Coffee is roughly 15 % of what you charge for it. That makes choosing a supplier one of the most profitable decisions behind the bar — and one of the most often made out of inertia.
The sum almost nobody does
An espresso at the bar sells for between €1.30 and €1.60 depending on the area. It contains 7 to 8 grams of coffee.
With coffee at €25/kg, that's about €0.20 of product per cup. Around 15 % of the selling price. The rest is premises, staff, machine, electricity and margin.
The consequence is counter-intuitive and worth sitting with: moving from a €12/kg coffee to a €25/kg one adds about 10 cents to the cup. On €1.40, that's 7 % more cost in exchange for completely changing the product you serve.
It is probably the cheapest quality improvement available to a bar. Almost any other — refurbishing, extending the menu, hiring — costs an order of magnitude more.
And yet coffee is among the decisions most often made by inertia: people stay with the supplier who installed the machine eight years ago because switching looks like hassle.
How much coffee you need
To order well, work this out first:
- 50 coffees/day → around 400 g daily → 12 kg a month
- 100 coffees/day → around 800 g daily → 24 kg a month
- 200 coffees/day → 1.6 kg daily → 48 kg a month
With that number you can negotiate rates and, more importantly, set a delivery frequency that stops coffee going stale in your store room — the most common error with large orders.
What a supplier owes you beyond the coffee
1 · Consistency between lots
A bar can't have its coffee changing flavour every couple of months, because regulars notice even if they can't articulate it. A well-built blend has an advantage over a single origin here: it's designed to stay the same harvest after harvest.
2 · Dialled in for your machine and your water
The same coffee behaves differently depending on the machine, the grinder and — especially — the hardness of your local water. Across much of the Spanish east and south the water is hard, and that mutes the cup and scales up the machine. A supplier who doesn't ask about your water isn't doing the whole job. It's covered in the article on water.
3 · Reliable delivery, inside the freshness window
Running out of coffee on a Saturday is a serious problem. But the opposite problem also exists: stockpiling three months' worth means serving stale coffee for the second half of the order. More frequent, smaller deliveries are the answer.
4 · Staff training
This is where most is lost. An excellent coffee extracted with the grind off and a dirty basket comes out worse than a mediocre one handled well. Half an hour with the team — dose, extraction time, daily cleaning — pays back more than upgrading the coffee.
5 · Rates that fall with volume
To be expected. But look at what's included as well: machine loan, servicing, grinder, training and who covers breakdowns. Price per kilo in isolation doesn't tell you much.
Machine loan, and the small print
It's the sector's standard model: the supplier provides the machine and you commit to a minimum consumption. It works well and avoids a significant upfront investment.
What to check before signing: the length of the commitment, the monthly minimum, who pays for repairs and what happens if you want to change supplier. A five-year contract with a stiff penalty can end up costing more than the machine.
Where it genuinely shows
In the coffee after a meal. It's the last flavour a customer takes away from your place, and it carries disproportionate weight in how they remember the whole meal. A good menu that ends with a burnt espresso leaves a worse impression than the kitchen deserves.
It's also where it's easiest to stand out, because the average standard in Spain remains low.
Our terms
We work with bars, restaurants, hotels and offices on volume-based rates, machine loan and dial-in support. We roast in Almería, which within the province means fast deliveries and coffee inside the good window.
You can request a quote on the business page, and if your venue is in the province, the specific terms are on our coffee supplier for hospitality in Almería page. If yours is an office rather than hospitality, there's a dedicated article. And to understand what justifies the price difference in the coffee you serve, what specialty coffee is.
