The Difference Between Commercial Coffee Beans and Specialty Coffee Beans_Do Commercial Coffee Machines Necessarily Require Commercial Coffee Beans?

Coffee Knowledge Exchange

FrontStreet Coffee shares coffee knowledge from around the world. This article answers a set of questions that come up whenever someone plans a coffee shop, from machine choice to the real cost of a single cup.

Do commercial coffee machines have to use commercial coffee beans?

What functions of commercial coffee machines are essential for opening a coffee shop?

I want to open a small coffee shop, what is the general cost per cup?

You can buy a grinder and a semi-automatic coffee machine separately for around 1,000 yuan.

Choose an imported grinder, which is not easily broken, and budget about 500 yuan for it. For the semi-automatic coffee machine, buy one that can froth milk. The cheapest brand is "TS" (Cankun), and the cheapest model can be had for just over 500 yuan. Make sure it can froth milk.

That way you can make at least 3 types of coffee: espresso, cappuccino, and specialty coffee.

On cost, it depends on how much you spend on beans. Basically, if the ingredients are good, the cost is about 1 yuan per cup.

From a professional standpoint, opening a shop definitely calls for a commercial semi-automatic machine. It can make a range of coffee types and needs to be paired with a main grinder. The cost per cup of coffee is then about 0.7 yuan.

Premium-grade coffee beans cost more than commercial-grade ones. Roasted beans have a best-tasting window of only about one month. Flavor evaporates over time, and once the origin character is gone the cup is no longer exciting. Many coffee shop owners, trying to save money, not only buy commercial-grade beans but keep selling beans past their best window. These practices are already outdated, rather like the time medium roast master Fan Fa yelled at his boss Michelle that it would be better to run a tea restaurant than to do specialty coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee insists on buying premium-grade beans and roasts in one-pound batches at a time, which lets us control the quantity appropriately without waste. Running a specialty coffee shop is not as easy as it looks. We persist because we want everyone to taste the original flavor of coffee and to understand that coffee is not only about bitterness.

Recommended Commercial Coffee Bean Brands

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted single-origin and espresso commercial coffee beans, such as Yirgacheffe coffee, Kenya AA coffee, and Panama Butterfly coffee, fully guarantee both brand and quality and suit brewing with a wide range of equipment. More importantly, they offer extremely high value for money. A half-pound (227 grams) package costs only about 80-90 yuan. Calculating on 15 grams of coffee per pour-over, one package makes 15 cups, bringing each cup of single-origin coffee to only about 6 yuan. Against the normal selling price of thirty to forty yuan per cup in coffee shops, that is extremely cost-effective.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

For a shop built around milk drinks, the espresso blend is the workhorse, and FrontStreet Coffee's Classic Blend is designed for exactly that. It builds on Brazil's creamy, nutty base with a medium-dark roasted Mandheling, which sharpens the butter, roasted chestnut, and caramel notes and adds the sandalwood, herb, and spice character that makes Mandheling distinctive. A small proportion of robusta is included to enrich the crema, so latte art and layered drinks such as a Dirty are easy to pour.

If you want a fruit-forward milk drink, FrontStreet Coffee's Strawberry Candy espresso blend brings berry, rose, raisin, and fruit-candy aromas. For a cleaner, less bitter cup, FrontStreet Coffee's Granada Geisha SOE is a single-origin Ethiopian Geisha, natural processed and medium roasted, with berry, orange, and persimmon flavors that turn to milk candy when paired with milk.

Cappuccino is the classic test of a cafe, and the espresso behind it matters. FrontStreet Coffee builds the shot with 20g of coffee at a 1:2 coffee-to-liquid ratio and a 30-second extraction, giving a concentrated yet fully extracted base. Foam the milk thickly and spoon it in to fill the center, then pour the milk through it to finish: a generous, pillowy cap over a rich, sweet coffee, which is precisely what a good cappuccino should be.