Private label coffee for cafés, from the roaster's side

Short answer. Say yes when the volume is real and the price is at or above your normal wholesale price, never below it. Private label costs you more per kilo than your own bag: smaller batches, a separate stock line, someone else's packaging to store, and a changeover on a roast day. Charge the setup — blend development, sample roasts, artwork, the print run — to the café up front, or recover it through a written minimum volume over a fixed term. Before anything is printed, agree who is named on the label as the food business operator, who owns the recipe, who owns the artwork, and what happens to the leftover bags.

What private label and white label actually mean

Private label coffee is coffee you roast that is sold under someone else's name. The café's customers see the café's brand; your name is on the invoice and, usually, somewhere small on the back of the bag. White label is the same idea, and in coffee the two words are used interchangeably. Fresh Cup's RoasterLink matchmaking service does not separate them either: its sign-up asks buyers whether they are looking for "Private / white labeling services".

Two neighbours are worth keeping distinct, because cafés use all three words loosely:

Co-branding

Both names on the bag. The café gets a label of its own and you keep your name in front of the customer. It is the easiest version to agree and the one most roasteries should offer first.

Toll or contract roasting

The café or brand owns the green coffee and pays you to roast and pack it. You are selling machine time and labour, not coffee, and the sourcing risk and the stock sit with them. The economics are completely different from private label and so is the agreement.

The demand is growing, at least in the market Fresh Cup measures. In August 2026 Fresh Cup reported that 41% of coffee businesses signing up to be matched with a roaster on RoasterLink so far in 2026 said they wanted private or white labelling, up from 36% in 2025. If you have had the conversation twice this year, you will have it again.

The three shapes a private label deal takes

They look similar in an email and are three different amounts of work. Work out which one is being asked for before you quote anything.

1. Your blend, the café's name

Your existing house espresso, packed in the café's bag. No development work, no new recipe, no extra green to buy. The cost is packaging, a changeover and a second stock line. This is the version to steer most requests towards.

2. A blend developed for the café

You cup, build a recipe to their brief, send samples, adjust, and end up with a coffee that exists for one account. Real development time, sample roasts that get drunk and not sold, and green you now buy partly for one customer. Someone has to pay for that before the first delivery.

3. A separate product

Own packaging, own label, own SKU, possibly their name as the operator on the label and their own retail shelf. This is a small manufacturing relationship, not a wholesale order, and it needs an agreement that says so.

Why a roastery says yes

• A volume commitment you can put in writing. The café wants something from you, which is the one moment you can reasonably ask for a minimum annual volume and a term in exchange. Ask for it then or not at all.
• The account is harder to move. Not because of the label — that is portable — but because the recipe, the samples and the artwork were agreed together, and the café would have to redo all of it somewhere else.
• It keeps a café that would otherwise buy a roaster. A café that wants its own name on its own coffee is often a year away from pricing a shop roaster. Private label gives it the brand without the machine. If that is the conversation you are in, read should a café roast its own coffee and use the break-even figures in it.
• Some buyers will never show your name anyway. A hotel group, an office caterer or a food brand is not going to put a roastery logo in its breakfast room. Your choice there is private label or no account, not private label or a branded one. See wholesale coffee for restaurants, hotels and offices.
• It fills a quiet roast day. If you have machine hours that are idle, a predictable monthly private label batch is a reasonable thing to put in them.

Why a roastery says no

• Your name disappears from the shelf. Every private label bag is a bag that does not introduce you to anybody. In the same Fresh Cup article, Russ Prefontaine of Fratello Coffee Roasters argues the other way for cafés: showing a known roaster's brand rather than a private label can itself justify the shelf price, by pointing at the craft, the sourcing and the expertise behind it. That argument is also yours to make.
• The label is portable and you are not. The café owns the brand on the bag. It can take the same artwork to a cheaper roaster and its customers will notice nothing. The only thing holding the account is the agreement and the coffee.
• Small runs eat production time. A separate recipe means separate blending, a changeover, a cleaned hopper, its own labels and its own place on the shelf. On a 12 kg roaster, a café taking 2 kg a week orders about 8 kg a month: less than one batch, for the same setup as a full one.
• The price expectation is often backwards. Fresh Cup's review of RoasterLink's first year of wholesale coffee matchmaking, published in February 2025, describes buyers arriving with expectations that do not survive contact with a price sheet: one wanted private label at $9 a pound, about $20 a kilo, from a roaster known for coffees scoring over 90 points, and a newly opened business on a quiet street expected to sell 300 pounds, about 136 kg, of coffee a week. More work for less money, against a volume that will not arrive, is the deal you are most often being offered.
• Your cash sits in someone else's bags. If you pay for the print run, you have bought several years of packaging that is worthless to every other customer you have.

What it should cost

Price a private label kilo the same way you price any kilo: from your own cost per roasted kilo, with the extras that private label actually adds, then the margin you need. The four extras are packaging, handling, the separate stock line, and the setup.

