A glossary of wholesale coffee terms

Short answer. Wholesale coffee vocabulary falls into six groups: the accounts you sell to, how orders are placed, how the money works, the coffee and the roast, the equipment you lend, and the EU paperwork that sits underneath it. Four terms cause most of the confusion. Roast loss is not waste. The C price is not what you pay. Net 30 runs from whichever date your terms name. And a best-before date is not a roast date.

Accounts and selling

The words for the relationship itself, and for the state it is in.

Wholesale account

A business that buys coffee from you to sell on or to serve, on trade prices and usually on credit. It is an account rather than a customer because it recurs: the same café, the same coffees, most weeks, on terms you agreed once.

House coffee

The espresso or filter a café pours by default, all day, every day. It is most of the volume on the account and the coffee a price increase is really about, so it is the one you keep stable and never run out of.

Guest coffee

A second coffee that rotates — a single origin, a different process, sometimes another roastery's. It keeps a menu interesting without touching the house coffee. See how guest coffee programmes work.

Multi-roaster

A café that buys from more than one roastery at once, usually one house coffee and rotating guests. It is not disloyalty; it is a format. Know before you quote whether you are being asked to be the house or the guest, because the volume differs by an order of magnitude.

Sample drop

Leaving one or two coffees with a café to taste, labelled with the roast date and a recipe card. The point is not the coffee, it is the reason to come back on a named day.

Sell sheet

A one-page document for a café that has not bought from you yet: the coffees, the prices per kilo ex VAT, the minimum order, delivery days, payment terms and one person's mobile number. See how roasteries win accounts.

Price sheet, or price list

The document a café orders from: one line per coffee and bag size, prices without VAT, a price per kilo so sizes can be compared, and the terms underneath. A price list template is the fastest way to see what belongs on it.

Account application

The form a new café fills in before it can buy on credit: trading name, VAT number, delivery address, who orders, who pays, and agreement to your terms. It is also where you decide the credit limit.

Onboarding

The first few weeks of an account: installing or dialling in, agreeing the par level and the ordering day, setting the recipe, and the first two or three deliveries. Most accounts that fail, fail here rather than a year later. See onboarding a new wholesale café.

Drift

An account slowing down against its own rhythm rather than stopping. Measured as the gap since its last order divided by its usual gap: past 1.5 it is slowing, past 2.5 it is drifting. A basket shrinking below about 70% of its usual size says the same thing. See accounts going quiet.

Churn

Accounts lost over a period, as a share of the accounts you had. Drift is the warning; churn is the count afterwards. A closure for August or a renovation looks identical to churn in the numbers and is not, which is why the two are worth separating by hand.

Account concentration

How much of your wholesale volume sits in your largest few accounts. If losing one café would change what you can pay yourself, the book is concentrated, whatever the total looks like. See how many accounts a roastery needs.

Ordering

The mechanics of getting coffee from a roast plan to a café's shelf.

Standing order

A repeating order a café has agreed to in advance — the same coffees, the same quantities, every week or fortnight — which places itself unless the café changes, skips or pauses it. It removes the weekly chase and makes the roast plan predictable. It only works if the café can edit it itself; otherwise it becomes coffee nobody asked for.

Order cutoff

The time after which an order goes on the next roast instead of this one. Set it one clear working day before each roast day, write it on the price list, and give cafés a par level big enough that missing it is an inconvenience rather than an empty hopper. See cutoffs and lead times.

Lead time

How long after the cutoff the coffee arrives. The café only experiences the total — waiting for the cutoff, then the lead time, then resting — so that total is the number to say out loud, and the one a café is complaining about when it says your lead time is long.

Par level

The amount of each coffee a café aims to have on the shelf when its order arrives: enough to cover the gap between deliveries plus the resting window plus a bad week. Agreeing the par level during onboarding prevents most rush orders.

Rush order

An order placed after the cutoff that the café needs before the next scheduled delivery. Each one costs an unplanned batch, and that batch takes coffee that was resting for someone else's Friday, so the correction runs through the following week.

Minimum order

The smallest order you will deliver, in kilos or in euros ex VAT, per delivery. Roasteries commonly quote something like 5 kg or €90 ex VAT; there is no standard. Say whether a café below it can still collect from the roastery.

Order line

One coffee, one bag size, one quantity. An order is a set of lines; the line is what gets picked, priced, substituted or back-ordered, so disputes are almost always about a line rather than about the order.

Picking list

What someone carries into the packing room: every line across every order for one delivery run, grouped so a bag is picked once rather than walked to five times.

