One of the best opportunities for generating sustained revenue for a coffee roaster is selling to grocery stores. With just a handful of wholesale coffee customers, you can increase sales volume, spread your realm of influence, and capture more customers in new markets.

During the pandemic, global retail e-commerce traffic skyrocketed a mind-blowing 22 billion monthly visits, as consumers shopped online for everyday household items like coffee.

Coffee subscriptions have been around for over a decade, but in 2020 they reached a height nobody saw coming. Trade, the JAB-backed subscription company, grew 400% at the start of the pandemic. Square’s annual report showed that the average subscription run by coffee shops and roasters doubled in size. 

The subscription model is firmly cemented in the mainstream, and coffee roasters who launch their own in-house subscriptions—as opposed to leveraging a third-party marketplace—have a lot to gain.

Let’s explore how you can build and launch an online coffee subscription for your roasting business.

We looked at new research and interviewed experts across the industry to put this guide together. In it, we’ll cover things like:

• The 3 different types of subscriptions you can offer

• How to price your coffee and other operational challenges

• Creating a Subscribe page that customers love

But first, a quick look at the key benefits of launching your own subscription and why it’s such a high-leverage sales channel for coffee shops and roasters.

The 4 Key Benefits of Launching a Coffee Subscription

Subscriptions are all the rage for consumers, and it’s not all empty hype from the business perspective. Offering a subscription that you have complete control over creates a unique way to interact with both new and existing customers—and the upsides are no joke.

• Create a new source of recurring revenue. It’s why we all love wholesale clients. Regular, reliable income lays a foundation for investment in other areas of the business. 

• Achieve a higher customer lifetime value. Customers who subscribe experience little to no friction when it comes to that second (or fifteenth) purchase, since they’re already invested. Subscribers are sticky, which increases their lifetime value over customers who have to make a conscious effort to purchase items one at a time.

• Generate long-term loyalty with continuous customer engagement. Subscribers are here for the long-haul, are more likely to open your email newsletters, and see your brand and products on a regular basis for months or years. These folks are your biggest advocates—and your biggest spenders.

• Access new customer segments. The subscription ecommerce market is expected to grow 65% annually for the next five years—that’s a lot of customers and dollars being traded for repeat purchases. Not everyone wants to go through the labor of logging into your site every time they need a new bag. And there’s no shortage of potential subscribers out there.

There’s reason to get excited about adopting the subscription model, but it’s going to take some careful logistical planning to get your operation ready for the opportunity.

Take a stroll around coffee websites, packaging, and social media, and you’re sure to encounter language like ethical, sustainable, and fair. It sounds great—who doesn’t want to support fair and ethical sourcing?

Once you’ve roasted your coffee, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got all the supplies you need to run a successful operation.

Finding the right-sized commercial coffee roaster is a balancing act that every business must get right before committing to a high-priced piece of gear. In this article, we will take a more detailed look at the pros and cons of common roaster sizes.

There’s never been a better time to set up your online store.

From bags, valves, designs, printing, and stickers; coffee packaging can feel like a big mess! Learn more about coffee bag packaging & design.

Are you a new coffee business? Click here to learn how to build a coffee shop menu that matches your customer expectations and business vision.

Finding the right wholesale partner is a challenge. We’ll show you what to look for in a potential coffee supplier, from quality assurance to shipping terms.

Along the journey of opening and growing a coffee shop, every owner wonders at some point, "Should we roast our own coffee?" Making the transition takes passion, patience, and skill-but before anything else, it has to make financial sense: is coffee roasting profitable?

Let's explore the research and break down coffee roasting profit margins vs coffee shop margins, dive deep into the financials, and analyze whether starting to roast coffee is a good move for you.

In this exploration, we'll take a look at:

• Research on average profit margins for roasters vs cafes

• What to expect for startup costs (+ how to save big in the beginning)

• Reasonable expectations for coffee roasting ROI

• How to start a coffee roasting business

Let's get into the numbers.

2023 was another exciting year at Bellwether—we proved the future of electric roasting by roasting completely with solar power in the desert of California, contributed thousands of dollars to farming communities, curbed millions of pounds of carbon, and more.

We stand firmly behind Living Income Pricing being the minimum price that producers need to be paid to truly support their futures and the long‑term health of our industry. As such, Bellwether is doubling down on our commitment and we have set an aggressive timeline to expand Living Income Pricing across all of our supply chains by the end of 2024.

Japanese consumers opened a recent edition of Nikkei ‑ the world’s largest financial newspaper, to headlines introducing Bellwether’s all‑electric, ventless roaster for the first time to the coffee‑obsessed country known for its thriving cafe culture.