The price per kilo

The example below uses the same inputs as the wholesale coffee price calculator: green at €8.00 a kilo, 15% roast loss, €0.60 packaging, €1.20 labour and energy, €1.50 delivery and €0.80 overhead, at a 40% gross margin. Replace every figure with your own before quoting anybody.

Packaging rises because a short print run of the café's own bag costs more per unit than your stock bag. Labour rises by the changeover, the separate blend and the extra pick. Neither line falls because the café asked nicely.

That is €1.83 a kilo more than the same coffee in your own bag, about 8%. It is the number to have in your head when the café opens with "and obviously it would be cheaper, since it's our brand". It is not cheaper. It is your coffee, plus work.

A simpler version of the same idea is common in the US market: Fresh Cup describes a flat fee per bag packed, around $1 to $2, covering the labour and the packaging. In euros, a euro or two a bag on top of your list price is a defensible way to quote shape 1 — your blend in their bag — without opening your cost sheet.

The setup, and who pays for it

Before a single saleable bag exists, someone has spent money. An example for a blend developed to a café's brief:

The €700 is the line that quietly ruins private label deals, because it usually gets absorbed rather than charged. Look at what happens if you swallow it and recover it through the price instead. A café using 6 kg a week takes 312 kg in a year:

Setup ÷ kilos = cost added per kilo. Price = (cost per kilo + setup per kilo) ÷ (1 − margin).

Charging the setup up front is easier for both sides and it is also a test. A café that will not pay €700 to start its own coffee brand is a café that was never going to order the volume it is describing, and you have found that out for the price of one conversation instead of a year of small batches.

Minimum runs

Two things set the minimum and neither of them is negotiable by goodwill. The print run: 1,000 one-kilo bags is more than three years of stock for a café using 6 kg a week, and close to ten years for one using 2 kg. Fresh Cup notes that Red Rooster Coffee ran 150 to 500 bags at a time to let new customers start small, which is the right instinct — short digital runs cost more per bag and far less in total, and they let a café find out whether it actually wanted this.

And your batch size. If the private label is a separate blend, it needs its own batches; set a minimum order of at least one full batch and state it in writing. A useful pair of numbers for the agreement is a minimum per order and a minimum over twelve months, reviewed on the anniversary.

Whose name is on the label, and what must be on it

This is the part roasteries skip and then discover after the bags are printed. In the EU, the food business operator named on the label is the one responsible for the food information on it. Whoever that is carries duties that come with it, so decide it deliberately and put it in the agreement before artwork goes to print.

A bag the café resells to its own customers is a retail food package and carries the full set of mandatory particulars, which for a bag of roasted coffee generally means:

• The name of the food — what it is, not only the brand name on the front.
• The net quantity.
• A date of minimum durability, the "best before".
• Storage conditions or conditions of use, where they matter.
• The name and address of the food business operator.
• A lot or batch identification.

Coffee the café only brews itself, and never resells, is a different case: some of the mandatory information can travel on the delivery documents rather than on the pack, though the outer packaging still has to identify the food, its net quantity and the operator. Two practical consequences. First, a café that starts by only brewing your private label and later puts a bag on its retail shelf has changed what the label needs, and someone should notice before a customer does. Second, allergen and ingredient rules apply to anything you blend in, so a flavoured or added-ingredient product is a bigger step than it sounds.

The arrangement that causes the fewest arguments is the café's brand on the front and your business name and address on the back as the operator, because you are the one who knows the roast date, the lot and the traceability behind it. If the café insists on being named as the operator, that is its right and its responsibility, and it needs to actually be able to answer a question about a lot. Either way, keep your own lot numbering on every batch you pack for them and keep retained samples, so any bag can be traced back to a roast.

This is a general description, not legal advice, and national rules sit on top of the EU ones. Check with your national food safety authority, and with the authority of the country the coffee is sold in if that is a different one, before the first print run.

What the agreement has to say

Private label is the one wholesale arrangement that genuinely needs paper. Everything below has cost a roastery money somewhere because it was assumed instead of written. Put it alongside your standard wholesale terms and conditions, which keep covering payment, delivery and title as usual.

Minimum volume and term

A minimum per order, a minimum over twelve months, and how long the arrangement runs. Say what happens if the café falls short: the price steps up to your list price, or the arrangement ends, or the balance of the setup becomes payable.

Who owns the recipe

Default to the recipe staying yours, with the café holding the right to buy it from you. If the café has paid separately for development, say what it bought — usually the exclusive right to sell that coffee under its brand while the agreement runs, not the component list to take elsewhere.

Who owns the artwork

Normally the café, or its designer. Get written permission to hold and use the files for printing, and to show the product in your own photographs if that matters to you.

Exclusivity, both ways

Can you sell the same blend under your own name, or to another café? Can the café have the same recipe roasted by someone else? These are two different questions and both need an answer. If you grant exclusivity on a blend, price it, and put a volume floor under it.

