Breaking Down the Price of Our Coffee

People often ask us: “Why is your coffee so expensive?”

Let’s break it down.

When you pick up one of our $22 half-pound bags, we’ve paid about $22 per kilo just for the green beans. That’s before adding shipping fees, customs, rent, hydro, packaging, wages, and equipment upkeep (roasters aren’t cheap to maintain!). Then there’s the 20% weight loss during roasting. On top of that, we spend countless hours sample roasting, tasting, and refining each profile—sometimes burning through 8 kilos of trial batches just to find the sweet spot that makes a coffee truly shine.

And remember, we’re a micro-roastery, roasting just 1 kilo at a time, not 20–30. We also love to rotate our offering lists often instead of serving the same coffee year-round. That means more sourcing, more tasting, and more development but it also means you get to explore fresh, exciting flavors every season.

Now, here’s the contrast: big chains often pay only $7–$8 per kilo for lower-grade coffee. They keep the same blends year after year, with very little investment in development or innovation. Yet they’ll still charge you $24 for a pound or even just 350g.

For our special process or rare variety coffees, our green costs climb to $40–$45 per kilo. At that level, most specialty roasters would price them at $40–$50 for 200g. Instead, we cap ours at $38 for 225g because here in Victoria, we want more people to enjoy exceptional coffee without saving it for a “special occasion.”

And sometimes, we go even further: for our Geisha and other limited-lot coffees, we’ve paid up to $150 per kilo. Even then, we keep it at $45 for 100g so you can taste something extraordinary without needing a competition judge’s budget.

Behind every bag, there are also the invisible costs: ongoing coffee education, marketing, and the time we spend sharing our passion and answering your questions. These don’t show up on a receipt, but they’re a huge part of what makes our little roasting studio special.

Do we make much profit on those coffees? Honestly, not. But that’s not the point. We carry them because we love sharing what coffee can be: vibrant, rare, and unforgettable.

So next time when you hold one of our bags, ask yourself—is it really expensive?