Hope I can add a little input without sounding like a buzzkill. I will be open that I am involved in the coffee business and have my own marketing company as well. So this will all be based on what I have seen in the past. I do not know anything about your financial status for this, so I am just going to be guessing.
The amount of traffic that you will need will be outrageous just to keep the doors open, much less turn a profit. Even though the amount of people getting coffee from local roasters is increasing, it is no where near the amount of people that are still buying coffee from the grocery stores. You may be able to offer k-cups and large name coffee, but you will not have anywhere near the margins that the stores will have. You may be able to go up a little on the prices, but it would be hard to convince someone to continue to come in to your store and pay more for something they can get while they do their grocery shopping. Many of the people that do buy from local roasters will not have a problem with it, but they will also want their coffee to be fresh. With this in mind, typically they will not care if they have to order it online and wait for it to get to them. If you are able to work something out with the local roasters, how big will your margins be? Lets say you are able to get it for $8 a lb wholesale, odds are they are going to dictate what you can sell it at so that you are not selling lower than they are on their own site. Even if you were able to sell the coffee at $16 a lb, it will probably be bulk so you will only have a short time to sell it to those that do not mind paying that price. Personally if I am going to pay that, I want my coffee as fresh as possible. Get past the first week, and odds are I am going somewhere else. You will have a delicate balance between how much coffee to have that you can sell without it going to waste due to age. The waste alone will be hard to manage.
For the traffic that you are needing, you are going to need something in a high volume area. Those spaces are high, but we will work with an arbitrary number of $10,000 a month in total operating expenses, (odds are it will be much higher), and a profit of $8 lb. If that is the number that you are looking at then you will need to sell a min of 1250 lbs of coffee a month to get there, and that does not replenish what you sold, just paid the bills for the month. Most people that are in retail will tell you that you need at least 2.5-3 times the amount of inventory to give the selection needed to reach your sales goals. If that number holds true for you, then you will need at least 3000 lbs of coffee coming through your store each month. Given the way coffee ages, you will have to keep rotating the coffee and make sure that every order you get it in, is something that is going to sell. Unfortunately it is not like another product that you can hold on the shelf for 6 months if it does not sell.
As one of the other posters wrote, it would be better if you can roast your own coffee. This way you can bring in other types of business, and storing green coffee is much better than already roasted. This would give you time to buy in larger quantities, have a higher margins, and control your own pricing. I am not saying it is a bad idea, just please make sure you look at the numbers carefully before doing it. I have seen way to many people have an idea and run with it and get themselves into financial trouble that will haunt them for years. Build your plan for the amount of money you will need to start, need to sell monthly, and the amount of traffic that you need to make it successful. Once you have those numbers, multiply them by 3 and you will have a good starting point to work from.
I know I am new here, and really did not mean to sound rude or condescending if it came off that way. I am currently working with a client that does retail, and from the beginning I told them over and over that their numbers were off and they we insistent that I was wrong. They have been open for less than 6 months and are struggling just to keep the doors open. It is hard to see, especially when know the amount of money, time, and energy they have put into it. Its not something that I would wish upon anyone. Good luck with your venture!
