The short version: Coffee you roast at home sells in seven places: a farmers market booth, your own storefront link, standing orders, local shop shelves, businesses that brew it by the pound, Etsy and Amazon, and fundraiser or gift orders. On a 12-ounce bag priced at $18, you keep $17.18 through your own link before its monthly plan, $15.84 on Etsy, $14.31 on Amazon, and $9.00 when a shop buys the bag to resell. For most part-time roasters, the setup that works is a booth where people taste it and a link where they reorder when the bag runs out. Your state decides which of the seven you may use: Connecticut and Colorado rule out shops and restaurants, Ohio allows both, Etsy and Amazon only work where your state allows shipping, Amazon may also ask for category approval and compliance documents before you list food, and New York's home processing exemption does not cover roasting coffee.
Checked September 23, 2026: Homegrown is $10 a month billed annually or $12.50 billed monthly, $0 platform fee and 0% commission, card processing 2.9% + $0.30 paid by the vendor, with 7 days before the first bill on day 8 (findhomegrown.com/signup). Etsy charges $0.20 a listing, a 6.5% transaction fee and 3% + $0.25 processing (etsy.com/sell). Amazon charges 15% on Grocery and Gourmet products priced above $15.00 plus $0.99 per product sold on the Individual plan (sell.amazon.com/pricing). Honest bounds: your customer creates a Homegrown account to place a first order, there is no countdown or timed release feature, Homegrown handles pickup and local delivery rather than national shipping, it does not bill customers automatically on a schedule, and your storefront is listed on the Homegrown marketplace but most orders will come from the link you hand out yourself.
Saturday's roast is cooling on the counter, the valve bags are sealed, and the kitchen smells like a cafe. Roasting was the part you practiced for months. Deciding which table, shelf or web page those bags belong on is the part nobody practiced, and every option takes a different cut that almost nobody prints in full.
This guide goes through the seven places a home coffee roaster actually sells, what each one leaves you on a single $18 bag, and which ones your state lets you use at all.
Seven places take home-roasted coffee, and a part-time roaster can run two or three of them without hiring anyone. Each asks for something different: a Saturday, a pitch, good photos, or nothing more than a link you text to a regular.
Coffee has two things going for it that most cottage food products do not. It keeps for weeks in a valve bag, so it can sit on a shop shelf, and people drink it every day, so the same customer comes back. The tradeoff is that grocery stores sell a bag for half your price, so every channel on this list has to give people a reason to pay for freshness they can taste.
If you have not sorted out the roaster, the green beans or the legal side yet, start with our guide on how to sell coffee and roasted beans from home, which covers the equipment, the sourcing and the labels. This page starts where that one ends: the bags are sealed, and now they need somewhere to go.
Your first channel should fit the assets you have today, whatever the biggest audience happens to be. A roaster with 300 people in a neighborhood group has a different first move than a roaster with a new drum machine and no customers at all.
Scroll sideways to see every column.
| Your situation today | First channel | Second channel | The reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| No customers and no booth | A farmers market | Your own storefront link | Strangers need a smell and a sip before they pay $18 for a bag they have never tried |
| A market booth you already pay for | Your own storefront link | Standing orders | The booth found the customers; the link lets them reorder when the bag runs out on a Tuesday |
| A following on social media | Your own storefront link | Gift and fundraiser orders | You already have attention; you need a page that takes payment and a pickup time |
| A job in an office or a church community | Businesses that brew it | Standing orders | One break room buying by the pound every week is steadier than a Saturday booth |
| Good photos and a plan to ship | Etsy | Your own storefront link | Etsy brings national search; the link keeps local repeat orders off Etsy's $2.16 in fees on every $18 bag |
The fees behind this reasoning were read on each company's own pricing page on September 23, 2026. Whether a shop, a restaurant or a shipping box is allowed at all depends on your state, which is covered further down this page.
The mistake is opening four channels in the same month. Each one needs its own photos, its own price sheet and its own roast schedule, and a roaster who tries to feed a booth, two shops and an Etsy shop from one countertop machine ends up with stale bags in some of them.
A farmers market is the best place to win a first coffee customer, because it is the only place a stranger can smell the beans. Most booths cost $20 to $75 a week, with busy urban markets charging $100 or more, as laid out in our breakdown of the real cost of selling at farmers markets.
