As a retailer, you may want to expand your selection to include gourmet wholesale coffee suppliers. Or, you may want access to craft coffees like our barrel aged selections. Or, you’ve had a cup of Cooper’s Cask Coffee at home and thought “I’d love to sell this at our store!”
You can—in more than one way!
Cooper’s Cask Coffee offers both wholesale coffee beans and private label coffee opportunities to retailers. Grocery stores, specialty gourmet stores, coffee shops, and even liquor stores can share the bold, delicious, single origin tastes of Cooper’s with their customers—and make the cash register sing.
Contact us for more information, or sign up right now. Read on to find out how retailing can work for you, how you can make your own bespoke gourmet coffee, and why you should partner up for a better cup.
Why You Should Sell the Toast of the Roast
Adding Cooper’s Cask Coffee as a gourmet selection at your retail location(s) offers several benefits.
New Customers
As word gets out through your marketing and our social media and web presence, new customers find your location to get their gourmet beans. We even include your location on a page for consumers to find you more easily—our own version of “coffee near me.”
Bulk Prices
Not only do you get to sell gourmet coffee that excites coffee enthusiasts (check out our 7,000+ 4- and 5-star reviews on Amazon), you get wholesale coffee suppliers’ best prices for making a profit.
Quality First
You’re purchasing directly from Cooper’s Cask Coffee, where we don’t roast until customers make the order. This makes our product super fresh, plus we constantly test our roasts for best-quality brewed flavor. We’re not one of the big guys; but, we are one of the best guys.
Product Variety
You know what your clients want. We have selections that will delight their taste buds and your bottom line. You can choose from single-origin coffees and specialty barrel aged coffees—with access to delicious new products on the horizon.
Certified Fresh
Cooper’s Cask Coffee delivers certification to assure our bean’s quality, origin, and freshness of roast.
Customer Support
Since we’re a small batch roaster, we don’t use call centers or corporate mazes of contact. Instead, a real person answers your call, replies to your email, and gives you personal customer service. You know—like how you treat your customers.
Wholesale Coffee Suppliers With Global Reach
We get our single origin coffee from around the world. Ethiopia, Rwanda, Guatemala, Colombia. The unique flavors imbued though that single region’s climate, soil, varietal, and processing style define the flavor profile.
Conversely, we will ship our gourmet beans quickly across the globe so that your retail locations can sell amazing coffee products wherever they operate. As we move forward, we find distributors who can help us get your coffee orders to you quickly, wherever you may be.
How to Become a Retailer for Cooper’s Cask Coffee
First, you’ll need to sign up for a wholesale account. It’s a no-obligation process, which doesn’t need a bunch of paperwork or corporate gimmicks. Visit our registration page and fill out the information.
What you’ll need to have on hand:
- Tax ID
- Billing address
- Shipping address
Once we approve your account, you’re ready to order. We’re one of the handful of progressive wholesale coffee suppliers who achieve paperless status by sending invoices through and letting you make payments via your online account too.
Are other investments/up-fronts needed?
Simply put: no. We won’t force you to buy certain products or certain amounts.
Of course, we do have a cool incentive for retailers who make an order of $500 or more. If you’re willing to take that chance on us, we’ll help you with a free retail display to go along with your order.
You have the flexibility to retail at your physical locations and through your website. Our only caveat: you won’t be able to retail Cooper’s Cask Coffee products through your Amazon account if you have one.
Choosing the Wholesale Coffee
As a small batch gourmet coffee supplier, we’re staffed by coffee purists (and yeah—coffee snobs too). We’ll be happy to help you figure out which of our choices should be popular in your area by using our sales data and expertise.
You can order any of our coffees—plus, we’re always tinkering with new single origin coffees and roasts to develop new products. Ask us about cold nitro coffee products too. (Sneak peek hint: they taste amazingly smooth, and they’re even refreshing on hot days!)
You know your clients. We know great coffee. As partners, we’ll make it work for you!
Shelf Life of Cooper’s Cask Coffee
Once your wholesale coffee suppliers’ product arrives and you’ve put it out on your shelves (or on our cool, branded retail display), you should have a maximum shelf life of 6 to 8 months. We fill our bags with nitrogen to retard oxidation of the coffee beans.
That being said, we expect you to be able to sell through inventory within 6 to 8 weeks.
