Wholesale prices
How much does coffee cost wholesale?
Coffee is the item most often sold with equipment attached, and that changes what the price means. A machine on loan is not free — it is financed by the per-pound price, over the term. Price the coffee and the equipment as one number, or the comparison is not a comparison.
What this page is and is not
We do not have wholesale quote data. Nobody publishes a national wholesale price for coffee that would mean anything on your invoice, and we are not going to invent one. The figure below is a retail-level US city average from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the same series behind our food cost index. Use it as a direction and a sanity check, never as a quote. The rest of this page is the part that is actually worth your time: how to read the quote you already have.
Where the tracked number sits
September 2026 · retail, US city average
$9.32
per lb
- 3 months
- −4.2%
- 12 months
- +10.7%
Your delivered price will not be this number. It will be a different number, in a different pack, at a different point in the chain, in your region — and that is fine, because the useful question is not does my price match a national average. It is did my price move the way the market moved. A quote that rose in a quarter when the tracked series fell −4.2% is a conversation you can have with evidence in your hand.
For what the last twelve months did to specific dishes, the coffee price page runs the per-plate arithmetic off this same series.
The packs you are actually quoted on
A quote arrives as a case price. Nothing is comparable until it is converted — to another vendor, to last quarter, or to the series above. The right-hand column is that conversion done at the retail-level average, so it is a reference point with the arithmetic shown, not a price anyone should expect to pay.
| Pack | In tracked units | At the retail-level average |
|---|---|---|
Whole bean — 5 lb bag The standard foodservice pack and the cheapest per pound. Whole bean also keeps far better than ground. | 5 × lb | $46.59 |
Fractional packs — case of pre-portioned filters Priced per case. Divide case price by total weight to get $/lb before comparing — the convenience premium is usually much larger than it looks. | — | not comparable |
Retail bags — 12 × 12 oz Only relevant if you resell them. As a brew supply this is the most expensive way to buy coffee. | 9 × lb | $83.85 |
What drives the spread
Four things separate any published average from the number on your invoice. Knowing which one a rep is moving is most of the skill.
Volume
Real, and usually bundled with the equipment conversation rather than negotiated on its own. Ask for the price at your actual volume and at double it — the shape of the curve tells you where the roaster's interest is.
Region
Freight matters less than freshness. A local roaster's advantage is a shorter gap between roast date and your hopper, which on coffee is a quality difference you can taste and a shelf-life difference you can count.
Grade & spec
Arabica or robusta, origin and blend, roast level, certification (organic, Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance — each a real added cost), whole bean or pre-ground, and roast date. Decaf is a separate price. The certifications are the most common source of an unexplained gap between two quotes.
Vendor
Roaster direct, broadline, or an equipment-tied programme. The third is the one to read carefully: espresso machines, grinders and brewers supplied on loan are paid for through the coffee price, and the term is usually long.
The public benchmark
The ICE "Coffee C" arabica futures contract is the base most green coffee is priced against, with a differential for origin and quality on top, then roasting and packaging. It is a public market and it is why a roaster's "our costs went up" is checkable rather than an assertion.
We name these rather than restate them. A market level quoted from memory is a fabricated statistic, and the point of a public benchmark is that you can go and read today's.
What to ask for
- Price per pound at your volume, unbundled from equipment — and the price with equipment, separately, so you can see what the machine costs.
- Origin or blend, certification, roast level, and whether the price includes grinding.
- The equipment term: length, what happens at the end, what happens if you switch, and who services it.
How to tell whether your quote is reasonable
- 1Convert everything to $/lb, including fractional packs. Case ÷ total weight. Then work out cost per cup at your actual dose — that is the number that prices a menu item.
- 2Add the equipment back in. Divide the machine's realistic purchase price over the contract term and add it to the per-pound price. A cheaper unbundled coffee plus a bought grinder frequently wins, and nobody runs the arithmetic.
- 3Compare like certifications. Organic against conventional is not a vendor difference, it is a different product with a different cost base.
Red flags
- "Free" equipment with no stated term or exit. It is financed by the coffee, and the exit clause is where the cost is.
- No roast date on the bag. Freshness is the one quality variable you can verify without a cupping, and its absence is a choice.
- A per-pound price quoted against a competitor's fractional-pack case price. Those two numbers are not comparable and the comparison always flatters whoever chose it.
Terms on this page
Edible portion vs. as-purchased
AP is what you paid the supplier; EP is what the usable part actually costs after loss.
Price creep
Small, frequent supplier price increases that individually look ignorable and collectively remove several points of margin a year.
Contribution margin
The dollars a dish contributes to overhead and profit after its ingredient cost — menu price minus plate cost.
A good quote still gets worse without anyone deciding to.
The negotiation is the easy part. What costs money is the eleven months afterwards, when the case weight drifts, the lean point changes, the slice count moves and every recipe built on the old number keeps quietly reporting the old cost. Marji reads the invoice, recosts every dish the ingredient touches, and tells you which menu price stopped working.
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