What is custom wholesale coffee toll roasting?

Toll roasting coffee is when coffee roasters are contracted to roast to specification for commercial customers.

Toll roasting is one form of wholesale coffee roasting where the customer sources the green coffee and contracts the roasting operation to roast the coffee to a specification. Toll roasting is most popular with larger operations that may not be interested in managing the day-to-day processes of a roasting operation but wish to have consistent access to products they may have been serving for a long time. An example would be with popular brands, such as Death Wish Coffee, where for years their popular brand of coffee was toll-roasted by various companies around the nation.

We don’t believe toll roasting is insincere, as if you are fooling a customer. In many cases the roasting profiles are managed by a coffee professional. The customers are simply contracting production and fulfillment to their specifications.

There are several reasons why a business may wish to contract a coffee roaster for toll roasting. The most obvious is because of the extreme expense in starting up and operating a coffee roastery. Additionally, toll roasting across the nation may provide a regional advantage for reducing shipping costs to the end users, like big retailers such as Costco or online distributors such as Amazon. And last, toll roasting can assist in capturing large volumes of product spread across multiple locations if there was a capacity issue with one or more of the contracted roasters.

Toll roasting is generally priced at a per-pound rate for green coffee roasted. This can vary from coffee roasting company to company, ranging from a $0.25 per pound to as much as $2.50 per pound. Price determination is based on total volume of scheduled roasts, frequency of orders, packing expectations, and fulfillment needs.

To price toll roasting, simply contact Reverie’s wholesale team and we can help you determine if it is a great option for your business or project.