Leftover printed bags

Who owns the stock, who stores it, how much you will hold, and what happens on notice. The clean version: the café buys the run, you store an agreed quantity, and on termination it pays for and collects the rest within a set number of days.

Notice

How much notice either side gives, and whether the café can end it in the middle of a print run it asked you to order.

Price review

A named review date and a notice period, the same as the rest of your book. Green moves, and a private label price fixed forever is a private label price that becomes a loss. See how to raise wholesale prices without losing cafés.

Labelling responsibility

Who is named as the food business operator, who signs off artwork before printing, and who is responsible if a label is wrong. This is the clause the previous section is about.

Quality and recall

How a complaint is handled, who talks to the café's customer, and what happens if a batch has to be withdrawn. Rare, and expensive when nobody has thought about it.

What to ask before you quote

Do not price on the first email. Ask these, then quote. Most private label requests either answer themselves at question one or turn into something smaller and better at question four.

Then price it in the open. Show the café the per-kilo comparison above: their bag, your bag, and the difference. A café that understands where €1.83 a kilo goes will usually accept it. A café that will not look at the arithmetic is telling you what the account will be like.

How to say no, and what to offer instead

Say no plainly and immediately, with a reason and an alternative in the same breath. "We don't do private label under 300 kg a year, because the print run alone is three years of stock at your volume. Here's what I'd suggest instead." Nobody is offended by a number.

Three alternatives that give the café most of what it actually wants, which is usually to look like it has its own coffee:

• Your coffee, their recipe card. A card on the bar in the café's own design, with the coffee's name, the dose, the yield and the time. It is the thing the customer and the new barista actually read, it costs a print shop very little, and it is theirs. There is a recipe card template in onboarding a new wholesale café.
• A house blend developed for them, sold under your name. They get "our house espresso, blended for us by [roastery]", which most customers read as ownership anyway. You keep the label, the recipe and the ability to sell it elsewhere if they leave. This is the compromise most private label conversations should land on.
• A guest slot with their name on the board. A rotating coffee they choose, presented as their selection. It scratches the same itch and it keeps the second grinder yours. See running a guest coffee programme.

And if the reason for the request is price rather than branding, deal with that instead. A volume break, a longer price hold, or a simpler delivery day is usually worth more to a café than its logo, and costs you far less than a private label line.

Questions roasters ask

What is private label coffee?

Private label coffee is coffee roasted by one business and sold under another business's name. A café buys the coffee, puts its own brand on the bag, and its customers see the café as the source. In coffee the words private label and white label are used for the same thing, and both are separate from toll roasting, where the café owns the green and pays you only to roast it.

Should private label coffee cost more or less than normal wholesale?

More, in almost every case. A private label line means smaller batches, a separate stock line, a changeover on the roast day and someone else's packaging to store and handle, and none of that gets cheaper because the café asked for it. Price it from your own cost per roasted kilo with those extras in, then set the margin. If the answer comes out below your list price, you have made an arithmetic mistake or you are subsidising the account.

What is a sensible minimum order for private label coffee?

Let the print run and your batch size decide it. A run of 1,000 one-kilo bags is more than three years of stock for a café using 6 kg a week, and a café using 2 kg a week does not order a full batch of a separate blend in a month. A minimum of a full batch per order and a written annual volume, reviewed each year, keeps both problems out of your roast schedule.

Who owns the blend recipe in a private label agreement?

Whoever the agreement says, which is why it has to say. The default worth arguing for is that the recipe stays yours and the café has the right to buy it from you, not the right to take the component list to another roaster. If the café paid for the development work outright, it will reasonably expect more than that, so price the development knowing what you are giving away with it.

Whose name goes on a private label coffee bag in the EU?

The food business operator named on the label is the one responsible for the information on it, so this is a decision, not a formality. Agree in writing who that operator is before the bags are printed, and check the rules that apply where the coffee is sold, since national requirements sit on top of the EU ones. A common arrangement is the café's brand on the front and the roastery's name and address as the operator on the back.

What happens to the printed bags if the café leaves?

Write it down before the run is ordered. The usual answer is that the café bought the bags, so on notice it pays for and collects whatever is left, and you are not storing four hundred bags with someone else's logo on them a year after they stopped ordering. If you paid for the run yourself, put a minimum volume in the agreement large enough to have covered it.

Where Order Book fits

A private label coffee is a product in one café's catalog and nobody else's. In Order Book each client has its own catalog and its own prices, so the café sees its own coffee under its own name at the price you agreed for it, and no other account sees it at all. Volume breaks and the order cutoff work on that line exactly as they do on any other, so the café orders its own blend with everything else and can change it itself before the cutoff. A scheduled price change can be written for that one product and that one account, announced to the café at its own prices, and applied on the date.

Order Book does not print bags or order packaging. What it does is make sure the private label line is priced once, visible to one café, and on the roast plan with everything else you are roasting that day.

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