2024 was an insane year for the coffee commodity market. For a small margin wholesale and retail coffee company, we are both price sensitive -- green coffee purchasing, shipping and storage accounts for about 20% of total company expenditures -- and our goal is to be nimble in paying high living-wage prices for great lots of coffees from producers we hold in the highest regard and have a long history working with; and find value coffees for our blends to try keep our own business sustainable and in the black.
2024 was an equally interesting year for a little company growing into a new roasting space and adding a second cafe. Including PTO and sick time, Bluebeard Coffee Roasters employees were paid for 21,973 hours in 2024 and averaged $32.17 per hour with tips included, $25.52 per hour without tips. Not too shabby, although Tacoma is no longer an inexpensive place to live either. Our owner and founder was not an outlier in this, bringing in $34 an hour at a 72k salary. 39% of total earnings went to payroll before taxes in 2024, which effectively jumps to 50% of total earnings with employer's share of payroll taxes -- Social Security, Medicare, Worker's Comp, unemployment (fed and state) and family & medical leave insurance.
Big Picture Green Coffee Takeaways
Bluebeard paid an average of $3.95 on 54,889 pounds of coffee purchased in 2024, which is actually down from the previous year for the first time since we began doing these. Although sheepish about it, this is a point of pride for a small lean company, and we think we found outstanding coffees (see Organic Ki-Saya Chiapas) that were booked deeply, customers loved, and had the versatility of being fantastic as a stand alone coffee or as a component of a blend.
For perspective, coffee's commodity price (C Market) began 2024 at $1.94 per pound and grew steadily and precipitously to previously unknown heights and unknown outcomes ending the year at a $3.71.
The Commodity C Market price of coffee is considered to be an average pound of Arabica coffee in Brazil, the largest producer of coffee in the world, now followed closely by Vietnam. Bluebeard has always paid precipitously higher prices for access to great coffees in our goal of gaining steady access to the best beans, farmed and processed by folks who deserve to live and prosper for their ongoing efforts. This year should bring us a new understanding of the dynamics herein.
Bluebeard is proud of these coffees, growers, source partners and our little role in their continued sustainability and success.
Our listed price is the Ex-Warehouse (EXW) price, paid for from the point of entry warehouse in the US. Shipping and storage in and from mostly NY and the Bay Area are not included here. As EXW covers nearly the entirety of our contracts and purchases, we utilize it.
The manner in which our partners at source have remunerated farmers is a fascinating and complex subject, which we won't begin to address here, save to pass along that it varies widely and necessarily by country, community, processor/coop/community/farmer, and stage at which coffee is purchased, whether it be cherry, parchment, bagged and ready for export, etc.
Should you seek it, we would invite you to dive into the web sites of our import partners, who embody many best-in-industry practices in coffee, paying at the top of the market to farmers and communities in the interests of sustainability, living wages, sound environmental practices and value paid throughout the coffee chain.
Thank you,
Kevin McGlocklin
Bluebeard Coffee Roasters