Hi Topher,
First off, we would like to thank you for all of your previous posts to the forum. We have poured over (pun intended) the entire forum and enjoyed your thoughts and ideas.
Not to be dodgy, but, because we need to be right now, we are planning to open in a location that doesn't currently have a local roaster, but is primed to experience locally roasted coffee. Until we are able to dot all of our "t"s, it is best to keep our planned location "close to the cuff". We believe it is unique and don't want to give anyone else any ideas (yet!). All of that to say, thanks for your understanding about this. We're inclined to share everything, so this is a challenge for us!
After much consternation, we have decided to start small and against better advice, with a 3Kg Chinese gas/drum roaster. We would love to purchase something larger, but after careful analysis of our overhead to start our business, we simply can't go past the $10,000 mark for the roaster. Which leads us to the elephant in the room:
How do small batch roasters make high enough margins on roasted coffee, while remaining somewhat competitive, upon startup with the upfront costs? In other words, fixed costs aside, the variable costs are massive and a bit overwhelming for us.
Our cash flows continue to reflect the slimmest of margins. We're not in this to make a mint, but we would like to be able to pay the people in our supply chain (most importantly the farmers) fair wages while putting some food on our table as well. It's a mysterious brew we're facing, so we will look forward to any insights.
Wow, we've much to talk about and clearly overstayed our visit to the introduction area! Thank you for your wonderful welcome and we will look forward to a continued dialogue.
---RoastOnCoast
