What It Actually Costs to Launch a Private Label Coffee Line

A 50 lb first order of house blend lands at roughly $585 to $625 before labels and freight, which is about $8.85 to $9.45 in a 12 oz bag. The coffee itself is $525 of that. Bags and filling are the rest, and both are priced by bag count rather than by weight.

The short version:

• 50 lb of roasted house blend at TiA Coffee’s $10.50/lb entry price is $525 of coffee. A 100 lb custom blend is $1,050.
• Bags run $0.40 to $1.00 each depending on route and quantity, which is what our brand clients actually pay.
• TiA Coffee charges $0.50 per bag to fill, and $0.50 per pound to grind, or a flat $0.50 per bag on bags under 1 lb.
• Smaller bags cost more per pound, because 50 lb is 66 twelve-ounce bags but 100 eight-ounce ones.
• Making the coffee is only half a launch budget. Brand design, a website and shipping to customers are the other half.
• Blend development, roast-profile engineering, samples and sample shipping are complimentary at TiA Coffee.

What a 50 lb First Order Actually Costs

Here is the whole thing, for one house blend, 50 lb roasted, whole bean, in 12 oz bags. The decisions behind each line, from blend to bag, are in our step-by-step roadmap to starting a coffee brand; this post is the arithmetic.

Two things are worth pulling out of that table. The coffee is 84 to 90 percent of the cost, which is unusual in packaged goods and is why blend choice matters more than bag choice. And bags and filling together add roughly $0.90 to $1.50 per bag, which is more than most first-time brands budget for.

TiA Coffee publishes these because the alternative is a quote you cannot compare. Ask any roaster what their per-pound price excludes. You will find out quickly how many of them will tell you.

Why Smaller Bags Cost More Per Pound

Bag count drives cost, not weight, and this catches almost everyone. The same 50 lb of coffee fills about 100 bags at 8 oz, 66 at 12 oz, or 25 at 2 lb. The coffee cost never changes. Everything else scales with the number of bags.

The practical consequence: if you are choosing a bag size to hit a shelf price, choose the largest one your customer will actually buy, not the smallest one that looks cheap on the shelf. An 8 oz bag is the most expensive coffee you can buy from us, by 60 cents to a dollar a pound, and the coffee inside it is identical.

TiA Coffee fills bags from 12 oz up to 5 lb in our own facility, and 8 oz is sometimes possible depending on how wide the bag opening is.

The Bag Minimum Is the Real Constraint, Not the Coffee Minimum

This is the part nobody tells first-time brands. Your 50 lb of coffee needs 66 bags. The packaging industry does not sell 66 bags.

Coffee packaging is sold in tiers set by minimum order quantity. A plain stock bag with a printed label can be bought in small quantities, custom-printed runs are commonly quoted from several hundred bags, and plate-printed runs go into the thousands. So the smallest custom print run is many times the bags your first order will fill.

Take a $0.70 bag on a 500-bag minimum: that is $350 of packaging to fill 66 bags of it, about $46 worth. The remaining 434 bags sit in a closet until your fourth or fifth order, and they are worthless the day you change your artwork.

This is why so many new brands start with a plain bag and a printed label. It is a recognised route rather than a compromise, it reaches a lower minimum, and it lets you revise your design without writing off inventory.

TiA Coffee will introduce you at no charge to the packaging manufacturers, label printers and designers we already work with, so you are pricing this against real quotes rather than published ranges.

What It Costs to Sell the Coffee, Not Just Make It

Everything above puts coffee into bags. Selling it is a separate budget, and for a direct-to-consumer launch it is often the larger of the two. None of it shows up on a roasting quote, from us or anyone else, so cost it separately from the start.

Brand and label design. Published ranges for food and beverage packaging design run from a few hundred dollars for a straightforward label to several thousand for a full brand identity. What you spend depends on whether you are buying a label or buying a brand. TiA Coffee will introduce you to the designers we work with at no charge, so you can get real quotes before you commit to either.

A website. Shopify’s 2026 plans start at $39 a month for Basic and $105 for Grow, with card processing around 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per online sale on the entry plan. Themes, a domain and apps sit on top, and $50 to $200 a month in apps is a normal range for a small store.

Photography. Coffee sells badly without good images, and this is one of the few places where spending early tends to pay for itself.

Shipping to your customer. A single bag is expensive to ship relative to what it sells for, which is why free-shipping thresholds and subscriptions are close to universal in direct-to-consumer coffee. Model this before you set a price, not after.

