What Is MOQ in Coffee Roasting, and Why It Matters for Private-Label Orders

Thinking about getting your café or F&B brand its own custom roast, only to hit the same question from every roastery: “What’s your MOQ?” If you’ve never worked with a B2B roaster before, that number can be confusing — order too little and you don’t meet it, order too much and you’re stuck with stock that goes stale before you sell through it. This post breaks down what MOQ means in coffee roasting, why roasters set it, and how to size your first order to fit your business.

What MOQ means in coffee roasting and how it’s calculated

MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) is the smallest amount of coffee a roaster will accept for a custom roast run. It’s usually tied to the drum roaster’s batch capacity — a 5kg, 12kg, or 20kg machine, for instance — because every time the roaster switches beans or profiles, the machine needs cleaning and the temperature curve needs resetting from scratch. If the batch is too small relative to that setup work, the cost per kilo climbs fast, which is why roasters can’t take tiny one-off orders and still keep pricing reasonable.

So when a roastery quotes a 20kg or 30kg MOQ per profile, it isn’t an arbitrary number — it reflects the minimum batch size needed to roast efficiently and consistently, with even development and no scorching or underdeveloped beans from running too little coffee through a machine built for more.

What affects MOQ and how to choose the right order size

MOQ isn’t fixed across the board. A few things move it: roasting a single origin versus a blend, how much custom profiling is involved (dialing in an existing profile versus testing one from zero), and how often you plan to reorder. If you commit to a recurring monthly order, many roasters will negotiate a lower MOQ per run, since they know the next order is coming and will offset the setup cost.

If this is your first time commissioning a private roast, it’s worth asking whether the roaster offers a smaller sample batch below the official MOQ, so you can test how the coffee fits your menu and your customers’ taste before committing to a full-size order. That protects you from hitting the MOQ but ending up with a batch that isn’t right for your target crowd.

Market context

According to the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association (VICOFA), in the first eight months of 2026 processed coffee (roasted, ground, instant, and blended) made up only about 8.2-8.3% of Vietnam’s total coffee export volume, yet accounted for 17.5% of total export value — a sign that roasting and further processing add significantly more value than exporting green beans alone. That gap is one reason more F&B brands and coffee startups are turning to B2B roasting services instead of building their own roastery, so they can capture that “deep processing” value without a large upfront investment.

Why choose EPIC

• EPIC has roasted on its own drum roaster in Saigon since 2014, dialing in each batch by hand — so a partner doesn’t need to commit to a huge first order just to get a custom roast profile.
• Green beans arrive by the sack and are hand-sorted before roasting, so even a batch sized right at MOQ for a first test order comes out just as consistent as a larger run.
• Roasted coffee rests before it’s packed to order rather than sitting pre-packed in inventory — so even at minimum order size, what you receive is still freshly roasted.
• EPIC has roasted coffee for export to Russia and the Netherlands, giving it experience working across very different order sizes, from a small first-time partner to larger recurring accounts.

If you need help figuring out the right MOQ for your brand or café, get in touch with EPIC to talk through your first B2B roasting order.