Run the math on a $40 booth. Our pricing guide's cost build puts the beans, the valve pouch and the label for a 12-ounce bag at $8.67. An $18 bag, minus that $8.67 and a $0.62 card fee on Square's free plan, leaves $8.71. Four bags sold covers $34.84 of a $40 table, so with $8.50-a-pound green beans the fifth bag pays it off. At the guide's $9.40 median green price, materials run $9.47 and a bag leaves $7.91, so it takes the sixth bag. Everything after goes toward your roasting time.
What a booth gives a roaster that no web page can:
Handing out brewed samples, or selling cups, is a different thing from selling sealed bags. Two of the states this guide checked allow roasted coffee but say brewed coffee is not a cottage food: Connecticut's Department of Consumer Protection says you "may not sell ready-made coffee," and Colorado lists beverages as ineligible. Ask your market manager and your county health department what they require before you bring a pot, and check your state's current rules first.
A booth only exists one morning a week. The other six days it is folded in your garage, and a customer who finishes your Ethiopian medium on Wednesday will buy the next bag at the grocery store unless you have given them another way to reach you.
Your coffee needs a page where a regular can reorder the day the bag runs out, and for a part-time roaster that page costs about $10 a month. Homegrown is $10 per month billed annually, or $12.50 billed monthly, with no percentage fees beyond standard payment processing of 2.9% + $0.30, which is $0.82 on an $18 bag. You get 7 days to set it up before the first charge lands on day 8.
For coffee in particular, four things earn the $10 or $12.50 a month:
Here is how that compares to where roasters usually land first:
What Homegrown will not do for a roaster matters as much as the price. A first-time customer has to create a Homegrown account before ordering, which adds a step at checkout. A small-lot roast cannot be released on a countdown, because there is no timed release feature. Homegrown is built for pickup and local delivery, not national shipping, so a roaster whose buyers live across the country is better served by Etsy or Shopify. It does not bill customers automatically on a schedule. Shoppers browsing the Homegrown marketplace can find your storefront, but expect the bulk of your orders to come through the link you put on bags, cards and texts.
In a live pull of the Homegrown catalog on September 29, 2026, the marketplace held 2,779 products from 312 vendors. Counted by category and description, not by name alone, 19 listings from 5 vendors were coffee you actually brew, and 14 of those were single-origin 8-ounce bags at $15.00 each from one roaster, Flying Carabao Coffee, named by origin, such as "Philippines: Sagada Gold" and "Vietnam: White Lotus." The other 5: a mushroom coffee blend from Swiss Mountain Coffee Roasters at $16.00 for an 8-ounce packet and its Keurig style pods at $22.00 for a 24 pack, Bates Beanery Coffee at Harvest House Foods at $15.00 for 12 ounces, a 9-ounce mushroom coffee blend from a mushroom grower at $22.00, and a $13.00 listing at Country Apple Orchard Farm Stand named Grounded Roast Coffee, counted on its name alone because its description is blank and it gives no size. Another 19 listings had coffee or espresso in the name without being coffee to brew: coffee cakes, other coffee and espresso treats, coffee syrups, soaps and scents. These are listing prices, not sales figures.
What "coffee" means on one local marketplace
Source: live pull of the Homegrown catalog, September 29, 2026, 2,779 products from 312 vendors. Coffee to brew counts listings in the Beverages or Pantry Goods category whose name or description shows a bag, packet or pod of coffee to brew at home, plus one listing named Grounded Roast Coffee that has a blank description and is counted on its name. The other bars count the 19 product names containing coffee or espresso that are not coffee to brew, sorted by what the product is. Bar widths are each count divided by the largest.
Here is what that chart shows. One roaster, Flying Carabao Coffee, lists 14 of the 19 coffees to brew, and apart from that roaster, most of what carries the word coffee on this marketplace is coffee cake, treats, syrups and scents, so a local roaster adds something the bakers around it do not sell. If your regulars already ask when the next roast is ready, set up a storefront, list each roast with its size and roast date, and put the link on a card at the booth so Saturday's buyer can order again on Thursday.
