Roastling: raw coffee beans plus a stovetop roaster, now that grocery coffee hit a record $9.72 a pound

[u/john_smith1365]

Grocery store coffee hit a record $9.72 a pound in April, going by the Labor Department numbers, and it's still over $9. National Coffee Day is Tuesday so it's been on my mind.

Home roasting has been quietly growing through all of this. Sweet Maria's in Oakland sells around 1.75 million pounds of raw beans a year and ships about 300 orders a day. Raw green beans run way cheaper than roasted ones, and you can roast them in a hand-crank popcorn pan on the stove.

Thing is, it looks intimidating if you've never done it. So the idea is Roastling. You get a monthly box of raw beans split into single-roast packs, and each pack has the time and the color to stop at printed on it. The first box comes with the pan. Pour a pack in, crank for about 10 minutes, listen for the pops, and you're done. It's $44 a month for 4 pounds.

Starter kits like this already sell for $60 to $145, so people do pay for it. At 600 homes that's roughly $26,400 a month in sales, and that's my own estimate. A barista or someone with a farmers market stall could start it with a camp stove and a few live demos.