SackOrderPlanning roast days from your wholesale orders
Updated October 22, 2026 · For specialty coffee roasters with wholesale accounts
Roasting to standing orders is easier than roasting to guesses. If you know what ships this week, you know what to roast, and fresh coffee goes out instead of sitting on a shelf.
Here is a simple weekly routine that works for a single-roaster shop.
Total the week by coffee
Add up the bags due to ship this week for each coffee. Add your retail and online estimates on top. That gives you a pound total per coffee for the week.
Convert to batches
Coffee loses weight during roasting as moisture cooks off, often somewhere in the mid-teens percent depending on roast level. Divide the roasted pounds you need by your own typical yield to get green weight, then by your batch size to get the number of batches.
Roast close to ship day
Most cafés want coffee that has rested a few days but not weeks; espresso in particular often benefits from a short rest. Roast wholesale coffees a day or two before they ship, and group roasts by coffee to cut changeovers.
Keep a small buffer
A little extra of your most-ordered blend covers a café that calls short on a Friday. Too much buffer just means older coffee next week. Track how often you use the buffer and adjust.