Delivery note

The document that travels with the coffee saying what is in the box, per line, usually without prices. It is what the café checks against on the doorstep, and what you point at when an invoice is queried three weeks later.

Run sheet

The driver's list for one delivery day: stops in order, what each one is getting, and anything to collect or say. On a good run sheet the equipment fault and the unpaid statement are on the same line as the address.

Back order

A line you could not fill, kept open to send when the coffee is available rather than cancelled. Back orders that are never closed are how a café ends up believing you owe it 4 kg you have already delivered.

Substitution

Sending a different coffee in place of one that ran out. It needs the café's agreement before it leaves, not a note in the box, because a head barista has a recipe dialled in for the coffee that was ordered.

Pricing and money

The vocabulary of the price list and the statement.

Price per kilo ex VAT

The trade price of a kilo of roasted coffee without VAT. Trade buyers reclaim VAT and compare net prices, so a wholesale list that mixes net and gross gets you a phone call. Showing the per-kilo figure for every bag size stops a 250 g bag looking cheap next to a kilo.

Volume break

A lower price above a stated quantity, for example from 10 kg per delivery. One break is usually enough. More than two and no café can predict what it will pay, which is worse for you than the discount.

Cost plus

Pricing from what the coffee actually cost you rather than from what the roastery down the road charges: green per roasted kilo, packaging, labour, then the margin you decided. The wholesale price calculator does the arithmetic.

Gross margin

The share of the selling price left after the cost of the goods. A bag costing €10.91 and sold at €18.20 ex VAT carries €7.29, which is a 40% gross margin. Percentage margin and cash margin per kilo are different decisions, and which one you hold when green rises is the whole argument in a price increase.

COGS

Cost of goods sold: green, packaging and the labour that goes into the bag. Overheads such as rent, the van and your own salary sit below it, which is why a healthy gross margin and no profit can happen at the same time.

Net 7, net 14, net 30

The payment period: the invoice is due in full that many days later, with no discount for paying sooner. The date it runs from is whichever your terms name — normally the invoice date, which means monthly invoicing quietly gives the first delivery of the month nearer 60 days. Between businesses the EU Late Payment Directive generally caps agreed periods at 60 days.

Statutory interest

Interest you are entitled to on a late business invoice without having to ask for it, under the same directive: the reference rate plus at least eight percentage points, and at least €40 per late invoice towards recovery costs. Most roasteries never claim it. Its value is that the café knows the clause is there, and pays you before the supplier whose terms say nothing. See late-paying café accounts.

Credit limit

The most an account may owe you at once before the next order waits for payment. Set it at the application, in writing, at roughly a month of that café's expected orders, and enforce it at the order rather than at the statement.

Prepay

Payment before the coffee is roasted or released. Normal for a brand-new account, a café with no trading history, or one coming back after a bad run. It is not an insult if it is your written policy for the first few orders rather than a judgement made about one café.

Indexation

A clause tying your prices to a published index or to the green price, so they move without a negotiation each time. It cuts both ways: if you index up, you have promised to index down, and the café will see every movement. Most small roasteries do better with a plain notice period of 30 days.

Coffee and production

The words that come from the roastery floor and end up on an invoice.

Green

Unroasted coffee, bought by the kilo, landed. Landed means the price includes freight and import costs, which is the only version of the number worth pricing from.

C price

The price of a pound of washed arabica traded on the ICE futures market in New York, in US cents. It is the benchmark the trade quotes against, not a price anyone pays. Converting it: divide by 100, divide by 0.4536, then divide by the euro-to-dollar rate to get euros per kilo. See green coffee prices in euros per kilo.

Differential

The amount added to or taken off the C price for a specific lot, reflecting its origin, quality and certification. Your invoice is the C price plus the differential plus freight, import costs, storage and the importer's margin — which is why green is always dearer than the headline number.

FOB

Free on board: the price of the coffee loaded at the origin port, before ocean freight and everything after it. It is the figure quoted in transparency reports because it is the last price the producing country sees, and it is not what the coffee costs you.

Roast loss, or shrinkage

The weight a batch loses between the green going in and the roasted coffee coming out, as a percentage of green weight: 12 kg in, 10.2 kg out, 15%. Mostly water, plus dry matter burnt off as gas and the chaff. It is not waste — waste is coffee that was roasted and never sold. Roasters commonly quote 12 to 18%. Divide by (1 − loss), never add the percentage. See the roast loss calculator.

