Green Coffee Sample Program: How to Test an Origin Before You Buy

caffepremium

6 days ago

5 min read

By Caffé Premium

Green coffee sample program tiers shown as four stages, from a one kilogram sample bag through a sixty kilogram trial lot to a pallet and a full container.

A green coffee sample program is not a giveaway. It is the first step of a structured sequence that lets a roastery answer a different question at each stage, without putting real money or real compliance exposure behind an origin nobody in the building has tasted yet.

Most first-time importers get the sequence wrong in one of two directions. Either they cup a sample they like and jump straight to a container, or they stay on samples for months because no single sample ever feels like enough evidence to move. Both mistakes come from treating every tier as the same decision at a different size. They are not. Each tier answers one question, and once that question is answered, the tier has done its job.

What a green coffee sample program is actually for

A sample proves cup character. That is all. It cannot prove lot consistency, it cannot prove shipping performance, and it cannot tell you whether the coffee holds up across a hundred bags. What it can tell you, cheaply and quickly, is whether this origin and this processing method belong anywhere near your roast profile.

Caffé Premium supplies samples of 350g to 1kg from India, Vietnam, and Ethiopia. The coffee itself is free. You cover the courier cost, which typically runs somewhere in the region of thirty to sixty dollars depending on the quantity, the origin, and which courier services are available on that lane. Sample shipments move by air under CIP plus IOR.

One kilogram is the useful size if you intend to test-roast rather than simply cup a pre-roasted reference. It gives you enough green to run two or three roast profiles and still have material left to re-cup a few days later, which matters more than most buyers expect.

Tier one: the sample, 350g to 1kg

The question this tier answers: does this coffee do something my current lineup does not?

Cup it against a coffee you already buy, not on its own. A sample tasted in isolation almost always scores generously, because there is nothing in the room to compare it against. Set it beside your current single origin or your current blend base and the honest verdict arrives faster.

If the answer is no, the sequence stops here and it has cost you a courier fee. That is the point of the tier.

Tier two: the trial lot, roughly 60kg

The question this tier answers: does the coffee behave the same way at production scale as it did on the sample roaster?

Sixty kilograms is one bag. It is enough to run several full production batches on your actual roaster, which is the only way to learn how a green behaves in a real drum with real thermal mass. A coffee that cupped beautifully at 100g on a sample roaster can turn flat or bake in a twelve kilo batch, and no amount of sample cupping will surface that in advance.

A trial lot also produces enough finished coffee to put in front of your own wholesale accounts or across your bar for a few weeks. That is real market signal on a small commitment.

Trial lots can move by air under CIP plus IOR, or by ocean under CIF plus IOR. Air makes sense when a launch date is driving the decision. Ocean is materially cheaper per kilogram and is the sensible default when the calendar allows it.

Tier three: the pallet, roughly 1,200kg

The question this tier answers: can I sell this consistently, and does my cash position support carrying it?

A pallet, around twenty bags, is the most common first genuine commercial order. By this stage the cup question and the roast question are both settled, and what you are really buying is inventory cover. The variables that matter now are turnover speed, storage conditions, and how many weeks of roasting the pallet represents against your actual volume.

Pallets ship by ocean under CIF plus IOR. Air freight is available at pallet volume under FCA named airport where a buyer arranges their own carriage, but the per kilogram economics rarely justify it for a coffee you plan to sell over several months.

When a full container makes sense

A full container load runs 17,000 to 21,000kg. The question here is no longer about the coffee at all. It is about whether you can commit to a single lot for the length of time it will take to roast through it, and whether your storage can hold that quality across the whole period.

Most small and mid-size roasteries should not be looking at container volume on a first relationship with any supplier, however good the price per kilogram looks. The freshness math tends to work against you long before the cost math works for you.

How the delivery terms change as you move up the ladder

Sample and trial tiers move by air under CIP plus IOR. Pallet and container volumes move by ocean under CIF plus IOR. FOB and FCA named airport are available where a buyer prefers to arrange carriage themselves. Other terms can be discussed and agreed in writing case by case.

In regulatory terms, InGain LLC d/b/a Caffé Premium acts as Importer of Record for CBP entry on these shipments, which is why a roastery buying this way does not need to register as its own Importer of Record or carry its own customs bond. Importer of Record is a customs role. It is separate from the FSVP importer role under FDA rules, which sits with the US buyer as the party that has agreed in writing to purchase the coffee before entry. Caffé Premium maintains a complete supplier documentation file on each foreign supplier and provides it to the buyer as commercial facilitation, not as a compliance service.

What to decide at each step

Before requesting a sample, write down what you want the coffee to do. A new single origin for the bar, a Robusta base to rebuild an espresso blend around, a specialty lot for a subscription tier. A sample requested with no stated purpose gets cupped with no stated standard, and the decision drifts.

Before ordering a trial lot, confirm the target roast profile and the batch size you will use to evaluate it. Before ordering a pallet, confirm your weeks of cover and your storage capacity. Each of those is a smaller decision than the one before it looked like from a distance.

Samples are available from India, Vietnam, and Ethiopia. Request one at caffepremium.com/request-a-free-sample or ask for landed pricing at caffepremium.com/get-a-quote.