Sorted into what you pay once and what recurs:

The effect is that a second order costs less per bag than the first without you changing anything, because the design work is behind you and the bag inventory is already bought. The recurring column, though, never gets shorter.

What TiA Coffee Does Not Charge For

Four things that are genuinely complimentary, stated plainly so you can subtract them when comparing quotes.

• Custom blend development and roast-profile engineering. You taste, we adjust, and we lock in the recipe together.
• Samples, and we usually cover sample shipping.
• Introductions to our preferred designers, packaging manufacturers and label printers.
• Lot number, roast date and expiration date printed on every bag we pack. None of the three are legally required for coffee. We do them anyway.

TiA Coffee is a family-owned roastery in Honeoye Falls, NY, in the Greater Rochester area, and our team brings more than 25 years of blending experience. When you partner with us, you talk to the people roasting and packing your coffee, not a call center.

Smooth. Balanced. Never bitter or sour. That is what the $10.50 buys.

Working Back From Your Shelf Price

Take your landed cost per bag and check it against what you can actually charge, because this is where launches go wrong. If a 12 oz bag lands near $9 before labels and freight, call it $10 once both are counted.

Two questions decide whether that works:

1. Are you selling direct, or through retailers? Direct means your shelf price is your revenue. Through retail means the store expects roughly half of it, so your wholesale price has to work at that level too.
2. Does it still work once a shop takes half? Retailers typically buy at around half the shelf price. A $20 bag therefore earns you $10 from a store, and at $10 landed that is nothing at all. The same bag sold direct at $20 has real margin in it. Same coffee, same bag, two very different businesses.

And on a direct sale, that $20 is not what you keep. Card processing takes roughly 3 percent plus 30 cents, shipping takes more, and both come out before you have paid yourself. Run the arithmetic on a single bag going to a single customer, because that is the transaction your business will mostly consist of.

Most new coffee brands start direct for exactly this reason, then move into wholesale once volume brings the cost per bag down. Our private label coffee program covers how pricing moves with volume, and TiA Coffee’s wholesale coffee program is the other side of that conversation.

Green coffee is also the part of your cost that moves on its own. The ICO composite indicator price averaged 296.89 US cents a pound in January 2026, 248.90 in June with a low of 231.96 on 9 June, and 287.29 in August: a range of roughly a fifth inside eight months, which is worth understanding before you fix a shelf price you cannot revisit. There is more in our post on why coffee prices are climbing again.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to start a private label coffee brand?

At TiA Coffee, a 50 lb first order of house blend in 12 oz bags comes to about $585 to $625 before labels and freight, or roughly $8.85 to $9.45 per bag. The coffee is $525 of that, at $10.50 per pound. A 100 lb custom blend starts at $1,050 of coffee.

Why does my cost per bag go up when I choose smaller bags?

Because bags and filling are priced per bag, not per pound. The same 50 lb fills 100 eight-ounce bags but only 66 twelve-ounce ones, so you buy and fill half again as many. The coffee cost is identical. Your cost per pound rises by 60 cents to a dollar.

What is not included in the per-pound price?

Bags, filling, labels, grinding and freight. TiA Coffee charges $0.50 per bag to fill, and $0.50 per pound to grind, or a flat $0.50 per bag on bags under 1 lb. Bags typically run $0.40 to $1.00 each, depending on route and quantity. Labels and freight depend on your printer and your address.

How many bags do I have to buy if I only need 66?

More than 66, and this surprises most first-time brands. Custom printed bags usually start at several hundred units, so packaging minimums are what actually gate a small launch, not the coffee. A plain bag with a printed label reaches the lowest minimum.

What does a launch cost beyond the coffee itself?

Brand and label design, a website, photography, and then payment processing and shipping on every sale. Ecommerce platforms start around $39 a month plus roughly 3 percent per transaction. These sit outside any roasting quote, so budget them separately. TiA Coffee can introduce you to designers for the brand and label side.

Does a second order cost less per bag than the first?

Usually, yes. The design work is paid for, the bag inventory is already bought, and a packaging minimum you cleared on the first order does not have to be cleared again. What stays are the recurring lines: coffee, filling, grinding, freight, and the cost of selling each bag.

What Would Your First Order Cost?

Tell us the blend, the bag size and roughly how much you expect to move in a year, and we will put a real number against every line above. That includes the two this post cannot give you on its own: what your labels will cost, and what freight runs to your address.

There is no charge for that, and it is a far better basis for a decision than anyone’s published price list, ours included.

The fastest next step is the contact form. Choose Private Label as the reason, tell us what you are building, and we will be back to you within one business day.