Coffee roaster wholesale: win new café and store accounts

Two wholesale coffee markets, two emails

A café switching its house roast is a big decision. It touches the grinder settings, the menu, staff training and often an existing supply agreement. That conversation is slow, and it starts with a tasting. Retail bags are a smaller ask: a deli or grocer adds a line to the shelf and sees how it sells.

Run them as separate campaigns. One email to café owners about your house blend, another to delis and grocers about bags on the shelf. Mixing them muddles both.

Where to look beyond cafés

Cafés are the obvious target and the most contested. Wholesale coffee also sells to:

• Restaurants and bakeries that serve coffee but do not think of themselves as cafés.
• Delis, grocers and health food shops for retail bags.
• Gyms, studios and co-working spaces with a coffee machine and a crowd.
• Hotels for rooms, breakfast and the lobby bar.

Who to email

At an independent café the owner chooses the coffee, sometimes with the head barista. At a restaurant or hotel it is usually the general manager or the F&B manager. We look for that person at each business and skip shared inboxes, such as accounts addresses, that nobody reads with buying in mind.

Each email reaches that one person, written about their café, not a list of cafés.

What a café owner wants to hear

Owners want to know what the coffee tastes like in milk, what support comes with it, how reliable delivery is, and the price per kilo. The first email does not try to answer all of that. It says why your coffee suits that café, in a few lines, and offers one easy step, usually a tasting bag. Price lists go out when the owner replies.

Tastings turn into accounts

Most café accounts are won at a tasting, not in an email. The email earns the tasting. When an owner replies, offer a bag to try in their own machine, then a visit with the head barista to dial it in. Book the follow-up there and then, while they are keen.

Know what you offer before that visit: delivery days, minimum order, how quickly you can replace a bag that runs out, and whether you help with training. Those answers win more accounts than the tasting notes on the bag.

How the outreach works

We find the cafés and stores in your area that fit your coffee and the owner at each, and write every email around that business. Emails go out from a separate sending domain we set up for you, so your roastery's own address is never at risk. Follow-ups stop the moment someone replies, and you answer it yourself.

Once accounts start ordering, Flow keeps each one in view from reply to tasting, first order and reorder, and reminds you who is due a check-in.

Where to go next

Read how to get your product into cafes for the café owner's side of the decision, and set a price that leaves room for both of you with the wholesale price calculator. Cold brew and ready-to-drink coffee sit with beverage brands; pantry products with food brands. To see cafés near you that would fit, see who would stock you.