Coffee is the easiest standing order in food because your customers finish it on a schedule. The National Coffee Association's 2026 Fall National Coffee Data Trends report, released September 15, 2026, found that 66% of American adults drank coffee in the past day and that 83% of those past-day drinkers had coffee at home. Home drinkers buy bags, and a household that drinks a pot a day empties a 12-ounce bag in a predictable number of days.
A workable standing-order setup for a part-time roaster:
On your own link, those 24 bags cost $19.73 in card processing plus the $10 plan on annual billing ($12.50 month to month), so $402.27 of the $432 reaches you before beans and bags ($399.77 on monthly billing). The honest limit is on the Homegrown side: a standing order there is a customer who reorders from your link each time, with a reminder text from you, because it does not charge cards automatically. Customers drift when the reminder stops, so send it on the same day every cycle. The mechanics of moving a one-time buyer onto a repeat rhythm are covered in our guide to turning one-time customers into subscribers.
Yes, if your state allows it and you walk in with the right price. A gift shop, farm store, co-op or specialty grocer buys your bags at about half the shelf price and resells them, so an $18 bag becomes $9.00 to you. Our pricing guide's materials figure of $8.67, built on green beans at $8.50 a pound, means that $9.00 clears the beans, pouch and label by $0.33 and pays nothing for your roasting hours. At the $9.40 median green price the same guide checks against, materials run $9.47, and a half-price wholesale bag loses $0.47 before your time is counted.
That math decides how to use a shelf. Treat it as advertising for your own link, not as income, until your retail price or your roaster size changes.
Swipe left to see who holds the bags and when you get paid.
| How the shop takes it | What you get per $18 bag | Who holds the bags | When you get paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| You sell it yourself | $18.00 minus your card fee ($0.62 to $0.89) | You | At the sale |
| Wholesale at half the shelf price | $9.00 | The shop, once it buys the case | On delivery, or on the shop's payment terms |
| Consignment, shop keeps 30 to 40 percent | $10.80 to $12.60 | You, sitting on their shelf | Only after each bag sells |
Half of retail and a 30 to 40 percent consignment cut are the usual starting offers, not fixed rates; every shop sets its own. The card fee range runs from Square's in-person rate ($0.62) to Square's online rate ($0.89) on an $18 bag, with Homegrown's online rate ($0.82) between them, all checked September 23, 2026.
Consignment pays more per bag and works worse for coffee than for almost anything else, because the roast date keeps moving while the bag sits. A bag more than four weeks past its roast date is a bag you should take back, and on consignment it is still yours to take back and still unpaid.
Harvest House Foods, a Homegrown vendor that sells food from several Montana farms and ranches, lists Bates Beanery Coffee at $15.00 for a 12-ounce bag of beans roasted in Missoula, offered in several named roasts from dark to light. It sits beside local ground beef, farm eggs, fresh milk and cream, flower jars and vegetable shares. Those listings come from the same September 29, 2026 catalog pull. That is the shelf idea at work on a storefront: a seller that already carries other people's local food adds one local roaster, and the roaster's bags show up next to the eggs and milk those customers already buy.
Before your first walk-in, read what owners look for on a price sheet in our guide on how to get your food into a local coffee shop.
Offices, bakeries, bed and breakfasts, churches and small restaurants buy coffee by the pound to pour for their own people, and one office taking 2 pounds a week uses about 8.7 pounds a month, the coffee in about 11 and a half twelve-ounce bags, dropped off once a week on the same day. They care about three things you can answer in one email: the price per pound, the day it arrives, and whether it tastes better than the can they buy now.
The accounts worth asking, easiest first:
Price these by the pound off your real cost, not off a discount instinct, and check your state first. Several states limit who can be on the other end of the sale: Connecticut says it must go person-to-person "to the actual consumer," Colorado says the product "cannot be resold," and Florida bars wholesale, so in those states a bakery shelf, a bed and breakfast basket or an office pot poured for other people may fall outside what the rules allow. Selling to a restaurant that pours it for paying customers is the kind of sale many states restrict, which the state table below spells out. The paperwork restaurants ask for is covered in our guide to selling food to local restaurants and cafes, and the office side in selling food at work.
