Skip to main content
Start for FreeBook a demo

How to start a coffee business

Decide which coffee business you mean first: roasting beans and selling bags, running a cart, or selling a brand someone else roasts. The cheapest test is a small roaster, ten pounds of green coffee and bags sold to people you can hand them to. That costs about $535. A shop or cart comes later.

Startup cost
About $535 to test from home
Time to first sale
2 to 3 weeks
Green coffee
From $9 a pound in bulk

How to start a coffee business, step by step

  1. Pick roasting, a cart or a brand

    Each one is a different business. A roaster sells bags and earns on the gap between green and roasted coffee. A cart or coffee truck sells drinks by the cup and lives on location and speed. A brand buys roasted coffee from a wholesale roaster, puts its own label on it and earns on marketing.

    Pick the one that matches what you're good at. If you love dialing in a roast, roast. If you love talking to customers at 7am, run a cart. If you love packaging and ads, start a brand.

  2. Check what your state allows from home

    Cottage food laws decide whether you can roast at home and sell. In Texas, the cottage food page lists the foods you can't make at home, and coffee isn't on it. You do need a food handler course, and every label needs your name, address or state ID number and a home-kitchen disclosure.

    Texas allows online orders from home only when you, an employee or a household member deliver them in person. The page doesn't cover shipping, so a mail-order coffee brand should roast in a licensed facility or buy from a licensed roaster.

  3. Start roasting small

    A fluid-bed home roaster costs a few hundred dollars and roasts about half a pound per batch. It's enough to find two coffees you'd sell and to get honest feedback from friends and a neighborhood market.

    Move to a drum roaster built for small businesses when you're roasting every day and still running out. Roast in the evening, rest the beans overnight, and bag them the next day.

  4. Price a bag from real costs

    Coffee loses weight in the roaster, so a pound of green coffee doesn't make a pound of roasted coffee. Weigh before and after your first ten roasts to learn your own loss, then price per bag from that number, plus the bag, label, card fees and your hours.

    Start with two or three coffees, not ten. A short menu sells faster, keeps every bag fresh and lets you buy green coffee in bulk at the lower price.

  5. Sell where people can taste it

    Farmers markets, offices, gyms and local shops are where a new roaster earns its first regulars. Brew samples where the market allows it, hand out a card with your site, and ask every buyer which coffee they'd reorder.

    If you go the cart route, the permit changes. Texas lists coffee trucks under its Type II mobile food vendor license, which has its own application and inspection fees.

  6. Put your bags on a site

    A site turns market regulars into repeat buyers between markets. Show each coffee with tasting notes, roast date and price, and take orders for local pickup or delivery.

    Replo checkout can sell a single bag, a gift card or a preorder box. Coffee subscriptions need Shopify with a subscription app; Replo builds the pages on top of that store.

  7. Add a subscription once people reorder

    When the same people buy every two or three weeks, offer a subscription with a small discount and a set roast day. It smooths your green coffee orders and gives you a reason to email every month.

    When you start advertising, remember that coffee brands send most of their ads to one product or a page that argues for it. Build that page before a full shop.

What it costs to start a coffee business

What a home-roast test costs, plus the step-up roaster and the Texas coffee truck permit. The cheapest way in is the small roaster and one case of bags.

Startup costs for a coffee business
Home coffee roaster$334Fluid-bed roaster for testing coffees and selling your first bags.
Small-business drum roaster$4,099The step up once you roast every day; skip it until demand is proven.
Green coffee, 10 lb$90Bulk pricing drops the per-pound cost; 1 lb costs $9.75 alone.
1 lb kraft coffee bags, 100$25.99Tin-tie paper bags for local sales; add your own label.
Food handler course (Texas)$15Texas cottage food operators must complete a food handler program.
Coffee truck permit (Texas)$1,018Type II license: $618 application plus $400 pre-licensing inspection; only for a cart.
Card reader (Square)$59Takes cards at markets; in-person payments cost 2.6% plus 15 cents.
.com domain$11.08 a yearFor your coffee site and the link on every bag.
Your site with Replo$0 to startTry Replo with 1,000 free credits. Your own domain comes with Starter, $99 a month billed yearly.
About $535 for a home-roast test, about $4,300 with the drum roaster instead.

Your first 30 days

  1. Week 1

    Choose your model

    • Decide between roasting, a cart or a brand roasted by someone else.
    • Read your state's cottage food page and note labeling rules.
    • Take the food handler course and get a free EIN.
    • Order a home roaster and ten pounds of two green coffees.

  2. Week 2

    Roast and taste

    • Roast ten batches and weigh each one before and after.
    • Give samples to twenty people and ask which they'd buy again.
    • Price a bag from your measured roast loss and packaging cost.

  3. Week 3

    Build the shop

    • Print labels with the required name, address and home disclosure.
    • Put up a site with each coffee, tasting notes and local pickup.
    • Book a spot at one farmers market or an office tasting.

  4. Week 4

    Sell the first bags

    • Sell at the market with a card reader and a sign-up sheet.
    • Email every buyer a week later asking which coffee to reorder.
    • Decide whether repeat buyers justify a subscription on Shopify.

What brands in this category run ads to

In Replo's ad library, 20 coffee brands ran Meta ads over the last four weeks, with over 6,600 ads live between them. About 66% of those ads are video. Here is where the ads send people:

Product page
33%
Listicle
29%
Offer page
12%
Advertorial
12%
Collection page
11%

Coffee brands rarely send ads to a homepage. They send them to one product, or to a listicle or advertorial that argues for it, and most use video. Build one bag's page and one reasons-to-switch page before a full shop.

Build your coffee shop site

Replo builds your coffee site and sells single bags or gift cards through its checkout; subscriptions run on Shopify.

The prompt Replo starts from

Build a site for my small-batch coffee roastery, [business name], in [city]. Make a homepage with our two or three coffees, tasting notes, roast day and price per bag, a product page for each coffee with a buy button, a page about how we roast, the markets where we sell each week, and a form for office and wholesale inquiries.
Build this with Replo

Edit the words in brackets once Replo opens.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to start a coffee business?
A home-roast test costs about $535: a small roaster, ten pounds of green coffee, bags, a food handler course, a card reader and a domain. A drum roaster raises that to about $4,300. A cart adds a vehicle and a mobile vendor permit.
Can I roast coffee at home and sell it?
In many states, yes, under cottage food rules. Texas excludes meat, seafood, ice products and a few others, and coffee isn't on that list. You need food handler training and proper labels, and online orders must be delivered in person.
What is the 15-15-15 coffee rule?
It's a freshness guideline: use green coffee within 15 months of harvest, roasted beans within 15 days, and ground coffee within 15 minutes. For a roaster, it's a good reason to print the roast date on every bag and roast to order.
What is a good location for a coffee business?
Where people already wait in the morning: office parks, gyms, hospitals, transit stops and weekend markets. Before signing a lease, test the spot with a cart or a market stall and count how many cups you sell in a morning.
Do coffee shop owners make a lot of money?
Some do, but a cafe carries rent, staff and equipment before the first cup. Selling roasted bags or running a cart costs far less to start, so many owners prove demand that way and open a shop only after they have regulars.
Can I sell a coffee subscription on my own site?
Yes, with the right store. Subscriptions need Shopify with a subscription app, and Replo builds the product and landing pages on top of it. Replo checkout on its own sells one-time items like a single bag or a gift card.

More business guides

All business guides

Keep reading