We get asked weekly how many pounds of espresso a 50-cover Bay Area cafe should be ordering. The honest answer is that the cover count is the wrong starting point. The right starting point is cup count per day. Here is the math we run with new cafe accounts.
Start with cups, not covers.
A 50-cover cafe might pour 80 espresso-based drinks per day, or it might pour 250. Brunch crowd, commuter morning rush, afternoon WFH crowd, weekend tourist traffic all change the number. Estimate or measure cups per day. If you have a POS, this is a one-query lookup. If you do not, count for two weeks.
The conversion: cups to pounds.
One pound of espresso beans pulls roughly 50 to 60 single shots, or 25 to 30 double shots. Most modern cafe drinks are double-shot defaults (lattes, cappuccinos, Americanos), so plan around 25 to 30 drinks per pound. A cafe pouring 200 espresso drinks per day burns 7 to 8 pounds of beans daily, or 50 to 56 pounds per week.
Hopper size sets your ordering frequency.
A standard espresso grinder hopper holds about 2 to 3 pounds. You want to be filling it once or twice per shift, not letting beans sit on the hopper for days losing freshness. For a 200-drink-per-day cafe, that is 3 to 4 hopper fills per day. The whole-bean stock behind the bar should be one to two weeks of supply at most. Beyond that you are losing freshness.
Delivery cadence: weekly, twice-weekly, or biweekly?
Under 30 pounds per week, biweekly delivery works. 30 to 80 pounds per week, weekly is right. 80 plus pounds per week, twice-weekly delivery makes the bean stock smaller and the freshness better. We will recommend cadence on the first quote based on your cup count.
Build in a buffer.
Order 15 percent above your average weekly burn. Cafes are variable. A sunny weekend, a nearby event, a coffee influencer posting your latte all spike volume. The cost of a small surplus is much lower than running out at 11am Saturday.
A worked example.
50-cover cafe in Hayes Valley, 200 espresso drinks per day, 7 days a week. That is 1,400 drinks per week. At 28 drinks per pound, that is 50 pounds per week of espresso beans. Add a 15 percent buffer: 58 pounds per week, ordered weekly, delivered Tuesday morning before the Wednesday push. Hopper gets refilled twice per shift. Bean stock behind the bar: one week. That is the order we would write up.
Want to talk about your account? Call Van at (415) 658-1864 or send a wholesale inquiry. We have been roasting for Bay Area kitchens since 1995. Organic and regular, Vietnamese and everything else, beans and equipment, and the call when you need it.