Etsy is worth it when you ship to strangers across the country and not worth it when your customers live 15 minutes away. On an $18 bag, Etsy takes $0.20 for the listing, 6.5% as a transaction fee ($1.17) and 3% + $0.25 for payment processing ($0.79), which is $2.16, or 12% of the sale. Those rates were read off etsy.com/sell on September 23, 2026, along with a 15% Offsite Ads fee on sales that come from ads Etsy runs for you and a possible one-time shop set-up fee for new shops.
Where Etsy earns its cut:
Where it does not:
The sensible pattern is both: Etsy for strangers who find you by searching, your own link for the people who already know your roast. The whole Etsy fee picture, including shipping and ads, is in our breakdown of Etsy fees for food sellers.
Amazon is the most expensive place on this list for an $18 bag, and its fee jumps at a price line that sits right where most craft coffee is priced. Amazon's Grocery and Gourmet referral fee is 8% for products with a total sales price of $15.00 or less and 15% above $15.00, checked on sell.amazon.com/pricing on September 23, 2026. An $18 bag pays $2.70 in referral fee, while a $15 bag pays $1.20.
On top of that you pick a plan: Individual at $0.99 per product sold, or Professional at $39.99 a month. Amazon collects the payment itself, so there is no separate card fee to add. That puts an $18 bag at $3.69 on the Individual plan, and the Professional plan only starts to pay off above about 40 bags a month.
Four things make it a hard fit for a home roaster:
Sell on Amazon when you roast one coffee in volume at a steady price. Skip it while you are roasting in 12-ounce batches in your kitchen. Check your state first, too: in 5 of the seven states in the state table below, a home roaster cannot ship Amazon orders the usual way, because Colorado and Ohio keep cottage food sales inside the state, Connecticut bars mail and parcel delivery, Texas requires you, an employee or a household member to deliver online orders in person, and New York does not allow home roasting at all.
Fees on an $18 bag run from $0.62 to $3.69 depending on where it sells, and across 50 bags a month that spread is the difference between $30.90 and $184.50. Each row shows the monthly plan, the trial, the commission and the card fee, then the fee on one bag and the total for a 50-bag month.
Drag the fee table sideways to reach the monthly totals.
| Place | Subscription | Before the first bill | Platform fee | Card processing | Customer pays on an $18 bag | Fee on one $18 bag | 50 bags ($900) in a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your own link (Homegrown) | $10/mo billed annually, $12.50 billed monthly | 7 days, no charge until day 8 | $0, 0% commission | 2.9% + $0.30, vendor pays | $18.00, no surcharge | $0.82 | $51.10 including the subscription |
| Square free plan, at the booth | $0/mo | Nothing to pay up front, reader bought separately | $0 | 2.6% + 15 cents in person | $18.00 | $0.62 | $30.90 |
| Square free plan, online | $0/mo | Nothing to pay up front | $0 | 3.3% + 30 cents online | $18.00 plus any shipping you charge | $0.89 | $44.70 |
| Shopify Basic | $29/mo billed yearly, $39 billed monthly | 3 days at no cost, then $1/month for 3 months | $0 on Shopify Payments, 2% on an outside provider | 2.9% + 30 cents online standard | $18.00 plus any shipping you charge | $0.82 | $70.10 on yearly billing |
| Etsy | None required | Nothing up front; a one-time shop set-up fee may apply | 6.5% transaction fee plus $0.20 per listing | 3% + $0.25 | $18.00 plus any shipping you charge | $2.16 | $108.00 |
| Amazon, Individual plan | None on Individual, $39.99/mo on Professional | Nothing up front | 15% referral above $15.00, 8% at $15.00 or less, plus $0.99 per product sold | Built in, Amazon takes the payment | $18.00 plus any shipping you charge | $3.69 | $184.50 ($174.99 on Professional) |
| Local shop, wholesale | None | None | The shop buys at half your shelf price | None, the shop pays you directly | $18.00 at the shop register | $9.00 below retail | $450 below retail on 50 bags |
Every rate was read off each company's own pricing page on September 23, 2026: findhomegrown.com/signup, squareup.com/us/en/pricing, shopify.com/pricing, etsy.com/sell and sell.amazon.com/pricing. The Square rows use its free plan, which is the one a weekend roaster would pick; Square Plus is $49 and Premium $149 a month per location. Annual billing is compared to annual billing. Card processing is figured on the $18 price; Etsy also charges its 6.5% on any shipping the buyer pays. Amazon figures its percentage on the total sales price rather than the shelf price, so confirm in Seller Central whether shipping you charge can push a $15 bag into the 15% tier. The wholesale row is a different price rather than a fee, and it is here because a roaster comparing places is really comparing what lands in the bank.
