Getting started

What it costs to start

Updated October 2026

On this page8

Coffee: the roaster dominates The ventilation question is a siting question Tea: no equipment, all inventory Green coffee is a commodity with a real price curve Packaging is a bigger line than it looks Price it before you buy the roaster A sample roaster pays for itself References

The two halves of this property have almost opposite cost structures, and one of them has a cost nobody thinks about until a neighbor complains.

Coffee: the roaster dominates

A roaster sized to your volume, which is the dominant capital cost and sets your ceiling for years.
Ventilation and often an afterburner, because roasting produces smoke and smell in quantity.
Green coffee, bought in sacks, which is inventory that ties up cash.
Packaging, scales and a grinder if you grind.

The ventilation question is a siting question

Roasting smells, and at production volume it smells a long way away. Whether a given building can be used often turns on what is next to it and what the local rules say about emissions, and finding that out after signing a lease is the most expensive mistake available here.

Tea: no equipment, all inventory

Blending needs scales, containers and space. The money goes into stock, and good tea is bought in quantities and at times that suit the grower rather than your cash flow. A tea business is a working capital business with very little plant.

Green coffee is a commodity with a real price curve

It moves with harvests, weather and currency, and a small roaster buys at the wrong end of every one of those. Knowing your cost per bag precisely enough to notice a change early is more useful here than in most crafts, because the input is most of the cost.

Packaging is a bigger line than it looks

Valve bags are not cheap per unit and they are bought in quantities that commit you to a design. For the bulk end, the canisters and pails on our shelf are a different and much lower cost per unit of product, which is one reason selling bulk changes the economics.

Price it before you buy the roaster

Work out what a bag has to sell for at the volume you can actually reach in year one. The roaster decision follows from that number, and buying capacity first and finding customers afterwards is the common order and the wrong one.

A sample roaster pays for itself

Evaluating green coffee means roasting small samples, and doing that on a production machine wastes time and gives results that do not transfer. It is a modest purchase against the cost of committing to a sack of green you turn out not to like.

References

21 CFR 101, Food Labeling, which carries the general requirements that apply here in the absence of a standard of identity: the statement of identity, net quantity, ingredient list and the name and place of business of the responsible party. law.cornell.edu

Written from federal regulation and from the published physics and chemistry of staling, not from a laboratory. There is no standard of identity for coffee or tea, so most of what governs a product here is the general requirement that labels be truthful and claims be substantiated. Anything here is a starting point for a conversation with your state department of agriculture, not a determination that you comply.