InfamousTuba Unfortunately, you cannot run a profitable business on a 1kg roaster and if a company finds it can’t upgrade…then sadly it doesn’t really have a business. I used to tell the same thing to everyone I trained, this 1kg roaster is only to see if you have a business. Plus any coffee you sell you have to take a much reduced margin on to remain competitive, because your time isn’t free. e.g. on a 1kg roaster you can roast 3.5 per hour max and realistically about 22Kg per day (7 hours roasting). In a 5kg roaster it’s going to be 110Kg per day, a huge difference for the same roasting time.
On a 1kg roaster, roasting 5 days per week might net you £10 per Kg gross profit, deduct costs (gas, maintenance, packaging, advertising, web site, insurance, possibly premises and amortised costs etc.. I doubt you making more than £7 per per Kg for a salary before tax and NI of 35K per year. this assumes you roast like a demon 7 hours a day and then do all the packing of the coffee yourself, all the website work all the paper work etc.. after that!
The rule is if you are roasting more than 3 7 hour days per week….you need to be thinking about a bigger roaster.
I think one roaster stuck on 1Kg roaster from the old forum for perhaps 3 years and eventually folded because it’s not being profitable…