Grow Your Coffee Shop Wholesale Business

Tools to easily manage wholesale inventory counts from packaging to selling online

What Is A Wholesale Coffee Roaster?

Roasting your own coffee is one of the best ways to set your coffee shop apart and expand into new markets. In fact, coffee shops that are also a roaster are more profitable than those who don’t. For many cafe owners, roasting their own beans and selling wholesale is a daunting task. However, wholesale coffee tends to be the next best step for those looking to grow their business alongside multiple locations. 

Creating a wholesale coffee business means roasting your own beans in-house that will later be ground and brewed by retail or foodservice customers. If you already roast your own beans this means packaging your beans and selling through new sales avenues. Otherwise, the first step is to begin roasting your own coffee. 

For many cafe owners, roasting their own beans and selling wholesale is a daunting task. However, wholesale coffee tends to be the next best step for those looking to grow their business alongside multiple locations. 

Wholesale Benefits

Increase Your Reach

Location-based coffee shops rely solely on customers coming in-store to purchase a finished good. Even if you have an e-commerce store for online ordering, you are still creating their order in-house. Roasting your own coffee and selling wholesale means expanding into new markets diversifying your business. 

Third-Party Partnerships

Subscription boxes and online marketplaces have had increasing popularity in recent years and cater to at-home coffee drinkers. Consider partnering with companies, like Trade or Mistobox, to quickly grow your wholesale business.

 
Retail, Foodservice & Grocery

Sell your coffee beans to offices, restaurants, hotels, local businesses, and even grocery stores. Increase the reach of your brand through other businesses to grow your customer base.

Other Cafes

If a coffee shop isn’t roasting their own beans, they’re ordering them from somewhere else. Selling wholesale to other cafes may mean disguising your brand name, however, it’s usually a great way to ensure a consistent profit flow.

 

What You Need To Sell Wholesale

This section is intended to be a guide to selling wholesale. However, depending on your goals and what resources you have available, it’s important to see what works for your business.

E-Commerce Website

Creating an e-commerce website is a great way to promote your wholesale business and streamline the ordering process. It’s essential that your wholesale website is a separate domain from your coffee shop website where customers place online orders. Both websites will have completely different customers, products, and likely pricing. We recommend exploring Square, Shopify, and BigCommerce for online ordering.

Packaging Plan

This is one area where you have a lot of options. Are you designing your product packaging in-house, buying a template, or hiring an agency? Likewise, you can choose to bag your beans in your roasting space by machine or by hand, or partner with a facility to do it for you. Inventory reports are based on Thrive's record-keeping of your inventory levels, eliminating the need for those confusing excel templates.

Shipping Partner

Since you won’t be selling your wholesale products in your coffee shop, you’ll have to select a shipping partner. When deciding what company to partner with, make sure it’s compatible with your e-commerce website and your sales cost and volume. Consider platforms like ShipStation, Shippo, and AfterShip.

Inventory Management System

Centeralize wholesale processes like tracking inventory as you package beans and invoicing with an inventory management system, like Thrive. Eliminate multiple, costly third-party apps or complicated spreadsheets to manage your wholesale business in order to save time and increase accuracy.

Coffee Shop POS Systems and E-Commerce Channels We Partner With

Wholesale With Thrive

Thrive by Shopventory not only has the features your coffee shop needs to effectively run in-store and online, but will simplify your business as you expand to wholesale. Thrive works by connecting your inventory for all your sales channels and locations, including your POS system, online ordering, wholesale website, and roaster.  

Bundles & Recipes

Create bundles and recipes to manage the set amount of beans that go into your coffee bags then track your inventory as you sell them by the case. Costs and quantities are automatically calculated. Just build the bundle or recipe and Thrive will manage all the individual components and their inventory levels.

Invoicing

Thrive's invoicing feature handles sales that occur outside your POS system, including wholesale orders. Powered by Stripe, simply compile customer-specific orders, collect payments, and track order fulfillment. All fulfilled invoices will be dedicated from your inventory automatically so you always have accurate stock counts

Variant Pricing

Coffee roasters typically price their products differently for their coffee shop products and wholesale products. Thrive allows you to track a single product, like a case of coffee beans, at multiple price points.

Internal Transfers

Coffee businesses use internal transfers to manage inventory between their roaster and coffee shop. Simply add what products you are transferring, track inventory in transit, and receive it at your selected coffee shop location.

Resources for Coffee Shops

Why Coffee Shops Choose Thrive

Good inventory management is vital for a business to be profitable and we wouldn't be there without Thrive.
Sagebrush Coffee
Thrive has completely changed the way we do business. Their program is beautiful, intuitive, and easy to use and their support team is second to none.
Kuppa Joy Coffee House
The bundles & variations are perfect for those needing those features with their inventory and now with the recently added Shopify fields, it allows me to update everything in one place.
La Creme De La Creme
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Try Thrive Coffee Shop Inventory Management For Free

Join Thrive and start saving on average 1 hour per day per location. Get advanced features such as custom reporting, barcode scanning, automatic purchase orders, price tag printing and more.

All Features Available During Your 30-Day Free Trial
All the tools you need to grow your business
PLAN DETAILS
STANDARD
Starting at $79/mo
PROFESSIONAL
Starting at $199/mo
ELITE
Starting at $399/mo
ENTERPRISE
Starting at $799/mo
Locations / Integrations
2
5
10
20
Users
2
5
10
20
Transactions Per Month
1-3,000
3,001-10,000
10,001-25,000
25,001-75,000
Products / Items / SKUs
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Order History
3 Years
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Reporting History
3 Years
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Product Catalog Management
Catalog / Menu Management
SKU Creation
Lot Costs
Modifier Configuration
Pricing Calculator
Expiration Dates
Price Tag / Label Printing
Spreadsheet Bulk Upload
Average Costs
Inventory Management
Min / Max Levels
Low Stock Alerts
Stocktakes and Approvals
Basic Internal Transfers
Basic Purchase Orders
Modifiers Inventory Tracking
Kits / Bundles
Recipe / Ingredient Managment
Assemblies
Bill of Materials
Automated Purchase Orders
Automated Stock Transfers
Barcodes & Labels
Barcode Generation
Dymo Label Printing
Brother Label Printing
Avery Label Printing
Scan-to-Create Stocktakes
Scan-to-Create Invoices
Scan-to-Create Purchase Orders
Scan-to-Create Transfers
Reporting
Custom Dashboards
Sales Goal Tracking
Franchise Reporting
Product Profitability Reports
Inventory Change Reports
Dead Inventory Reports
Inventory Valuation Reports
Low Inventory Reports
Unsold Product Reports
Saved Reports
Region / District Reporting
Scheduled Reports
Intelligent Stock Forecasting
Wholesale
Customer Managment
Dynamic Price Lists
Wholesale Reporting
Payment Terms
Payments
Invoicing
Security
Theft / Discount Tracking
Multifactor Authentication
User Access Permissions
Support
Email
Live Chat
Phone
Dedicated Account Manager
Professional Services
Account Implementation
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Catalog Migration
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Product Creation
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Extras
Global Currency Support
Dashboard Reporting App
Barcode Scanner App
Alexa Voice Command
Additional Transactions Available
Google for Retail Integration
QuickBooks Online Integration
Beta Feature Access