Wholesale Roasted Coffee Beans in India: What a Kilo Costs a Café, and What It Gets You

Written by Tiny Tiger Coffee

Are you planning to open a new café? Or are you running one already, a little fed up with the beans you're using, and curious about what else is out there?

Either way, the short answer is this. Wholesale coffee in India starts at around ₹700 a kilo... but that isn't the coffee a premium café should be buying.

What exactly is a wholesale coffee price?

It's the price of coffee that has already been roasted and is ready to grind, delivered to a café in bulk bags, usually of 1 kg. It isn't the price of green (unroasted) coffee, which is what coffee producers sell to roasters and which is sometimes quoted online at a fraction of these figures. Comparing the two is a bit like comparing the price of wheat to the price of bread.

A word on where this guide comes from. Tiny Tiger's coffee is grown on Hoysala Estate in Mudigere, a family farm run for three generations and one of the few certified organic, biodynamically run coffee farms in India, and we roast for more than 50 cafés across 13 cities.

This guide starts with what 1 kg of roasted coffee costs per cup, then goes on to what influences the price of roasted coffee, and ends with questions you must ask your supplier before buying any coffee.

What a kilo price means per cup

A kilo of beans gives you about 55 double shots at 18 g each, or 110 single shots at 9 g each, before any waste. The table below shows what four prices across the specialty range do to the cost of each shot.

Moving from ₹1,200 to ₹1,500 a kilo adds ₹5.40 to a double shot. If you sell your coffee at anything above ₹100 a cup, that barely touches your costing or your profit margin. Where it does make a real difference is in whether a customer comes back. Picture a regular who drops in four times a week. One flat, forgettable cappuccino and they try the new place down the road, and the few rupees saved on that shot walk out with them. With new coffee shops opening on almost every corner, the question is a simple one: would you rather save a little on beans and lose the customer, or pay a little more for good coffee and keep them coming back?

If you don't believe us, try out our cost per cup calculator and plug in your own costing.

What makes 1 kg of roasted coffee cost more than another?

Four things move the price, and each one is a trade-off rather than a simple case of more money buying better coffee.

How much arabica is in it

Arabica and robusta are the two coffee species almost every café in India uses. Robusta grows at lower altitudes, yields more per plant and sells for less, so a blend with robusta in it costs less per kilo. That isn't the whole story, though, because robusta also brings more caffeine, heavier body and thicker crema, and plenty of Indian cafés use it in their house blends for exactly those reasons.

That's why we make Caramel Espresso in an 80/20 version with 20% robusta, for more body in milk drinks. So the rule we'd suggest is this: if your menu is mostly milk drinks, a 20% robusta blend is a sensible place to save money, and if you sell a lot of espresso or black coffee, it usually isn't.

How it was grown and processed

Our coffee is grown at about 1,200 metres on Hoysala Estate. Coffee grown higher ripens more slowly, which generally makes the beans denser and sweeter, and it also makes them more expensive to produce, because yields are lower and the work is harder. Farming organically adds to that, since there's no shortcut when the plants need feeding or protecting. Processing is where specialty coffee is in a league of its own. Every lot is handled gently, then slowly fermented and dried, and while it dries the coffee is turned twice a day for 21 days.

How old it is when you use it

This is the one that catches cafés out.

Most people know that coffee can be too old. A low price per kilo can hide coffee that was roasted many months ago and then sat in a warm warehouse, and once beans have gone stale they pull fast and taste flat. A barista's natural response is to grind finer and dose heavier to compensate, so you end up using more coffee per cup to get a worse cup, which quietly cancels the saving.

Fewer people know that coffee can also be too fresh. Freshly roasted beans are still full of carbon dioxide. Shots come out unpredictable, with a sharp, extra acidity that a lot of people mistake for bitterness. So we suggest resting espresso beans for at least 10 days after the roast date. After that, a medium-plus roast like ours stays good for a long time, and honestly anywhere from 10 days to 60 or 70 days after roasting can taste excellent, provided the coffee has been stored well: sealed in its bag, somewhere cool and out of the sun.

We roast only after an order comes in, about twice a week, and print the roast date on every bag. Ask any supplier what their roast date policy is, and then check the date on the first delivery yourself, because a policy is only as good as the bag in front of you. Our post on roast dates and expiry dates explains what to look for.

How much you buy, and for how long

Most roasters price by monthly volume, and the per-kilo figure drops as your volume goes up. A longer commitment also buys protection from price swings, which matters more than it sounds. Green coffee prices moved a great deal over the last two years. The trade-off is flexibility. The longer you commit, the harder it is to switch if the coffee or the service slips, so make sure the agreement says what happens if it does.

