Re: Question for the home roasters

I dunno - these sound like kind of weak excuses to me. I grew up with a
small retail business (primarily an egg farm) and my Dad's philosophy was
that EVERYTHING was for sale so long as it yielded a profit - not just the
eggs, but the chickens, the manure, the outbuildings that were not being
used, the trees in the back field, the vegetables in the family garden,
etc. He was not in the "egg" business or the "brown bean" business but the
"making money" business. Every smart business is in the "making money
business". Gas stations used to only sell you gas, but now they run whole
grocery stores in gas stations. At the grocery store they sell garden mulch
and propane refills. At the garden center, they sell crafts in the "off
season". Nowadays, every time you have a real live customer in front of you
(something that is becoming increasingly rare - see below) you have to take
your shot at selling him every conceivable thing that he might be willing to
buy while you've got his ever so brief attention.

Here you have a product that is already present in your shop - there are no
extra inventory costs, no need to train the employees, no extra equipment
needed. It's no more difficult to measure and sell than roasted coffee -
all you gotta do is weigh the beans out. For inventory control purposes, if
your cash register was not sophisticated enough to track each variety of
green, you could print a simple tally sheet and mark off green sales with a
pencil - it would take about 2 seconds to scribble the #1 of lbs. sold next
to the name of the varietal. It doesn't seem that hard to me to work
backwards from your roasted coffee prices to come up with a price that will
yield your customary margins - subtract out weight loss in roasting,
roasting labor and energy and the capital cost of the roaster, etc. It
strikes me that 50 cents/lb. above green cost is too little (although I
appreciate that Bernie is doing this for his customers and maybe he's
gaining in goodwill whatever potential margin he is losing) but that only $1
off roasted cost of $10/lb. is WAAAY too much. Probably around 1/2 the
retail price for roasted would be "about right". Basic economics tells you
that you should charge a "market price" for your product because if you
charge too little you're leaving money on the table but if you charge more
than your competitors your volume will be very low or close to zero. If you
look at even the green sellers with the highest prices for a premium product
(and Olde City sells a lot of coffees that are much more generic), places
like Sweet Marias charge around $5/lb. for most typical origins, so what
make a local roaster even DREAM that he would be able to do any appreciable
volume (outside of the desparate or naive) at a higher price? And if your
volume would be higher at $5/lb. than at $9 (and economics and common sense
tells you that it would - at $4 or 5/lb. I might be willing to shift some of
my green buying to Olde City and I must not be the only one in a metro area
of 2 million plus people) then you are not making a rational pricing
decision but some kind of emotional one ("we're not in that business").

I just read an article today that mail order clothing has passed computer
parts as the #1 selling item on the internet. They used to think that people
would not buy clothing unless they could try it on first, see the colors and
the fabrics, etc. but apparently that ain't true anymore. Personally, I
PREFER to buy on the internet vs. going to a store whenever I can - it
saves me time and gas if I can order from my keyboard instead of risking my
life for an hour in traffic only to arrive at a store where the item is not
in stock or some mono-syllabic teen with his mind elsewhere offers me zero
information about the product (if I can find a live human being at all). And
usually for this inconvenience, the store charges me MORE for the product -
a higher price for an inferior experience is a recipe for going broke. So
the B&M retailer had either better start cutting his prices (hard to do if
you are paying huge rents for a prime location while your internet
competitor is in some warehouse paying $3/sf) or offering a better product
or service or else find another line of work.



"Brent" <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5aq23pF2m4l38U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I can kind of see it both ways.

I am reluctant to sell green coffee, as it then messes with my already
messy and chaotic ordering and stock of green.

And sure - if your business is brown beans, why sell different shades?
It's not a mentality issue, it's as much a "this is what we do, why do we
want to bend over backwards for something else?" I think Bernie gives a
good description of where some roasters are at - engage them genuinely,
and get some really good info, and even coffee from them... at which point
the price becomes irrelevant surely? up until then, a green buyer in most
roasters shops is probably a distraction.

My thoughts for now...

Brent





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