Great coffee, wrong layout, no menu discipline, no SOPs. The first café a roaster opens often serves worse coffee than its wholesale accounts do.
Bags go out, support doesn't. Accounts drift, quality at the bar drops, and the roaster gets blamed for a barista's grind setting.
Accounts on machines nobody services. When it breaks, they call you, and you have no answer.
Accounts want it, you don't have the materials or the time. It's the most requested thing a roaster doesn't sell.
The café needs its own plan. Layout, menu, SOPs and training are café problems, not roasting problems. Treat it as a new business that happens to buy your coffee, and plan it like one.
Wholesale is a service, not a product. Accounts stay for the support: training, equipment help, a phone that gets answered. The coffee gets you in; the program keeps you there.
Equipment service is a revenue line. Preventative maintenance contracts on your accounts' machines protect your coffee's reputation and pay for a tech. Most roasters give this away or don't offer it.
Write your training once. A recipe and SOP book you hand to every account, and a training you can deliver in an afternoon. It's the difference between an account and a partner.
Layout, equipment, health department, menu and training for a roaster's first café. The build-out page covers the process.
Pricing, tiers, account onboarding, support cadence and the materials that keep accounts. [LUKE: confirm you'd consult on this for other roasters]
Spec and source for your accounts, and how to set up a maintenance program. Equipment page.
A recipe and SOP book you can hand to accounts, and a training you can run yourself. Training page.
Menu support and signature drink development for your café or your accounts' cafés.
Overflow roasting or private label production when your roaster is full. [LUKE: confirm whether you offer co-roasting / overflow]
Week 1Talk shop. What you roast, who you sell to, what you're trying to add. A scope within 1 to 2 business days.
Weeks 2 to 6Build it. Whichever piece it is: the café plan, the wholesale program, the service model, the training book.
AfterRun it. Hand-off, and a check-in after the first quarter.
In the same city, maybe, and we'd say so up front. Most roasters we'd work with are in other markets. Either way, the café, wholesale and service problems are the same everywhere, and we don't share client information. [LUKE: confirm how you want to handle this]
Yes. It's the most common thing a roaster asks for and the one with the most avoidable mistakes. Same process as any build-out, with the roasting side already solved.
We roast private label in Detroit. Whether that extends to overflow production for another roaster depends on volume and timing. [LUKE: yes / no]
In metro Detroit, yes, through the repair program. Elsewhere, we can help you set up your own service model.
