We now sell green coffee
At least one of us here at Skylark started roasting coffee with a flimsy little gadget in the back garden shed. We have no comment on how many times we somehow managed to achieve full combustion, with ashen results.
These days, roasting at home or as part of a cafe business is increasingly common, and we’re now selling most of our coffees as green (unroasted) beans on this website. They're all listed separately here, or at the bottom of the shop page.
The main reason to do this is simply to shift as much coffee as we can for the producers and supply partners who we’re structured to support. If you want to start a small roasting company in your cafe basement or garage, and to do it with highly impactful and carefully sourced coffees, then we’re happy to help.
The price we pay for green coffee creates change (by empowering producers who have historically remained dependent) so whether we sell it green or brown, the impact is there.
Here’s how the pricing works
For home roasters and cafe micro-roasteries, we’ve set a simple ‘cost plus’ model for green coffee. Here’s the formula:
For 1kg bags: [our green cost per kg] x 1.5 plus £5
For 10kg bags: [our green cost per 10kg] x 1.3 plus £10
Here’s what that formula takes into account:
Our green coffee cost
+ our £1/kg donation for every kilo sold
+ the cost of shipping the coffee to our warehouse
+ the cost of packaging
+ labour to pack/ship it to you
+ the shipping cost to send it to you
+ the small share of our overhead costs like electricity that belong to that sale.
This creates a transparent system where really affordable green coffee is actually quite accessible. Meanwhile, we’ll keep making sure everyone in our supply chain is treated well, our own staff included.
If you’re a slightly larger coffee roasting business interested in larger volumes of coffee — perhaps splitting a shipping container and sharing a supply chain — just get in touch. We’ll share any knowledge or contacts for free because the goal is simple: To help producers sell all their coffee at good prices.
Ben Szobody is a co-founder of Skylark, a former home roaster who blogged shamelessly about it, and the editor of Cherry Bones magazine.