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Adding Your First Coffee

Set up your coffee inventory with proper organization from the start

Brian Zambrano avatar
Written by Brian Zambrano
Updated over 2 weeks ago

Goal: Create well-structured Parent Coffees and Bean Lots that will scale with your business.

Prerequisites: You must have a RoastLog account activated.

Creating a Thoughtful Structure

Before adding your first coffee, take a moment to consider how you want to organize your inventory. The structure you create now will serve you as your business grows, so it's worth getting right from the beginning.

Step 1: Decide on Your Parent Coffee Organization

The Parent Coffee is simply a method for organizing coffees. We recommend one of these approaches:

  • By Origin - Group coffees from the same country (e.g., "Ethiopia," "Colombia")

  • By Region - Group coffees from specific regions (e.g., "Yirgacheffe," "Huila")

  • By origin/region comp - Combine the two with your own naming convention (e.g., "ETH-HUI", "ETH-YIRG")

The parent coffee naming and organization isn't important day-to-day, but will be important as you being to run historical reports to determine past roasting volumes.

Important: All Bean Lots associated with a Parent Coffee must share the same origin.

Step 2: Add Your First Coffee

  1. From the Inventory page, click New bean in the toolbar

  2. Create a new Parent Coffee or select an existing one

  3. Enter the origin information

Create a thoughtful Parent Coffee structure from the beginning.

Step 3: Enter Lot Details

Next, provide information about the specific lot:

  1. Bean Reference - A name for this specific lot (can be auto-generated)

  2. ICO Mark - The identifying mark from the bags

  3. Importer Reference - Lot number from your importer

  4. Location - Where the coffee currently resides

  5. Quantity - Number of bags and weight per bag

Providing complete lot details improves traceability.

Step 4: Add Contract Information

While optional, we recommend completing the contract section:

  1. Price - Cost per unit (crucial for accurate reporting)

  2. Purchase Order - Your internal reference

  3. Importer - Who you purchased from

  4. Contract Number - Reference from the importer

  5. Delivery Terms - Standard shipping terms (FOB, EXW, etc.)

  6. Contract Terms - Payment and delivery terms

Step 5: Include Cultivation & Processing Details

Finally, add information about how the coffee was grown and processed:

  1. Processing Method - Washed, Natural, Honey, etc.

  2. Variety - Bourbon, Typica, SL28, etc.

  3. Certification - Organic, Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, etc.

  4. Screen Size - Sorting size if available

  5. Grade - Quality classification

This information helps with:

  • Quality control tracking

  • Marketing and storytelling

  • Customer education

Best Practices for Adding Coffee

  • Be consistent with your naming conventions

  • Include lot numbers whenever possible

  • Track costs accurately for better financial reporting

  • Add details incrementally if you don't have everything at once

  • Use contracted coffees for tracking pre-shipment purchases

In the next section, we'll explore how to use the coffee you've added through the Roastables system.

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