How to start a coffee roastery in Europe

Europe drinks more coffee than any other region on earth — roughly 30.7% of global consumption, or about 3.26 million tonnes a year, at an average of 5.7 kg of green coffee per person (European Coffee Federation). Yet the fastest-growing slice isn't the supermarket vacuum pack — it's specialty coffee, a European segment valued near USD 7.7 billion in 2024 and forecast to compound at around 10% a year through 2030 (Grand View Research). Roasting is where that value is created, and it's one of the few food businesses a small, well-run team can enter on a five-figure machine budget. Here's how to build one properly.

This guide sits inside our wider series on how to start a business in Europe; if you're weighing roasting against opening a room with tables, read it alongside starting a restaurant or café too.

The regulatory reality: you're a food business first

The moment you roast beans to sell, you are a food business operator under EU law, and the baseline rulebook is Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 on the hygiene of foodstuffs (EUR-Lex). Two obligations matter most.

First, registration. Almost every EU member state requires you to register your premises with the local food-safety or environmental-health authority before you trade. This is usually a notification rather than a licence, it's often free or low-cost, and it must happen before you sell your first bag — but the authority, the form and the lead time differ by country and even by municipality.

Second, HACCP. Article 5 of 852/2004 requires food businesses to put in place permanent procedures based on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points principles. For a roastery the hazards are manageable — foreign objects in green beans, allergen cross-contact if you also handle nuts or flavourings, correct labelling, pest control, traceability of lots. The regulation explicitly builds in flexibility for small businesses, so you don't need an industrial food-safety department; you need a documented, followed, audit-ready plan. Most countries expect at least one person to hold basic food-hygiene training.

Beyond hygiene there's the physical reality of a gas-fired machine indoors. Roasting produces smoke, chaff and — during the roast — carbon monoxide, so you'll need proper extraction and, in many jurisdictions, an afterburner or catalytic oxidiser to meet local air-quality and fire rules once you scale past a small drum. Planning permission and landlord consent for a commercial roaster with a flue are frequently the slowest part of the whole setup.

None of the above is legal advice, and the specifics genuinely vary: confirm registration, HACCP expectations, emissions limits and any trade qualifications with your national food-safety regulator and local authority before you commit to a unit or sign a lease.

What it actually costs to set up

Roasting has an unusually wide entry range because the machine scales with ambition. The core capital lines:

• The roaster. A specialty-grade 5 kg batch roaster — the workhorse size for a new brand — typically runs the equivalent of roughly EUR 12,000–22,000 depending on brand; a Golden Roasters GR5 sits around USD 12,000–14,000 and a premium Diedrich IR-5 around USD 20,000–23,000 (CoffeeTec). Step up to a 15 kg machine and you're looking at USD 30,000-plus. Buying quality used equipment is common and can halve that.
• Extraction, afterburner and installation. Budget realistically for ventilation, gas connection and emissions abatement — this can rival the cost of the roaster itself once local rules bite.
• Premises. A small industrial unit with three-phase power, a flue route and space for green-bean storage. Damp-free, temperature-stable storage matters because green coffee is your inventory.
• Ancillary kit. Sample roaster, grinders, a moisture meter, scales, a heat sealer or nitrogen-flush packing setup, and a decent espresso machine for cupping and quality control.
• Packaging and first green-bean lots (see below).

A lean single-machine roastery can open for a mid five-figure sum in EUR; add a café front and you're into restaurant-fit-out territory. Run your own numbers before you buy — a quick pass through our product pricing calculator will tell you whether your target retail bag price actually covers the machine.

Green beans, sourcing and the margin squeeze

Green coffee is both your raw material and your biggest ongoing cost, and the market has been brutal lately. The arabica "C" price — the ICE futures benchmark — pushed past USD 4.40/lb in early 2025, more than double a year earlier and the highest on record (Perfect Daily Grind). Specialty lots trade at a premium on top of that. Two consequences for a new roaster:

• Buy deliberately. You can source through green-bean importers who hold European warehouse stock (small quantities, fast, no import paperwork), or direct/relationship coffees for traceability and story. Most new roasters start with importers and add direct lots as volume justifies it.
• Cost in the losses. Roasting drives off moisture, so expect roughly 15–18% weight loss between green and roasted — a kilo of green does not make a kilo of roasted. Your true cost per roasted kilo is meaningfully higher than the green price, before packaging, labour, gas and wastage on dialling-in batches.