Read the last two columns together. Per bag, Square's reader at the booth is the cheapest way to take a card among the options that charge $0 a month; Shopify Basic's in-person rate is 5 cents lower on an $18 bag but comes with its $29 monthly plan. Per month, your own link at $51.10 sits between Square online at $44.70 and Shopify Basic at $70.10, while Etsy at $108.00 is more than double the cheapest online option and Amazon is more than four times as much. For the exact cost of each bag size and the markup behind the $18, see our guide to how much to sell coffee for.
Yes, and they are the one place a home roaster can sell 30 to 100 bags in a single week without a booth. A fundraiser uses a school, team or church's own families as your sales force, and a gift order is one business buying the same bag for every client.
Where the batch orders come from:
Two cautions. A batch order has to be roasted in a batch, so count how many roasting sessions 80 bags take on your machine before you agree to a date. And price the group's share out of your margin honestly: on a bag that clears $8.71 at the booth with $8.50-a-pound green beans, giving a school $5 leaves you $3.71. The setup for these sales is in our guide to selling food at school fundraisers and church events, and the price tiers for business orders are in corporate gifting bulk pricing.
Your state decides which of these seven places you can use, and in the 7 states checked for this guide, only 2 (Ohio, and California with a Class B permit) let a roaster sell straight to restaurants, while Texas allows it only by wholesaling to a cottage food vendor registered with the state, who can then sell your bags in a shop or restaurant. Some states list roasted coffee by name, some allow it because it is not excluded, and New York does not allow home roasting under its home processing exemption at all.
Swipe the state table left to read the shop and restaurant rules.
| State | Roasted coffee allowed? | Online orders and shipping | Shops and restaurants |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | Yes, "Coffee (roasted or freeze-dried)" is on the approved list | Direct sales may be fulfilled in person, by mail or by a delivery service | Only with a Class B permit, which adds sales through restaurants and food markets |
| Colorado | Yes, "Roasted coffee beans" are listed; ground coffee is not mentioned | Only inside Colorado, no interstate sales | No, cottage foods cannot be sold to restaurants or grocery stores |
| Connecticut | Yes, whole bean or ground; no ready-made coffee | Orders online are fine, but you deliver in person inside Connecticut; no mail, UPS or FedEx | No wholesale or consignment, and not in grocery stores or restaurants |
| New York | No, "Roasting/grinding coffee beans" is on the not-allowed list | Not applicable | Not applicable |
| Ohio | Yes, whole beans or ground | Only inside Ohio | Yes: grocery stores, registered farm markets, farmers markets, and restaurants |
| Texas | Yes, coffee is not on the excluded list | Online orders must be delivered by you, an employee or a household member | Wholesale only to a registered cottage food vendor, who can then sell your bags in a shop or restaurant |
| Florida | Not named on the approved list, so ask the state first | Website, mail order and in person are allowed | No wholesale |
Checked September 23, 2026 on each state's own page: the California Department of Public Health cottage food page and its Approved Cottage Foods list (last reviewed April 2026), the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment cottage foods page, the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection cottage food FAQs dated March 2026, the New York Department of Agriculture and Markets home processing page, the Ohio Department of Agriculture cottage food page, the Texas Department of State Health Services cottage food page and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services cottage foods page.
Ohio is the clearest case for a roaster. Ohio's cottage food rule lists "roasted coffee, whole beans or ground" among the approved products, and the state's cottage food page says those products may be sold through grocery stores and farmers markets and used in preparing food in a restaurant, which opens every channel in this guide except shipping out of state. Connecticut is the opposite: the same bag can only go from you to the drinker, in person, inside the state.
