If you’re a caffeine junkie with an entrepreneurial bent, then starting a coffee roasting business might be the perfect venture for you. While it’s not easy by any means, there are several factors that can make this enterprise a rewarding one, both personally and financially. Here are five reasons you should consider roasting coffee as a side or full-time business:
- You’ll Get a Piece of a Profitable Industry
Calling coffee popular doesn’t even begin to capture the ubiquity of the beverage. According to Business Insider, coffee is a $100 billion industry globally, coming in second only to oil and ahead of natural gas and gold when it comes to commodities. Becoming a professional coffee roaster in your hometown is a way to bring some of those profits into your own pocket and the local economy.
- You’ll Have More Limited Startup Costs
When people think of starting a coffee-related business, they often think of a coffee shop first. But a coffee roasting business, whether it includes a storefront or is only home based, offers a more manageable way of getting started. Not only will you not need to pay to lease a large space, you’ll have far fewer labor and product costs.
- You’ll Get to Play With Cool Toys
If you love gadgets and machines, then coffee roaster machines are sure to fascinate you. You’ll probably want to start out with a small batch roaster (both because they’re more affordable and because you won’t need the capacity of a larger machine), but these scaled-down versions are just as complex and powerful as larger commercial versions while being easier to operate.
- You’ll Get to Educate Yourself as You Go
Even as a professional coffee roaster, coffee roasting is a segment of the coffee world that relies heavily on experimentation, constant adjustment and ongoing education. As you try different beans from growers around the world, you’ll develop not only a solid base of knowledge regarding coffee, but also a gut feeling as to the roasting profiles that will best bring out the flavors of each different batch of beans.
- You’ll Become a Part of the Community
Especially if you make the effort to brand yourself as an artisanal coffee roaster, roasting coffee puts you at the heart of the slow-food, farm-to-table type community, whose members are often willing to pay a little more for local, gourmet products. You can build financially savvy relationships with local coffee shops and co-ops even as you build personally satisfying relationships with your customers.
Share your thoughts about becoming a professional coffee roaster in the comments!
