Selling it

Dating it honestly

Updated October 2026

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Establish it rather than copying it Taste at the date, not before it Ground and whole bean should not share a date Nobody gets ill from stale coffee Resist extending it to reduce waste Tea is a different conversation References

A date on coffee is a statement about a decline that is already under way, which makes it a more honest number than a shelf-stable product’s date.

Establish it rather than copying it

The date on a competitor’s bag reflects their packaging, their roast and their distribution. Yours has to come from holding your own product in your own packaging and tasting it, which means a small ongoing program of retained bags rather than a single trial.

Taste at the date, not before it

The useful test is the product at the end of its claimed life, stored the way a customer would store it. The trial therefore takes as long as the shelf life, and there is no way to shorten that.

They decline at very different rates, and giving them the same number is convenient rather than true. A shorter date on the ground product is the correct answer and it supports the case for buying whole bean.

Nobody gets ill from stale coffee

Which changes the stakes. This is a quality date rather than a safety one, and that is worth being clear about in your own mind because it decides what you do with stock that approaches it. Donating or using it for staff coffee is reasonable in a way it would not be for a dairy product.

Resist extending it to reduce waste

A longer date does not make the coffee better and it does weaken the one thing a small roaster is selling, which is freshness. The structural fix is roasting smaller batches more often.

Tea is a different conversation

It keeps far longer and its decline is slower and less dramatic, so a longer date is genuinely defensible. The thing to avoid is applying coffee’s urgency to tea or tea’s relaxed dating to coffee.

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.