Guides
Coffee shop inventory: what to settle before you sign
Coffee shop inventory: the clauses to settle with suppliers, how loaned equipment and storage affect your lease, and the records to keep for tax and waste.
What to take away
- Six clauses decide what a supplier can do to youlead time, minimum order, loaned equipment, exclusivity, price notice and who pays for training. Get all six in writing.
- Loaned equipment is the clause that catches shops. It reads like a saving and behaves like a term commitment.
- Measure storage against a week of your real delivery pattern before you sign the lease, not during fit-out.
- Every ingredient used by one menu item adds an order line, a shelf position and a rotation duty.
- Counts and waste logs answer questions tax records cannotwhether a recipe is poured over, and whether a supplier's price rise reached your cost per cup.
The six clauses to get in writing
Nothing here recommends a supplier. What matters is knowing what you agreed to before the menu depends on it.
Six clauses to get in writing
- Lead timedays, and what happens when it slips
- Minimum orderfigure, and if it changes
- Loaned equipmentterm, exit, ownership
- Exclusivitywhether, how long, to what
- Price noticehow set, days of warning
- Trainingwho trains staff, at whose cost
Clause / What to pin down
- Lead time
- The number of days, and what the supplier does when it slips
- Minimum order
- The figure, and whether it changes if your volume drops
- Loaned equipment
- The term, the exit, and who owns the machine at the end
- Exclusivity
- Whether you are committed, for how long, and to what
- Price notice
- How price is set and how many days' warning you get before it moves
- Training
- Who trains staff on the equipment, and at whose cost
Ask for all six in writing even when the relationship is friendly. A roaster relationship is a contract whether or not anything is signed, and a verbal answer is not one you can hold anyone to in month nine.
For each of the six, write down the answer, who gave it and the date. Then read it back as the person you will be in month nine, when a delivery is late and the price has moved: if the answer leaves you nothing to point at, the clause is not settled. That is the difference between a term in writing and a friendly phone call.
Loaned equipment is the clause that catches people
A grinder or a brewer placed in your shop looks like a saving. It usually carries a term, a minimum volume, or both, and leaving early has a cost attached.
Before you accept a machine, ask what happens to it if you switch suppliers, what volume you must buy to keep it, and whether the term outlasts your lease. If the answers are vague, price the machine yourself and buy it. Owning a grinder is a smaller commitment than a contract you did not read.
Storage is a lease decision, not a fit-out decision
Measure the storage against a week of your actual delivery pattern before you sign. A unit with nowhere to put a milk delivery creates a daily problem no process fixes.
Count the space in the units you actually buy, not in shelf feet. If storage holds two days of dairy and delivery comes twice a week, the pattern does not work and no amount of care will make it. Fix the delivery frequency or fix the storage before you start managing shortages by hand.
This is why storage volume belongs in how a site is judged rather than in the equipment budget. It is also why what you sell and what it loads is an inventory decision as much as a customer one. Every item needing an ingredient nothing else uses adds an order line, a shelf position and a rotation duty.
Where a permission attaches to equipment or a product you resell, keep it with your licensing and compliance records, not in a drawer. Reselling packaged beans or pastry brings a state seller's permit or resale certificate; the permit to run a food service establishment comes from the local health department that inspects you; the business license comes from your city or county. Write down which ones you hold, who issued them and when they renew.
Beans, milk and pastry fail differently
Beans age out of their window while still saleable. Milk spoils on a date you cannot extend. Pastry is a bet placed the day before. Only one of the three is a handling problem.
Order beans to your actual weekly usage rather than to a price break. A discount that buys four weeks of coffee has bought two good weeks and two mediocre ones. Date every bag on arrival so whoever opens it can see what they are opening.
Milk is the item most likely to run out during a peak and the one you can least afford to lose. It is bulky, so cold storage volume is the real limit.
Handling and holding requirements come from your local health department. The FDA Food Code is a model states adopt in varying forms, so take temperatures and labeling from the department that inspects you.
Bought-in food is the clearest case of waste locked in before the day starts. Track sell-through by day of week for a month, then order to that pattern rather than to a flat number.
When there is surplus, the EPA's Wasted Food Scale ranks the preferred paths for food that will not be sold, from prevention downward.
Prevention is at the top because it is the only rung that costs nothing.
Price moves for reasons outside your shop
Green coffee is traded globally, and production, exports and stocks are reported publicly. The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service publishes Coffee: World Markets and Trade, which tracks production and trade across origins and seasons.
You cannot control any of that. You can know when your own price is fixed until, ask for a notice period in writing, and decide in advance what you will do when a cost moves: absorb it, change the menu, or reprice. Deciding that in the week it happens is how a shop ends up absorbing everything.
Records, and what they are for
Keep purchase records, delivery notes, counts and waste logs. The Internal Revenue Service sets out the general expectation in Publication 583, Starting a Business and Keeping Records: a business has to support the figures on its return with documentation, and that documentation stays in the file long after the return is filed. Your counts and waste logs belong in the same file, not in a separate habit.
Beyond tax, counts answer questions nothing else can. Whether a recipe is being poured over. Whether a supplier's price rise has reached your cost per cup. Whether waste is falling. None of it is visible without written counts.
Allergen information is a separate record with a separate purpose. The FDA's questions and answers on food allergens covers the federal framework for labeled packaged food.
What you must disclose about drinks assembled at a shared bar is set locally. Keep supplier specifications for everything you buy in, and ask the health department that issues your food service permit what you are required to say. Get the answer in writing, because that is what your staff will follow on a busy Saturday.
Common questions
What happens if I do not get the clauses in writing?
You keep whatever the supplier says on the phone, which is worth nothing when a lead time slips or a price moves. Ask for the six clauses by email and keep the reply. A short written answer beats a long verbal one.
Should I use one supplier or several?
One supplier is simpler and more exposed. Several is more work and more resilient. Whichever you choose, know what happens when the main one fails to deliver on a Monday, and have that answer before the Monday.
Is it worth roasting my own coffee?
It is a different business attached to yours, with its own equipment, approvals and storage. Price it as a separate venture rather than as an extension of the bar.
How do I cut pastry waste without running out?
Order to the day of week pattern rather than to a flat number, and accept selling out late in the day. A display still full at closing has been paid for twice.
