Buyer’s guide
Green Coffee Buyer’s Guide
Four pages covering the procurement process end to end — written for a roaster or importer making a first East African purchase, or a first purchase from a new origin.
Process
From specification to shipment
Most first-purchase problems come from skipping the first step and buying against a grade name alone.
- Buyer specification received
- Origin and lot selection
- Samples dispatched
- Buyer cupping and approval
- Contract issued
- Milling to the approved preparation
- Pre-shipment inspection
- Export documentation
- Container loading and shipment
Guides
The four questions buyers ask first
- How to Buy Green Coffee from AfricaThe sequence is: define a specification, request offers against it, cup samples, approve one, contract with an explicit quality and delivery basis, arrange pre-shipment inspection, and confirm the document set before shipment. Most first-purchase problems come from skipping the specification step and buying against a grade name alone.
- How to Specify Green CoffeeA complete green coffee specification names the origin and region, species, process, grade, screen with tolerance, defect basis, moisture with method, crop year, packaging, and the cup basis. Leave any of those out and it becomes the seller’s choice by default.
- Green Coffee Sample EvaluationEvaluate a sample in three passes: a physical assessment of the green, a sample roast, and a blind cupping in multiple cups against a reference you already buy. Record everything against the lot identity — an evaluation you cannot reproduce six months later has limited value.
- Green Coffee ShippingEast African coffee moves by road to Mombasa, Dar es Salaam or Djibouti and then by sea. The inland leg is the largest source of schedule variance, particularly from the landlocked origins. Total time from mill-ready to arrival is driven more by inland transit, port dwell and transhipment than by sailing time.