Batch

One load through the roaster. It is the unit a roast plan is built in, so an order for 7 kg of a coffee roasted in 10 kg batches costs the same drum time as an order for 10 kg.

Drum capacity

The green weight a roaster is rated for per batch. Most roasteries run below the rating rather than at it, because a full drum at the top of the range recovers heat slowly. Your real capacity is batches per day times the weight you actually load, not the number on the machine.

Development

The part of the roast after first crack, before the drop. Often expressed as development time ratio: development time as a share of total roast time, which roasters commonly run somewhere between about 15 and 25%. It is a profile decision, not a standard, and darker development costs you roast loss.

Degassing, or resting

Roasted coffee keeps releasing carbon dioxide for days, and fresh-out-of-the-roaster espresso gushes and will not dial in. The window depends on the coffee and the roast — espresso usually wants longer than filter. Decide yours, print it on the recipe card, and build it into the lead time.

Roast date

The day the coffee left the roaster. It is the only date that tells a café whether a bag is three days or three months old, and the one a head barista uses to decide what to open next. Put it on every bag.

Best before

A date of minimum durability that you choose and are required to print on prepacked food under EU labelling rules, often nine or twelve months out. It says nothing useful about freshness. A bag with only a best-before date and no roast date is a bag the café cannot manage.

Blend

Two or more coffees combined to a recipe, usually for a house espresso that must taste the same all year. The advantage is that you can swap a component when a crop runs out; the work is keeping the cup consistent when you do.

Single origin

Coffee from one country, region, farm or washing station, sold on its own. It changes with the harvest, so a single origin on a menu is a promise to tell the café when the crop turns over.

Decaf

Coffee with the caffeine removed, named on the price list by its process — sugarcane, mountain water, Swiss Water, CO2. It is low-volume and rarely worth a volume break, and it is the line most often forgotten when a café builds its order.

Lot

One identifiable quantity of coffee bought as a unit, from one producer and harvest. It is the level at which price, traceability and due diligence records attach, so when the lot changes, the cup and the paperwork both change.

Equipment and service

What happens when the roastery owns something sitting on the café's counter.

Loan machine, or placed machine

An espresso machine or grinder you own, installed at a café at no purchase cost, in exchange for buying coffee. The machine stays yours, and what happens to it when the account ends is the clause people forget to write. See the espresso machine loan agreement.

Exclusivity

A commitment that the café buys all its espresso coffee from you for the term of the loan. It is the thing the machine is actually paying for. Be specific about what it covers: espresso only, or filter and retail bags as well.

Minimum volume

The kilos per month the café must buy to keep the machine, and what happens in the months it does not. A stated shortfall charge is fairer than an unstated right to remove the machine, and easier to enforce.

Buy-out schedule

A table of what the café pays to end the agreement early and keep or release the machine, falling month by month over the term. Writing it into the agreement turns the end of an account into arithmetic rather than a fight.

Dialling in

Setting grind, dose, yield and time so a coffee tastes right on that café's machine, with that water, on that day. It is needed whenever the coffee, the crop or the grinder changes, which is why substitutions without warning are a real cost to a café.

Recipe card

A card at the machine with dose, yield, time and a starting grind for each coffee, plus the resting window and who to call. It is what a new barista uses at 07:00 when nobody who was trained is in.

Water filtration

The filter between the mains and the machine, sized for the café's water and changed on a schedule. Most espresso that suddenly tastes wrong, and most machine faults you will be blamed for, come back to water. Agree in writing who pays for cartridges and who books the descale.

Rules and paperwork

The European obligations that reach a small roastery, in the words they are written in.

EUDR

The EU Deforestation Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, which covers coffee green, roasted and decaf. It applies from 30 December 2026 for large and medium companies, and from 30 June 2027 for operators that were micro or small undertakings at the end of 2024. A roastery buying green from an EU importer keeps records; one importing green itself does full due diligence. See EUDR for coffee roasters.

Due diligence statement

The declaration filed by the operator that first places the coffee on the EU market, usually the importer clearing it through customs, with the geolocation of the plots behind the lot. It carries a reference number. A roastery buying from that importer keeps the number rather than filing anything.

Structured e-invoice

An invoice issued as a machine-readable file that the buyer's software processes directly, rather than a PDF a person reads. In several European countries the PDF is no longer the legal invoice. Yours comes from your own invoicing software; the PDF you attach to the order is the copy the café reads. See e-invoicing by country.

Peppol

A network for exchanging structured business documents, used for e-invoicing in some countries — Belgium and Croatia among them — while others run their own national systems. In practice you do not choose a network: you choose invoicing software already connected to whichever one your country uses.

