Selling 12 oz or 16 oz bags of coffee?

[paypalboutique]

Some local websites only offer 12 oz roasted beans or ground coffee figuring people will only go through 12 oz before it goes bad and they have to buy more. Other sites sell 16 oz bag. Which would be better to offer?

 

[tazzadiluna]

I'm seeing a trend with 12oz. I got annoyed at first when I started seeing this shrinkage, but for some reason I'm getting used to it as it seems like everything is getting downsized... I would prefer to buy a full 16oz, but would only buy 12oz if it's a roaster I REALLY want to try.

 

[janry]

As long as the price per ounce is roughly the same, I prefer the smaller bag as it takes me over a week to go through one bag.

 

[kaffa]

but from marketing point . how many people do really look into difference between 12 or 16 oz. i know it is a whole lot difference on quantity. but people who buys speciality roaster coffee.attributes more to quality,test and roast of coffee. but if you are distributing to other retailers it is a whole lot different story.

 

[eldub]

Unfortunately, many people don't look at the size of the bag when making a purchase; they just look at the price. So its common, in my experience for folks buying 12 oz of coffee to think they are getting a pound. And when they compare prices on bags of coffee, many think the 12 and 16 oz offerings are the same size and the 16 oz is a more expensive, even though the cost per oz might be the same.

We sell 12 oz bags wholesale to grocery stores and mostly by the pound in our shop. (Although we're willing to weigh up any amount a person walking into the shop desires.)

 

[John P]

We sell 312g bags only (as opposed to 300g) and you can call it 12 oz if you want, but that's 340g).

We do this for a host of reasons.

We are a small micro roaster and the quality and freshness of the coffee for the time our average customer uses it is of utmost importance to us. We started with the traditional 1/2# and 1# bags and as a small roaster it's hard to maintain inventory and quality standards with 2 different size. We never let any coffee on shelf for more than 10 days, although generally it's about 4 to 5 at the longest. For us the 1/2 pound people didn't generate sufficient revenue as it wasn't based on volume, and the whole pound people took too long to use their coffee which does two things: it compromises the quality of the coffee while the customer has it, and it slows down their need to return. The other reason was after our third year of roasting, online sales came into play. The cost difference, especially when shipping cross country, between under and over a pound is quite a bit when you factor in the price of the coffee. In the beginning, I discounted shipping rates by $3, just to give out of area people who really wanted our coffee a price break as a "thank you". Due to cost of product going up and shipping rates increasing in the midst of all of this was another reason we made the move from 1# to 312g, and just do Coffee Subscriptions, rather than single bags, online.

So now, everything is uniform. I roast 3-4 times a week. And we sell 312g bags of whole bean (only) from $18-$24 depending on the coffee.