These rules change most years, and the channel rule is the one roasters get caught on. A farmers market may ask for your permit and a liability policy before it assigns a table, and a shop in a state like Colorado or Connecticut is not allowed to resell your bags even if the owner wants to. Verify your state's current rules with the agency that runs cottage food there before you print a wholesale price sheet, and make sure every bag carries the label your state requires, as covered in our cottage food labeling checklist.
Not in 3 of the 7 states checked for this guide, because a cup of brewed coffee is a beverage and Connecticut, Colorado and New York name beverages as off limits under their home food rules. Texas's list of excluded foods does not name beverages, and the California, Ohio and Florida pages do not mention a brewed cup, so ask your state before you sell one. Connecticut's consumer protection department answers the question directly: you may roast and sell whole bean or ground coffee, but "beverages may not be sold, so you may not sell ready-made coffee." Colorado lists beverages among its ineligible foods, and New York's not-allowed list includes beverages next to coffee roasting.
What that means in practice:
If a coffee cart is where you want to end up, treat it as a second business with its own permit, and let the bags pay for it first.
Roasters who have sold for a few seasons put their effort into the second bag, because the first one costs the most to sell. Their habits are plain and they add up.
Track bags roasted against bags sold for six weeks before you judge any channel. If you roast 20 bags a week and bring 6 home every Saturday, cut the roast to 15 and push the difference into orders placed ahead. A bag that goes home is a bag that is a week older next Saturday, and at $8.67 in materials each, six a week is over $50 of coffee aging on your counter.
Open one channel at a time and run it for a full week before judging it. Every place in this guide can be started with two roasts, 20 bags and one afternoon of setup.
The same QR card that turns a booth buyer into a reorder can also collect names for a customer list, as our guide to QR codes for farmers market customer lists shows.
Home-roasted coffee sells at farmers markets, through your own online storefront link, as standing orders to your regulars, on local shop shelves at about half your retail price, to offices and bakeries that brew it by the pound, on Etsy and Amazon, and through fundraiser and gift orders. For most part-time roasters, the setup that works is a booth and a link run together. On an $18 bag, fees run $0.82 through your own link, $2.16 on Etsy and $3.69 on Amazon's Individual plan.
In 5 of the seven states this guide checked, you can sell sealed bags of roasted coffee at a farmers market under cottage food rules, with a label and whatever permit your state requires. New York's home processing exemption does not cover roasting, and Florida's approved list does not name coffee. Brewed coffee by the cup is usually a different matter, because states such as Connecticut and Colorado say beverages are not cottage foods. Before you book a table, check your state's current rules and ask the market manager what paperwork they want.
For local customers who reorder, your own storefront link handles pickup and local delivery at $10 a month paid yearly or $12.50 paid monthly, plus $0.82 in card processing on an $18 bag, with no commission. Square's free online store also takes pickup orders at $0 a month, with $0.89 a bag in card processing, so across a 50-bag month it costs less. For strangers across the country, Etsy's search traffic is worth its $2.16 a bag. Shopify Basic at $29 a month billed yearly suits a roaster building a shipping brand.
Most coffee shops that roast their own will not, and some states, including Colorado and Connecticut, do not allow any shop or restaurant to resell cottage foods. Where your state allows it, the better targets are shops that sell food without roasting, such as farm stores, gift shops and bakeries, and in states like Ohio restaurants are allowed. Expect to be paid about half your shelf price, which is $9.00 on an $18 bag.
It depends on your state, not on the coffee. Colorado and Ohio limit cottage food sales to inside the state, Connecticut does not allow mail or parcel delivery at all, and Florida allows mail order. Coffee itself ships well in a valve bag, but check your state's current cottage food rules before you list a shipping option.
If you searched for where to sell a coffee machine rather than coffee, local listing sites and resale marketplaces are the usual places for home espresso machines and grinders, and dealers that specialize in roasting equipment handle larger roasters. That is a different question from this guide, which is about selling the coffee you roast. If you are upgrading from a countertop roaster, selling the old one locally lets a buyer test it before paying.
Six more guides for the steps around this one, from buying a roaster to pricing the bag.
A bag of coffee keeps for weeks and gets finished on a schedule, so the customer you win in one place comes back every two weeks, provided they know where to find you. If your regulars are already asking what you are roasting next, give them a place to order it: open a storefront, list your roasts with their sizes and roast dates, and put the link on every bag.