Minimum orders, price locks and paperwork

Once you're open and ordering every week, these four details matter more than the headline price.

Minimum order. Ours is 5 kg per order, and you can mix any of our café coffees to reach it. A café selling 60 cups a day goes through 5 kg in under five days, so at that volume you'd order about 8 kg a week or 16 kg a fortnight. Because beans are at their best between about 10 and 60 days after roasting, the simplest rule is to order a week or two ahead of when you'll need the coffee and never more than you'll get through in about six weeks. That gives each bag time to rest and still leaves plenty of time to use it while it's fresh.

Price lock. We hold your price for six months from your first order. If a supplier won't commit to a price for any period at all, ask how often they changed it last year.

GST invoice. You need one to claim input credit. Every wholesale order from us comes with a GST invoice from Tiny Tiger Coffee.

Freight. Ask whether the quoted price includes delivery to your city, because a cheap kilo with expensive freight isn't cheap. We ship café orders free to metro cities, and they arrive within three working days. Other cities take about five days.

Why the cheapest kilo often costs more

Buying coffee on price per kilo alone is a lot like choosing a car on the price of its fuel. The cheaper fuel only saves money if the mileage is the same, and with coffee it often isn't.

Picture two cafés on the same street, each selling 60 cappuccinos a day. The first buys a ₹1,000 coffee that was roasted months before it arrived and wasn't stored with much care. It pulls fast, so the barista doses 20 g instead of 18 g to slow it down, and on a typical day five or six shots taste wrong and go down the sink. The second pays ₹1,200 for well-rested, well-stored coffee and doses 18 g. Do the sums and the first café is using around 1.3 kg a day against the second's 1.1 kg, and both end up paying about ₹22 of coffee per cup sold. The gap on the invoice was ₹200 a kilo. The gap in the cup is close to nothing, and only one of those cafés is serving a cappuccino people come back for.

Our guide to choosing a coffee supplier for your café has the full list of questions to ask before you commit.

How we price coffee for cafés

Our café pricing starts at ₹1,200 a kilo, with a minimum order of 5 kg, and the exact price depends on which coffee you choose and how much you use each month. Send us your café's name, city, monthly volume and what you pay per kilo now, and we'll send café pricing on WhatsApp within one working day.

Before you commit to anything, you can order a paid Café Sampler: two, three or four of our café coffees, 250 g of whole beans each, roasted just for you. Give them their 10 days, then pull them on your own machine, in your own milk, and choose the one your regulars would order twice. Order a Café Sampler.

To sum up

1. Wholesale coffee in India starts around ₹700 a kilo, but specialty coffee, at roughly ₹1,200 to ₹2,600, is what a café should buy. Tiny Tiger café pricing starts at ₹1,200 a kilo, with a 5 kg minimum.
2. Convert every quote to cost per cup. At 18 g a shot, each ₹100 a kilo adds about ₹1.80 a cup.
3. Robusta lowers the price and adds body and crema. It's a good saving for milk drinks, and it is not a bad coffee.
4. Rest espresso beans for at least 10 days after roasting, and store them sealed and cool.
5. Before you sign, ask about the minimum order, how long the price is held, the GST invoice and freight.
6. Check your dial-in every day and weigh a week of waste. Your real cost per cup is the invoice plus whatever goes down the sink.

If you'd like a second opinion on a quote you've received, send it to us on WhatsApp and we'll tell you what it works out to per cup, even if you don't end up buying from us.

Common questions

What is the wholesale price of coffee beans in India?

Wholesale coffee beans in India start at around ₹700 a kilo, but specialty coffee, which is what most cafés should buy, costs roughly ₹1,200 to ₹2,600 a kilo, roasted and ready to grind. Tiny Tiger café pricing starts at ₹1,200 a kilo, about ₹21.60 of coffee in an 18 g double shot.

What is the minimum order for wholesale coffee beans?

It varies by roaster, and 5 kg per order is common for café accounts. Tiny Tiger's minimum is 5 kg per order, which can be any mix of our café coffees. A café selling 60 coffees a day uses about 32 kg a month, so it would usually order weekly or fortnightly.

How fresh should coffee beans be for a café?

Not too fresh. Espresso beans need at least 10 days after roasting to release their carbon dioxide, or shots turn unpredictable and sharply acidic. After that, a medium-plus roast stays good for roughly 60 to 70 days if the bags are sealed and kept cool.

How much coffee does a café use in a month?

At 18 g per double shot, a café uses about 1 kg of beans for every 55 drinks, before waste. That works out to roughly 16 kg a month at 30 drinks a day, 32 kg at 60 a day, and 54 kg at 100 a day. Add a margin for dialling in and discarded shots.