Low Minimum Orders
To help retailers manage inventory, we provide low minimum orders. You won’t have to overstock your store. Instead, buy enough coffee choices in-toto to reach the low minimum, and you’re good to go.
Bespoke Coffee Branding
Have you ever thought about having your own branded coffee to sell to customers? Think about it: a great coffee with packaging that has your business name/logo on it. You become a brand-name coffee!
Having your own bespoke coffee brand makes it a unique product, and that can drive sales to customers who also love your store. Your private label coffee also gives you control over labeling, allowing you to reinforce brand recognition and recall.
Beyond the Label: Bespoke Roasting
Your private label coffee can also be roasted to the level you feel represents your brand the best. Wholesale coffee suppliers call this “coffee toll roasting,” and we’re all about it. You can even have multiple roasts, each with a different label. Or, you can choose different single origin beans at different roasts.
Because we don’t roast in massive batches like the corporate coffee companies, we can truly customize your brand, your coffee, and even your roast for the just-right, perfect cup. You can create your own taste profile that speaks to your brand and has your customers speaking about it to their friends.
Bespoke at Wholesale Too
Your private label coffee also comes at wholesale prices.
Generally, we stick with our basic bag and label it with your design. In as little as 1 to 2 weeks, you can have your brand of coffee on the way to you. We do have a low minimum order of 24 bags for private label coffee.
If you don’t have a design, don’t worry. We’ve been shipping and selling our gourmet coffee for a long time. Our in-house designers can create a custom label for you for just $250.
You can choose different coffee bag sizes too—from 12 oz to 5 lbs. Contact us for full details on minimum orders, roasting choices, and to discuss how your bespoke coffee brand can fit into your retail situation.
White Label Coffee
If you love one of our coffees but want your label on it, we can do that too.
We’re proud of the coffee products we offer. Years of testing, cupping, and testing again have achieved specific flavor profiles, from the beans on the coffee shrub to the technical excellence of our roasting equipment to the aroma as the coffee brews.
We’ve been meticulous about our final offerings so that our customers get the best of the best. Your customers can do the same—with your label on it.
Real Retail Customers of Cooper’s Cask Coffee
As one of the premiere gourmet wholesale coffee suppliers on the east coast, we provide retail opportunities to different businesses across the globe.
Liquor store, Kansas City, KS
We went inside the store and did tastings for them. To help with their marketing (and because they ordered $500+ of coffee), we gave them a free display. The shop owners loved the coffee. So did their paying customers.
Coffee House, Phoenix, AZ
A long-time customer of ours who loves our coffee, started their own coffee shop. They said, “We only drink Cooper’s. Any time we try another coffee, we are disappointed, so we knew we had to serve Cooper’s!” We were flattered, but we also helped them succeed.
Cold Brew Brand, NY
Cooper’s Cask Coffee developed a custom roast profile for a New Orleans-style cold brew company. This budding entrepreneur has a growing list of cold brew points of sale around the New York area. Every 2 to 3 weeks, she orders 35 lbs of her bespoke Cooper’s Cask Coffee and continues her dedicated work to become a cold brew magnate.
South Korea
We have a new distribution partner introducing Cooper’s barrel aged coffees to the South Korea market. We’re super excited to share our products there, and more details are to come after the final importing approvals are completed by the distributor. 감사합니다 (gamsahabnida)!
Understanding Our Wholesale Coffee Suppliers Choices
When we talk about our coffee retail products, this isn’t the same as the blended coffees you get from big, corporate coffee companies. We choose our beans for flavor profile—but we also make sure they’re single origin. Plus our barrel aged coffees—like our Bourbon Barrel Aged Coffee and our Pinot Noir Barrel Aged Coffee—take the process even further for more incredible flavor.
To fully understand the care and commitment put into every cup, let’s take a closer look at your choices from Cooper’s Cask Coffee and why they make us a first choice among wholesale coffee suppliers.
First Off: This Bean Isn’t a Bean at All
Coffee beans aren’t, in fact, beans. Coffee beans are actually coffee seeds.
When a coffee shrub flowers, those pollinated flowers become what are called “coffee cherries.” These cherries are known as a stone fruit, and they’re edible. People usually describe the coffee cherry taste as slightly sweet and fresh, with hints of other berries and hibiscus. Some varietals even have mild tobacco notes depending on the climate and soil in which they’re grown.
