Budget Challenge

[Green]

Time to see how creative everyone is.

Theoretical situation: You have been given $10,000 and been told to start a business roasting coffee. The backer has a goal of 1,000 pounds a week being sold. They tell you that if you can achieve this in three months there is a $50,000 bonus waiting for you.

What do you do?

(A) Freak out.
(B) Don't freak out.
(C) Don't freak out and you succeed! (If you pick option C, explain. This question is worth 20 points.)

 

[PinkRose]

So what happens if you give it a try and you don't succeed?

 

[CoffeeJunky]

So what happens if you give it a try and you don't succeed?

Then you are screwed???? lol Joke... That 50k is great incentive but making it work will be much more rewarding....

 

[Green]

So what happens if you give it a try and you don't succeed?

Perhaps you owe them $50,000? ^^

 

[PinkRose]

I choose answer B

You don't freak out, but you tell the person to keep the $10,000 because it's impossible to do.

Rose

 

[eldub]

I'm with Rose. Not a very realistic scenario, imo.

It took us about $50,000 to open our coffee roasting business five months ago. We're still not anywhere near roasting 1,000 lbs./week, but we are operating in the black.

Let's say you are roasting crummy/cheap beans that you wholesale for $6/lb. You are looking at bringing in $24,000 per month or $312,000/year on a $10,000 initial investment. Couple that with the fact that you will prolly be roasting no more than 5lbs at a time on your cheap little roaster, so will need to roast more than 200 batches per week. Let's say you have the worlds best cheap roaster that can do four batches per hour. That means you will be roasting for at least 50 hours per week to fill orders.

Looks like a pipe dream from here.

 

[CoffeeJunky]

Let see... I have a friend who roast his Kona beans in Hawaii to sell to his customers. It is 10k machine he made. he said it cost him around 1500 dollars to make. It is drum roaster and it does not have chaff collector... Just tall stack he built.

If someone has to go out and purchase Probat type of roaster, this is not going to work but there is little twist you can do to make this work.... 60-70 pounds an hour roasting ... this is very doable. I guess depends how pretty you want this to look....

 

[eldub]

CJ: Does your friend roasting Kona go through 50,000 lbs of beans per year?

Most local governments won't allow a roaster without chaff collector, let alone one churning out 25 tons of roasted beans per year. And most cobbled together units won't stand up to the volume of use outlined by the op.

Imo, looks have nothing to do with the issues faced by a professional roaster wanting to burn 50,000 lbs of beans per year.

 

[CoffeeJunky]

CJ: Does your friend roasting Kona go through 50,000 lbs of beans per year?

Most local governments won't allow a roaster without chaff collector, let alone one churning out 25 tons of roasted beans per year. And most cobbled together units won't stand up to the volume of use outlined by the op.

Imo, looks have nothing to do with the issues faced by a professional roaster wanting to burn 50,000 lbs of beans per year.

He has been roasting over 2000 pound per week in season.... and over 100,000 pounds(thats what he said) last season alone. His roaster is located in out door. Not in-door. This does not have to follow typical fire code. This is also near at the farm land. Also allow you to roast without much of restriction. He sent me picture of this roaster and yes it is not very pretty..... I added picture of his roaster....
I am just going by his words....

 

[topher]

The pics aren't showing up for me...so the chaff is shooting out the pipe? Does he have a roof over his roaster? I would like to see the picture of it.

 

[CoffeeJunky]

His place has roof and all four walls are open. about 8000 sqft of open space with roof over.... I think the chaffs are shooting all over.. I don't know how he does it... I have not seen it working... The drum can hold up to about 10-12 kg of green beans.... That's what he said....

 

[topher]

The reason I asked was a long time ago I used to roast for a steak house and the owner got annoyed that I filled bags with chaff. He felt it was a waste of money. He said it was bio-degradable and got rid of bugs. So he had me scatter the chaff in the bushes around the place. Well after filling the bushes for over a year...we had a wine/cigar festival on the grounds. Someone threw a lit cigar into the bushes and the bushes almost exploded...there was fire everywhere...it was fun to watch all these rich people pouring super expensive wine into the bushes to put out the fire. The next day the owner walked up to me and handed me a case of garbage bags.

 

[CoffeeJunky]

I have edited the post... I hope you can see the pictures now....

 

[TheBigDripper]

First thing *I* would do is move out of Austin.

 

[Green]

The reason I asked was a long time ago I used to roast for a steak house and the owner got annoyed that I filled bags with chaff. He felt it was a waste of money. He said it was bio-degradable and got rid of bugs. So he had me scatter the chaff in the bushes around the place. Well after filling the bushes for over a year...we had a wine/cigar festival on the grounds. Someone threw a lit cigar into the bushes and the bushes almost exploded...there was fire everywhere...it was fun to watch all these rich people pouring super expensive wine into the bushes to put out the fire. The next day the owner walked up to me and handed me a case of garbage bags.

Love that story!