Because input prices are volatile, review your pricing on a schedule, not once at launch.

Choosing your route to market — and the margins behind each

The same beans can go down very different channels, and they carry very different economics:

• Wholesale to cafés. High volume, steady, but the thinnest margin — cafés expect a trade price well below retail, and you'll often lend or subsidise equipment and training. Great for filling the roaster; poor for cash per kilo.
• Direct-to-consumer (retail bags and subscriptions). The best margin by far, because you capture the full retail price and own the customer relationship. This is where the specialty growth is, and it's where the digital section below earns its keep.
• Your own café. The highest revenue per kilo of all — a bag's worth of beans becomes many cups — but it's a separate, staff-heavy hospitality business layered on top of roasting. Treat it as a second venture, not a side effect.

Most successful small roasters blend the three: wholesale keeps the machine busy and pays the rent, while direct-to-consumer carries the profit. Model the split honestly with our ecommerce margin calculator before you assume DTC will subsidise cheap wholesale.

Packaging and shelf life shape the DTC channel in particular. Roasted coffee degasses CO2 and stales on contact with oxygen, so you'll want valved, foil-lined bags (a one-way degassing valve is effectively standard) and honest roast-date labelling rather than a distant "best before". Selling fresh, dated, subscription-friendly coffee is precisely the promise supermarkets can't make — lean into it.

The digital side: where a modern roastery wins or loses

For a specialty roaster, the website is not a brochure — it is the highest-margin sales channel, and a beans subscription is the single best asset you can build. Recurring orders smooth out cash flow, make green-bean forecasting possible, and turn a one-off buyer into a predictable monthly relationship.

The practical stack:

• A DTC webshop with subscriptions. A hosted platform like Shopify starts around EUR 33/month on its Basic plan, with subscription functionality added via an app (KNR Agency). That's enough to sell dated bags, offer "grind for" options, and run a recurring plan with customer-managed frequency and pausing.
• Automation that removes admin. Connect the shop to your roast schedule so subscription renewals batch into a weekly roast-and-ship run; trigger dispatch emails, restock alerts on green lots, and post-purchase brew-guide sequences automatically. This is the difference between a subscription that scales and one that drowns you in manual packing lists.
• Reviews and reputation. Specialty buyers research before they commit. Actively collect reviews on each coffee, showcase tasting notes and origin stories, and keep your Google Business Profile current if you have a physical door. Social proof on individual lots converts far better than a generic homepage.
• Wholesale ordering online too. Give café accounts a simple login to reorder without emailing you — it lifts wholesale reorder rates and frees your time for roasting.

If you're serious about the DTC route, think about the brand as much as the beans; our guide to building a product brand and our piece on finding products to sell online both translate directly to packaged coffee.

Bringing it together

A European coffee roastery is a genuine opportunity: a large, growing specialty market, a manageable capital hurdle, and a business model where owning the customer online multiplies your margin. The hard parts are real — food-business registration and HACCP, ventilation and emissions, volatile green prices, and the discipline of fresh, dated packaging — but they're all solvable with planning. Because roasting is a regulated food activity, treat this article as general guidance: confirm registration, hygiene and emissions requirements with your national food-safety regulator and local authority before you trade, and get your HACCP plan reviewed by someone who knows your jurisdiction.

Where we can help is the part that decides whether your roastery is merely busy or actually profitable: the digital engine. If you want a fast, conversion-focused webshop with a real beans subscription, wholesale reordering and the automation that keeps renewals and dispatch running without manual work, our web development team builds exactly that. Book a free consultation and we'll map the shortest path from your first roast to recurring revenue.

Sources: European Coffee Federation Report 2024/2025, Grand View Research — Europe Specialty Coffee Market, EUR-Lex — Regulation (EC) No 852/2004, CoffeeTec — Coffee Roaster Cost Guide, Perfect Daily Grind — record coffee prices, KNR Agency — Shopify Pricing 2025