The weird part is: A coffee cherry doesn’t taste like “coffee.” The roasting process creates the coffee flavors we’re all familiar with.
You know the flat side of coffee beans? That’s where the two coffee seeds (“pips”) grow together. Most coffee cherries have 2 seeds; however, some coffee cherries only have a single seed. This single seed is called a “peaberry.” They’re delicious too, as proven with our Tanzania Peaberry Medium Light Roast Coffee.
How Coffee Goes From Farm to Cup
At Cooper’s Cask Coffee, all of our coffees are single origin coffees. That means:
- The coffee is sourced from a single region in one country.
- Our coffee beans frequently arrive from a single producer in that region.
- Only the best quality beans make up the lots we purchase.
Why do we put in this much effort and specificity for wholesale coffee suppliers? It’s for the flavor. Each Cooper’s Cask Coffee choice delivers tasting notes and flavor profiles that are unique and true to that region.
Picking the Fruit
The Coffea species that gives us our beloved coffee fruit is a shrub, albeit one that can reach 20 feet in height. These shrubs take 3 to 4 years to mature before they bear fruit.
Most coffee crops deliver one harvest per year as dictated by their seasons. However, some regions in Colombia have a climate that can deliver two flowerings per year, ergo two crops for harvest.
For single origin coffee, farmers harvest most crops by hand. These smaller farms utilize mountainous, higher-altitude slopes as fields, which precludes the use of heavier machinery. Extremely large farms where the land is fairly flat may harvest their cherries by machine.
Either way, the berries are either selectively hand picked for just the ripe cherries or strip-picked for all the berries on a branch, ripe or not.
Getting Down to the Seed
Coffee beans must be removed from the pulpy fruit surrounding them. Three different methods accomplish this.
Wet Method Processing
The coffee cherry heads to a pulping machine which separates the outer skin and the pulp from the seeds. This leaves a bean with a layer of cellulose on it called “parchment skin,” along with a thin layer of “mucilage.” Mucilage is a sticky, sugary substance.
The wet beans get separated by weight and size, and eventually they end up in water-filled fermentation tanks for anywhere from 12 hours to 4 days. The fermentation process dissolves the mucilage.
From here, the beans are rinsed and prepared for drying.
Dry Method Processing
Wherever water resources aren’t plentiful or the farms are smaller, the dry method is prominent for cleaning the beans.
This processing avoids the pulping and fermentation of the wet method. Instead, the farm lays the freshly picked cherries out on large surfaces to dry in the sun.
Workers rake and turn the cherries at times during the day to keep the fruit from spoiling, which would ruin the beans. At night, workers cover the berries to prevent moisture from evening condensation and morning fog/dew.
The dry method often takes weeks to fully complete. The beans absorb more of the fruity flavor of the pulp that translates through roasting done via the wholesale coffee suppliers.
Honey Process Beans
As a combination of wet and dry methods, the honey process removes some of the fruit from the beans, leaving the sticky mucilage layer.
These pulpy beans go into the fermentation tanks for 1 to 3 days. After that, they’re sun dried with the mucilage still intact. Dry milling removes the dried mucilage, producing beans ready for transport.
Honey processed beans deliver a sweeter flavor profile with an almost honey-like taste, great on their own and for our barrel aged coffees.
How dry is dry?
Whether the beans are dried with the pulp and mucilage removed, dried in the cherry without pulping, or as part of the honey process, they all achieve 11% moisture content in the beans before shipping.
Last Steps Before Export
The whole coffee beans go through final processing, called “milling,” before they arrive at Cooper’s Cask Coffee for aging and/or roasting.
It’s a Hull of a Deal
The dried beans get loaded into a special hulling machine that does 1 of 2 things:
- For wet processed coffee beans, it removes the parchment layer.
- For dry processed coffee beans, it removes the outer skin, the dried fruit, and the parchment layer.
Only the Best
The beans get sorted and graded based on:
- Size
- Weight
- Color
- Flaws/Imperfections
In the end, the best whole green coffee beans get tagged and bagged, ready to ship across continents and oceans to our roastery near Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.
Barrel Aged Coffee
One of our specialties as wholesale coffee suppliers is our barrel aged coffee choices. Flavors from retired barrels that were used to age spirits and wines infused these coffees.
The Barrel Aging Process
It starts with choosing the right barrel.
