First time roaster advice for busy cafe

[Noosariver]

Hi, new to all this, so here goes...

What roaster can can anyone recommend for a small caffe doing 2-3kg espresso beans a day? Prefer to roast offsite at small factory space.

Thanks[media][/media]

[Noosariver]

Re: First time roaster advice for busy cafe

Roaster for a caffe doing 2-3kg espresso beans a day.

Roast offsite at factory space.

Whats out there to suite?

Release the torrent of advise... Cheers!

[sidewayss]

Re: First time roaster advice for busy cafe

Coffee-Tech has two models in its 2 kg range.

One is the Terrafattore which is the manual version for those who like to be hands on and tweak their roasting skills on it.

The other is the Solar Autoroast which is automatic and its aimed for cafe use. Can operate it while youre busy running the cafe.

These are very robust and should last a very long time.

Check out Coffee Roasters Australia on your left.<-----------

Gary at G

[blanyon]

Re: First time roaster advice for busy cafe

My advice is go find a small roaster who will custom roast for you, for that volume of coffee I believe that your time would be better spent in the cafe rather than off site. If you are hoping to supply other cafes well that is a different story and the numbers might start adding up, just my 2c anyway.

Cheers

Brett

[jkarlis]

Re: First time roaster advice for busy cafe

My advice is go find a small roaster who will custom roast for you, for that volume of coffee I believe that your time would be better spent in the cafe rather than off site. If you are hoping to supply other cafes well that is a different story and the numbers might start adding up, just my 2c anyway.

Cheers

Brett

I didnt want to be the first one to say it as I have no experience in running a cafe. I do however know a little about P&Ls.

Lets assume youre roasting 15kg a week for your own use at a saving of $10 per kg.  Thats a saving of $7800 per year.  Sounds like a lot but you may need to spend twice that to get a good roaster.  So you would be looking at 2 years to break even and thats without counting  your time, consumables, maintenance cost, electricity/gas, etc.  

Consider the cost v benefit to the business. As Moto points out you may be better off putting that effort into other areas of the business; theres probably a good reason why most cafes dont roast their own beans.

Also what is your experience with roasting?  If none-to-little then there could be a big learning curve involved.  There is more to it than throwing beans in the roaster and flicking a switch.

[Fresh_Coffee]

Re: First time roaster advice for busy cafe

It had to come from someone else first.

On the face of it, without knowing any background to the reason for this topic (and not trying to be facetious):

Too often people dont think the whole lot through and its not just small business owners but also those who are trying to build big businesses in cafes....

How on earth does one get their money back on the investment?

Does one factor in the cost of the person doing the roasting (because that person is then not doing whatever else they "used to do).

Does it matter that person probably has not the slightest idea about the profession of roasting coffee, and will produce extactly what all the cafe clients actually dont want......IN-Consistency in the beans (that they cannot handle).

And what of the continuing on costs of running the roaster? Many people make the mistake of looking only at what they think the cost of the raw beans is and dont add any margins for anything else.

And what advantage is there in roasting off site? The coffee could come from anywhere.....if you are going to roast at all it shoud be in the cafe where it can be seen and smelled and used to best advantage from within your core business.

Generally I would say most cafe people would be better off growing their business in the area where they have the most expertise....which is in their core (cafe) business. Are you also going to buy a sugar portioning machine to pack sugar portions, put a cow in the back yard to get milk and a vege patch to get lettuce and tomato (and a glasshouse to keep that going all year round), put in a bakehouse to make the bread, and buy cocoa powder and the other ingredients to make drinking chocolate mix?  

The best advice I can give is to think about this very very carefully before spending money that may never be recouped and roasting the worlds worst coffee.

If you wanted to try to make it pay, you would need to be selling your coffee to your own cafe at the market wholesale rate or even more, therefore not saving anything in your cafe, but trying to make the roaster pay for itself.

Therefore totally in agreement with moto except that even when selling coffee to others, there will never be any money in doing that with almost nil turnover (for the roaster) and such a small sized machine....the point being, the cost of roasting coffee properly ( or even badly) is much much more than the apparent cost of a kilo of raw beans.  

In the topic heading it says "...busy cafe". Work on making it more and more busy....a small to medium increase in your sales of cups-a-coffee, and / or increasing your per cup price by the lowest possible coinage (5 cents) will reward you far far more than diverting your energies into something that has nothing to do with regular cafe business and may only drain your total resources.

Regardz,
Attilio.

[don_nairn]

Re: First time roaster advice for busy cafe

If you have to pay rent on your small factory space and you have to pay wages to the person who does the roasting you are unlikely to get economies of scale from 15 to 20 Kg a week.

If on the other hand you are thinking to do some roasting at home for your shop if you got a small home roaster you could have some fun and save a few dollars per hour for your mucking about.

If you are roasting for sale the health and food regulations should be followed.

If you can make $20 per hour working as a barista should you work for $4 as a coffee roaster?

[beanflying]

Re: First time roaster advice for busy cafe

Like the others have mentioned above you wont make much out of a 2kg roaster based on 3kg/day for example BUT.

If you have room to place it in the Cafe as part of the ambiance of the place and also roast then it can set you apart from your opposition and may help improve sales of coffee (wet sales) and roasted coffee (dry sales). Also as the day quietens off you can potentially fire up the roaster and roast during opening hours instead of it taking extra time from your day.

A very major point here just because you make coffee dont be fooled into thinking you will automatically be able to roast it as well or better than you are already getting. I have had some poorly roasted beans from some very highly rated shops caused I suspect by a lack of understanding the roast process.

As to brands there are plenty of 2-3kg roasters out there both electric and gas powered. Gas has some fairly hefty compliance costs in Australia (where are you?) so if you are still going down this path then electric will represent a substantial initial capital reduction but at the expense of higher running costs compared to gas.

Let us know a little more about what you have in mind  

[borat123]

Re: First time roaster advice for busy cafe

I have had some poorly roasted beans from some very highly rated shops caused I suspect by a lack of understanding the roast process.

Reminds me of a sample pack of roasted I received from a (non-sponsor) with another purchase.

I nearly laughed when out popped charcoal black oily beans..... Talk about bad advertising.....

I was almost going to send him back a sample of my KKTO roast to show what roasted beans are supposed to look like....

[sidewayss]

Re: First time roaster advice for busy cafe

Coffee-fuerte, we do hope you will respond back to us eventually as we have taken a bit of time and effort to respond to your question and we certainly are eager to hear from you on what course of action you intend to take.

If you want to carry on with roasting your own, by all means. Roasting on site rather than off site is a selling point itself. But as have been mentioned before, only when you have the roasting skills and knowledge/knowhow of how the bean is grown right through to the final cup, because there will be questions flying towards you at the shop, and if you cant back up your knowledge, it reflects badly on you, your business and its bad advertising for the coffee community as a whole.

When you do it well, and you love what youre doing, they will know and they will come to you.

All the best.

Gary at G