Training & roastery support
Supporting you with your roastery business needs
Roast profiling & training
Supporting start-up
& small roasteries
Getting started in coffee can be daunting. Ask any coffee professional and they’ll tell you there’s a lot to learn! Even if you’ve started a business before, starting a coffee roastery is a big ask. Just a few of the dozens of crucial questions that you need to ask are:
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What business model am I going to adopt and what is my U.S.P?
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What size roastery will I need - not just today but in a few years?
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What size roaster do I need?
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How much space and labour do I need for green storage and roasted coffee packing and storing? And how do I store and move coffee?
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What about installation, ducting and emissions and what are the regulations?
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My start-up costs - what can I really expect?
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What ancillary kit do I need and crucially what don’t I need?
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What should my margins and running costs be and how do I keep my all important cost per kilo costs down?
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Above all - CASH FLOW. You need to manage cash flow in a highly cash flow negative business. Working capital becomes more important than ever. What does that mean?
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To give yourself the best chance, these are are a few of the most obvious questions you'll need to understand and answer. That's before you’ve begun to source, roast and profile for your client base and fine tune your extraction techniques! At Rubiaceae Consulting, we can help you navigate these steps, save lots of money, lots of time and perhaps your business.
A first step is to book a two-day, 'How to start a roastery' course we run with London School of Coffee in Wandswoth, London. This takes a detailed look under the bonnet of the business of how to start a coffee roastery. What are the business models? How much do they cost to get up and running? How do I sell coffee? If you’ve not thought about how you’re going to sell it, then you’re just at square one - whatever else you have planned. Your access to market and U.S.P are the key to success.
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Rubiaceae Consulting also offer one-to-one consulting. From advising about all aspects of start-up, to helping people get roasting with toll and slot-roasting and generate some revenues before investing in a fully (or not) kitted out roastery.
Finally, we can also support you with financing your roaster. For all start-ups its crucial to have as much working capital in the bank as possible, it's what facilitates and so drives growth. That's why we believe that leasing or renting can be the smart option to help your business grow quickly.
Get in touch and we’ll help you make the right first steps for you.
(Pictured: Stephen from Lucid Coffee- see case studies for more info!)
Green sourcing
& roast profiling
On our roasting courses we often talk about the three fundamental skills need to be a great roaster. They are;
1. Green Coffee Sourcing
2. Roasting and Profiling
3. Cupping and Roasted QC
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Green sourcing is fundamental to being a great roaster, buying the right green, at the right cost for the right extraction technique/client is key to your success. Put simply it takes time to build up those skills, we're here to help bridge that gap and guide you through those greens that work best to blend for espresso, to work with capsules perhaps all the way to your marquee single origin filter range. We work closely with Stephen Hurst and The Coffee Hunters team of Mercanta Coffee. Stephen has been sourcing specialty green coffee since 1996, that is well before the specialty sector was the size and prominence it is today.
Stephen believed in great green, great roasting and great coffee skills enough to found the London School of Coffee way back in 2002. It has been training and providing invaluable courses to improve skills across all areas of specialty coffee. We're proud to be partners with them via Diedrich Roasters LLC.
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If you want to talk this through please get in touch with one of the team at Rubiaceae Consulting or Gayle and London School of Coffee.
Roastery expansion
That next step in your business and roastery expansions is key - you need to expand. How do you wisely invest for growth, whilst reducing cost per kilo and maintaining the quality and consistency that is the hallmark of specialty roasting? We can help you grow with tailored solutions based around:​
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Reducing that all important cost per kilo metric
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Introducing Silos and conveying for green and roasted coffee
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Sorting and quality control with colour sorters, de-stoners and QC advice
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Diedrich's unrivalled industrial roasters
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Emissions controls with Reicat Catalytic Oxidiser, the industry leading solution
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Design and implementation of your facility
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Lease and rental options subject to eligibility
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Support and training every step of the way​
If you just need that 25kg or 35kg upgrade to your existing facility, or a 140kg system with silos, conveying, emissions control and to move to new premises, we can help. Perhaps you need some advice about the next step so that you make confident decisions? For roasteries large or small, we have the experience to help you grow.​
Roast profiling & training
If you want to be a successful roaster then training is definitely the way forward. It will save you many wasted months, a lot of frustration and a lot of money. It may be the difference between success and failure; it will certainly enable you to grow quicker and make less mistakes.
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Jamie is an authorised SCA trainer (AST) with 10 years' teaching experience. He focuses specifically on roasting and within those courses covers aspects of green and a lot of cupping. Lectures will only get you so far, so, at Rubiaceae Consulting and London School of Coffee, we’re set up to get people on commercial size roasters for most of the training courses. We focus on planning, executing, cupping and re-planning. For example, on a three-day intermediate course you will be roasting for two and half days.
Courses provided:
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SCA Foundation Roasting
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SCA Intermediate Roasting
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SCA Professional Roasting
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Other training:
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How to start a roastery
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Introduction to cupping and sensory
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Roaster maintenance and engineering
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Roastery quality control – green and roasted
Please feel free to get in touch to talk through your training needs and see how we can help.
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If you’re looking for green coffee or sensory courses, we’re happy to recommend trainers we’ve worked with and we would say are amongst the best in the business.
Slot & toll
roasting services
That first step into coffee roasting is a big step, you need premises, a roaster and much more. Slot & toll roasting is a service that we provide alongside London School of Coffee to help roastery enthusiasts and professionals bridge that gap and take those first steps
Slot roasting is when you hire a roaster at our London Co-Roasting Hub for a 4 hr slot. We provide the beans, equipment so all you can get roasting.
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Toll roasting is when we roast for you. You come to London Co-Roasting Hub and pick up your coffee in our re-usable 12kg containers or labelled bags which you have provided. This added service means we can profile for you to get the exact flavour profile you're looking for. Profiling comes at an extra cost but is well worth the investment.
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If you'd like to explore either option then please follow this link or get in touch. We're based in Wandsworth, London and are easily accessible with parking.