EN 16931

The European standard that defines the semantic data model for the core elements of an electronic invoice — which fields must be present and what each one means. It is the answer to "to what standard?" when you ask your invoicing software whether it can issue structured invoices.

VAT reverse charge

Selling goods to a VAT-registered business in another EU member state, you invoice without VAT and the buyer accounts for it in its own return. You need its valid VAT number and evidence the goods left your country. A café in your own country is a domestic sale and VAT applies as normal.

HACCP

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points: the food-safety method EU food hygiene law requires food businesses to base their procedures on. A roastery is a food business. In practice it is a written plan naming the points where something could go wrong, what you check, and what you record.

Best-before labelling

EU food information rules require prepacked food to carry a date of minimum durability, in the regulated wording for the language of the market it is sold in. A roast date is not required by law and is not a substitute — print both.

This section is a plain-language summary, not legal advice. Dates and obligations change; confirm yours with your accountant, your importer or your national authority before you act on them.

The same thing in another language

Selling across a border, or reading a competitor's price list, the vocabulary changes before the trade does. These are the words used in European markets, not literal translations. Where a market has borrowed the English word — single origin, blend, specialty — it is usually understood as it stands.

Three of these are worth a second look. The trade channel has a different name in each market: French roasters say CHR, for cafés, hôtels, restaurants; horeca does the same job in the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal; German trade says Gastronomie. Delivery note is a real document with a legal weight that varies — albarán in Spain and guia de remessa in Portugal are more formal than a Dutch pakbon. And best before has a wording set by EU labelling rules for each language, so it is copied exactly rather than translated.

Questions roasters ask

What is the difference between roast loss and waste?

Roast loss is the weight that leaves the bean in the roaster, mostly water, and it is unavoidable: 12 to 18% covers most specialty roasting. Waste is coffee that was roasted and never sold — quakers picked out, stale bags, samples, a batch dropped wrong. Roast loss is priced into the cost of every kilo; waste comes off your margin afterwards. Keep them in separate lines, because you fix them in different ways.

Is the C price what a roaster pays for green coffee?

No. The C price is a pound of washed arabica traded on the ICE futures market in New York, quoted in US cents, and it is a benchmark rather than a price anyone pays. What a roastery pays is that number plus or minus a differential for the actual lot, plus freight, import costs, storage and the importer's margin. Many specialty coffees are bought on a fixed price agreed with the producer and do not move with the C price at all.

Does net 30 run from the invoice date or the delivery date?

From whichever your written terms say, which is why it has to be written down. Net 30 normally runs from the invoice date, so an invoice raised at the end of the month for deliveries made through it gives the café up to 60 days on the first delivery. If you want 30 days from delivery, say so in the terms and invoice per delivery. Between businesses the EU Late Payment Directive generally caps agreed payment periods at 60 days.

What is the difference between a roast date and a best-before date?

The roast date is the day the coffee came out of the roaster. The best before is a date of minimum durability that the roastery chooses and is required to print on prepacked food under EU labelling rules, often nine or twelve months out. Only the roast date tells a café whether a bag is three days or three months old, which is what decides whether the espresso can be dialled in. Put both on the bag.

What is drift in a wholesale coffee account?

Drift is an account slowing down against its own rhythm rather than stopping. Measure each café against the median gap between its own orders: past one and a half times that gap it is slowing, past two and a half it is drifting. A basket that shrinks below about 70% of its usual size while the ordering rhythm holds is the same warning, and usually means part of the order has gone to another roaster.

What does a wholesale coffee minimum order usually look like?

Roasteries commonly set it in kilos or in euros ex VAT per delivery — 5 kg, or €90 ex VAT, is the kind of figure that appears on a small roastery's price list. There is no standard. The number should be whatever makes a delivery worth driving, and it belongs on the price list and in the terms rather than in your head.

Where Order Book fits

Most of the words above are things Order Book has a place for, so they stop living in your head. Each café gets its own ordering account with its own catalogue and prices, its own volume breaks, and it can change an order up to the cutoff you set. Orders become a roast plan, a run sheet, a picking list and delivery notes. Drift is measured against each account's own rhythm rather than a fixed number of days. Loan equipment is recorded against the café with a QR fault page on the machine. Payments are recorded against the account with a running balance, and insights show gross margin per coffee and per account.

It does not issue invoices, collect payment, chase them, or sync with your accounting. You raise the invoice in your own software and attach the PDF to the order, and the café is emailed it.

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