Definition of Micro Roaster?

[expat]

Let's see, there is a guy south of me who took early retirement to get out of corporate insanity and started roasting coffee. He and his wife roast 8,000 lbs a month. I'd call them 'micro'.

So maybe the answer is for you to coin a new phrase such as 'nano roaster', 'sub-atomic roaster' or 'quark roaster'. I'd say it is up to you to come up with the name and boldly lead us to where we haven't gone before.

Happy roasting, whatever size category you fall into. I'm probably at the sub-atomic level right now.

[Ads]

[eldub]

LOL Then we're at dark matter....

[Spice]

Ok, now we have to come up a term that is smaller than "micro"!

[tankin_tummy]

As to scale, right now my wife roasts, I sell and deliver. We both label, grind, and bag. Our kids help out when they're not in school or doing kid things. Once the business gets to a point where I'd have to hire someone, where automation -- like a bigger grinder, roaster, or auto-bagger -- couldn't fill in the gaps, then I'd think we might be moving away from being a "micro roaster". Maybe too if The Lovely & Talented Roast Mistress had to get help with the roasting, in my mind that would start to put us in a different category. But with just a 10k roaster, and not killing ourselves, our family can produce about a ton of coffee a week. With things properly automated and a 60kg roaster we could produce five tons a week which works out to about half-a-million pounds of coffee a year. That's a lot of coffee!

Thats a lot of coffee! Even if you only made $1 per pound net profit that's still $500,000 per year!

[farmroast]

In "Roast" magazines roasters of the year awards the "micro roaster" category is for less than 100,000 lbs/year
But generally I think it's used like a politicians definition of "small business"