and roasters can both benefit from the relationship (less margin for them, but less inventory risk... less margin for you, but less work to develop sales channels).