Cooper’s Cask Coffee only works with barrel suppliers who get their barrels from quality spirit and wine makers. We also require that the sourcing is earth-conscious.
Barrels we use include:
- Award-winning Sons of Liberty Spirits (South Kingstown, RI) for whiskey.
- Rum barrels from Thomas Tew Rum (Newport, RI), among others.
- Retired bourbon barrels from Kentucky
- Wine barrels from premier US vintners
These Beans are Green
They’re “green beans,” but they wouldn’t make a great casserole at your next family reunion. Green coffee beans are coffee seeds that haven’t been roasted yet.
For all of our coffees, we only source the best single origin coffee beans. We have picked the regions for the flavor notes and subtleties they produce after roasting. We choose the beans that best complement the flavors imparted by the barrels.
We don’t roast them before aging because green coffee beans excel at taking on the flavors of their storage containers. Early on, coffee shippers discovered this—finding out that if you leave green coffee beans in a burlap bag too long, the resultant brewed coffee will have strong flavor overtones of burlap. And that’s just hot, steaming “ugh” in your mug.
However, we discovered that when you put those beans into retired whiskey, bourbon, rum, and wine barrels? #MAGIC
Infusing the Flavors
We infuse our top-quality beans using award-winning whiskey barrels from Sons of Liberty Spirits (South Kingstown, RI) and rum barrels from Thomas Tew Rum (Newport, RI), among others. By resting in these sealed barrels for 4 to 8 weeks, the flavors and aromas that are still present in the barrel’s wood get absorbed by the beans.
Other coffee companies will actually soak roasted beans in the chosen spirit or wine, and then they’ll dry those. We think wholesale coffee suppliers who that impart too much flavor into the beans. The result is an overpowering cup that hides the delicious taste of coffee.
We also don’t want the wait time between roasting and delivery. We get you the freshest beans possible, period.
FAQs About Wholesale Coffee Suppliers
Why partner with a small batch roaster instead of a corporate coffee?
A small batch roaster like us offers unique choices that larger, generic corporate companies can’t as wholesale coffee suppliers. Some of the benefits of our wholesale coffee beans include:
- Single origin coffees (not blends)
- Natural flavors that aren’t artificially derived
- Gourmet-level guidance for retailers
- Personal service
- Assistance with marketing the products
- Serious in-house quality control
What’s the difference between white label and private label coffees?
A “white label” coffee allows you to put your bespoke branding on the generic containers, but allows no change at all to the coffee itself.
A “private label” coffee allows you to do the same branding, except you can also change up the bean/roast too.
How might my business use private label coffee?
The first and most obvious answer is: to increase coffee sales. Creating your own brand of coffee from wholesale coffee suppliers gives coffee drinkers a unique experience and more confidence in your product. Other instances can include:
- Liquor stores. Our barrel aged coffees are perfect to level-up your store brand.
- Resorts/Retreats. Let your guests enjoy great coffee—and purchase it from your gift shop/website.
- Museums. Your gift store just got more interesting. So did your major donor gifts!
- Bookstores. What goes better than coffee and books? Let customers take the great taste home—with your branding on it.
- Corporate gifts. Give your clients a truly unique gift that shows good taste—and tastes great.
- Large events. Make your charity golf tournament or luxury wedding event stand out with branded coffee in the attendants’ gift bags.
Try Our Coffee Risk Free.
Wondering about the taste of our coffees? Our coffee finder tool can help you sort through the choices. And, once you place a personal order for your taste test, our 100% satisfaction guarantee means that if within 30 days of your order you aren’t wholly satisfied, you can trade it out for another coffee.
Or, you can send your personal order back postage-free, and we’ll return your money.
Show Up—and Show Off—With Gourmet Flavor
We dreamed of having our own brand of coffee. We succeeded! Now we share that success with businesses by being gourmet wholesale coffee distributors.
Contact us with your wholesale coffee questions. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible to make sure you’ve got the info you need to make confident business decisions about creating your own bespoke coffee brand. With over 7,000 4- and 5-star ratings on Amazon, we’re doing something right.
And, as one of the premier gourmet coffee wholesale suppliers, we’d love to do it right for you too!
Small batch, big satisfaction.That’s Cooper’s Cask Coffee.
Sign up for our email list and get 10% off your first personal order!
