918 Coffee Co is our feature private label coffee roaster this time around.
Located in Dorset, England 918 Coffee has a big focus on contract roasting and private label coffee production.
In addition to providing a full suite of services for roasting, grinding and packaging the coffee, 918 stands out as a supplier who wil also manage shipping & fulfillment.
In this post we'll tell you everything you need to know if you're looking for a partner in the UK to not only private label your coffee but potentially handle the full fulfillment process as well.
The Coffee Roast
918 Coffee provides hundreds of different high grade Arabica and Robusta coffee roasts. They are Fair Trade and Rainforest Alliance certified and maintain values articulated by their "E.R.A.S.E." acronym which stands for Ethical, Responsible, Award Winning, Sustainable, and Environmental.
Shortly after it was first launched their innovative Coffe-Eco system was shortlisted by the World Beverage Innovation Awards for "Best Environmental Sustainability Initiative". The Coffe-Eco system looks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through a carbon neutral roasting process. It's quite an amazing system which essentially allows them to run their coffee roasting machines on reprocessed used coffee grounds.
They explain that each batch of coffee is roasted by hand and use multiple drum roasters (rather than fluid bed roasting) to ensure a consistent and full flavor profile.
Private Labelling
918 Coffee has a wide variety of options they provide those who are looking to private label coffee. Not only do they provide coffee, but they also offer blends, single orgin coffee, filtered ground coffee (since they both roast AND grind the coffee), espresso, and Nespresso coffee pods (or "capsules"). They even product Nitro Coffee products.
As previously mentioned, in addition to roasting, grinding, and packaging the coffee, 918 Coffee Co offers fulfillment service. The full process of sourcing, roasting, and then shipping out coffee is commonly referred to as drop shipping.
Drop Shipping
As their website explains:
You know what your story is, what your brand looks like, who your audience is... now you need a relationship with a coffee roaster who will roast and pack your coffee for you, ship it to you so that you can then send out your online orders to your customers...... or you could dropship!
In addition to producing the coffee 918 Coffee Co will manage the inventory and the shipping to customers. An arrangement with them as a supplier would mean your focus is exclusively on marketing, order taking, and customer service.
Interestingly, they also specifically recommend using Shopify, Wix, or similar platforms as your website builder / CMS to make integration more seamless, which suggests this type of partnership is something they have a good deal of experience with.
Packaging & Labels
True to form, 918 Coffee also offers a wide set of options to package / label the coffee once you enter into a private label partnership with them.
They seem to offer everything from hand packed individual bags to fully automated Form Fill & Seal equipment to package the coffee at scale.
You can arrange to have your own labels printed yourself or if you prefer they offer custom label printing so you can have them apply your brand and logo to the labels on the coffee bags.
They make the submission of the custom label pretty easy, with a simple form you can use to upload the labels on their website.
Minimums and Requirements
918 offers different pricing depending on the order quantity. They have 3 tiers which breakdown as follows:
- Trade
- High Volume
- Wholesale
The "Trade" discount prices can all be found here and require a MOQ (minimum order quantity) of £100. The High Volume MOQ is £500 and comes with a 15% discount. Finally their wholesale MOQ is £1000 and comes with a 25% discount.
Next Steps
Their private label page offers a nice breakdown of the full process (most of which you can complete on their website).
The final step would be to email them to outline your order needs and they also call out their available to call at 01747 228260 or can be messaged through WhatsApp to get started.
