Roasting To Order

UNM

I saw a post from a coffee roaster that made great play of the fact they "roast to order"

obviously they believe this will influence potential customers in their favour.

does it influence your purchase decision if your supplier roasts to order?
What exactly does that mean to you with respect to bean suitability for your requirements?

when is, or is it not, desirable?

I have my opinions (a little muddled perhaps), but thought I should wait a little while before expressing them and canvass other points of view.

Kelsey

If you're talking about who you're thinking about, I purchased from them quite frequently prior to starting home roasting. But I did so in the knowledge that I would need to order a week in advance of when I intended to use the beans. For the average punter who is halfway between 'nespresso drinker' and 'fanatic' (someone who buys beans but uses a cheap, probably blade, grinder and has a sub $300 domestic machine) then 'roasted to order' sounds like a good thing. "Hey, it's fresh, right? Fresh is always better!" So for them it's good marketing and with their equipment there's a good chance they won't even notice the difference. For us it simply puts us on notice that we need to pre-order.

Thundergod

If they roast regularly there's no need to "roast to order" because they will always have fresh on hand.

UNM

Although the trigger was one post elsewhere, this seems to be common marketing. there is one place in melb that uses a probat g90 (90kg?) for roast to order. clearly they are not roasting a 250g batch in response to each client request.

Brett_H

Thundergod wrote:

If they roast regularly there's no need to "roast to order" because they will always have fresh on hand.

Spot on :thumb:

beanflying

It has just become overused marketing speak these days, given a few years ago pre more roasters adding roasted on dates to their bags it was just a clear statement of 'you will get it fresh'. As we all know to fresh is a problem too if you run out of beans so being able to order week old is sometimes nice. OT but Still irks me somewhat that a lot of the mid level to larger roasters (non stupormarket stocked) avoid dating or doing this and use batch numbers with no external meaning.

Kelsey

Bean Flying wrote:

OT but Still irks me somewhat that a lot of the mid level to larger roasters (non stupormarket stocked) avoid dating or doing this and use batch numbers with no external meaning.

Costas of Noosa, I'm looking' at you.

mycuppa

As a person who does roast to order for our regular clients (and we manage the peak usage window as well) - it's a very complex and demanding routine to keep running 24x7 and is only more complicated when you have a large portfolio of coffees. We roast 7 days a week and up to 14 different coffees a day (on big days we can do 20+ different coffees), some of them many batches each - it's a tough gig and I doubt many would be able to sustain it long-term or handle the associated issues of stock planning and movement. It does my head in actually - trying to predict what coffees will move on a day-to-day basis - sometimes we spend more time planning and organizing than actually roasting ! Its why I have instituted a special product called Roaster's Choice - it's what I think is great right now, we have it perfectly timed (ready) to enjoy.