Blog
Notes on operating and selling a coffee business in the Gulf.
Written from running these businesses rather than from reading about them. Mostly about the economics owners deal with and rarely see written down.
What consolidation did to other fragmented food categories
Craft brewing is the closest precedent for what is starting to happen in specialty coffee — including the parts that went badly.
By Robert Jones
Contract roasting: the economics nobody explains
Why two quotes for the same job can differ by a factor of two, what a brand is actually buying, and when owning a roaster is the most expensive way to buy coffee.
By Robert Jones
The GCC coffee market in numbers, and what the numbers miss
The published figures describe a large, fast-growing market. They also obscure the three things that actually determine how this industry behaves.
By Robert Jones
Owner dependency, and what it costs you
If the relationships, the roast profiles and every pricing decision live in one head, a buyer is not purchasing a business. Here is how to fix it, whether or not you ever sell.
By Robert Jones
The roaster that runs two days a week
Utilisation, not price or cup quality, is the economics that decides whether an independent roastery works. Most of the industry is sized for a volume it never reaches.
By Robert Jones
Succession in a first-generation industry
Gulf specialty coffee is about fifteen years old. Its founders are arriving at the succession question together, for the first time, with no established route.
By Robert Jones
What a buyer actually looks at
Diligence demystified: the things that genuinely move how a roastery is regarded, written by someone who sits on the buying side of the table.
By Robert Jones
What green actually costs a small roaster
The price on the offer sheet is the smallest part of what green costs you. A roaster buying a container a month and one buying a pallet are in different industries.
By Robert Jones
Why coffee businesses stop growing at the same point
There is a recognisable ceiling in this industry, and it is structural rather than personal. Crossing it requires management, systems and capital at the moment you can least afford any of them.
By Robert Jones
Working capital is the constraint, not demand
Coffee pays cash out before it takes cash in. That timing gap, not a shortage of customers, is what stops most roasteries growing.
By Ana Maria Aldana