Sizes, and the headspace that does not shrink
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The range on this shelf
From 950 ml to about 4.7 liters, which is storage and refill scale rather than retail. The small end suits a cafe’s daily working stock and the large end suits back-of-house storage or a refill counter with real throughput.
Headspace grows and never shrinks
As a rigid container empties, the air space increases and stays. The last quarter of a large canister has been sitting over three quarters of a container of air, which is why bulk storage suits whole beans and fast turnover rather than ground coffee and slow use.
Size to how fast it empties
The right container is the one that empties in the time the product stays good, which for ground coffee is short and for whole bean or tea is longer. Choosing by how much you want to store is how a large container full of stale product happens.
Several smaller beats one larger, usually
Decanting a large supply into several sealed containers and opening them one at a time keeps most of the stock untouched. It is slightly more work and it is the single most effective thing a cafe can do about freshness without buying anything.
Weight matters when it is carried daily
A 4.7 liter container of beans is heavy and gets lifted, carried and opened by people in a hurry. That is part of why the shelf is HDPE and PET rather than anything heavier, and it is worth thinking about where the container actually lives.
Label the container, not just the product
A bulk container with the roast date and the lot written on it keeps the traceability that a retail bag carries on its label. Without it, product decanted into storage loses its history at exactly the point it starts aging.