There is almost nothing that you cannot dropship. Dropshipping is an easy way for anyone to get into eCommerce. If you want to dropship coffee beans there are some things to be aware of before you start.
Dropshipping coffee beans is an online business model in which the roasting, packaging, and shipping of beans is handled by a coffee roasting company. You market the coffee beans in your own online store and when orders are placed, you forward them to your dropshipping supplier.
The supplier ships your orders to your customers for you. Your profit is the difference in price between what you charged the customer and what the dropshipping supplier has charged you. Now, let’s dive in so you can begin your plan of opening an online coffee store.
Open your coffee store today using Shopify’s 2-week free trial.
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Can You Dropship Coffee Beans?
The dropship model is a low-cost and convenient way to be up and running with your own online coffee store. The process is pretty simple. First, you must locate various coffee dropshipping suppliers.
Open up your favorite search engine and type in keyword phrases such as “coffee dropshipping supplier” or “dropship coffee roasters“.
Once you do, you can narrow down your choices to suppliers that you are interested in working with. Here are some questions to ask the suppliers that you find:
1. Can They Provide Samples?
It is important to know what the end product will be that is shipped out to your customers. If you like the quality and taste of the coffee, then you can almost be sure that your customers will as well.
After all, this will be your brand and you want repeat customers. Therefore, it is important that the end product should be top quality.
2. Can You Create Your Own Roast?
In some cases, many dropship coffee roasters may require you to create your own roast. Don’t stress about this as they can help you with this process.
If you are lucky enough to find a local roaster, this will be an easier (and even fun) process to create your own roast.
3. Will You Need to Provide Your Own Bags and Labels?
Some dropship coffee roasters will not provide bags or labels for shipping out your orders to your customers. You will need to order your own bags and labels and ship them to your supplier.
There are some suppliers that will provide the bags but you will still need to send your labels. Be sure that you know this beforehand so that you are prepared when your receive your first orders.
4. Are There Any Fees to Be Aware Of?
I’ve done a bit of research on various coffee dropshipping suppliers and some do have set-up fees or charge a fee per product shipped.
If there are fees for each product shipped, that will cut into your profit margin and you will need to account for it if you choose to move forward.
5. Will You Be Offered Wholesale Pricing?
Not all suppliers will offer wholesale pricing for dropshipping their coffee. That means you may have very little profit left after promoting the products in your store.
It is difficult to have a profitable online coffee store if you are paying retail prices for the coffee beans.
Can I Sell Coffee On Shopify?
Shopify is a popular and easy to use shopping cart platform for all types of online businesses. It is the shopping cart of choice when I recommend a multi-product shopping cart to others.
You can have your own store set up in a matter of minutes using Shopify’s 2-week free trial. Shopify’s admin area is user-friendly and there are plenty of video tutorials to help you along the way.
Once you have signed up with a coffee dropshipping supplier, it is a matter of getting images of your products and creating descriptions. These are what you will upload to your store.
Set up your pricing and payment gateway (which is included with Shopify) and you can begin marketing your products online.
When you receive orders, you pass the shipping details and payment to your supplier. Your profit is what is leftover after you have paid for marketing and what your supplier charges you per item.
Automating the Process
There will likely be no way to automate placing orders with your dropshipping supplier using software.
However, Shopify has tons of different apps that are released all of the time and one may work depending on who your supplier is.
This will be a matter of asking your supplier if it is possible on their end as well as understanding the capability of the app.
Other than that, when you get to the point of receiving multiple orders per day, you can outsource the work to a virtual assistant.
Branding and Store Promotion
Getting sales on a regular basis will come down to how well you are marketing your business. This means building a brand and placing that brand in front of your target audience, in this case coffee drinkers.
The best social media options for this can include Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and if you are able, creating a YouTube channel.
Reaching out to influencers in the coffee niche can help gain subscribers as well as sales. Contact an Instagram or Facebook influencer and offer a discount code especially for their followers.
As for paid advertising, eCommerce stores thrive with both Facebook and Instagram ads. It does take time to create winning ads, but once you do, sales can come in on a daily basis.
My Closing Thoughts On How to Dropship Coffee Beans
I hope this post has helped you to understand a little bit more about how to dropship coffee beans online. The Shopify platform makes it super easy to open your own store after you have located a coffee roaster that also dropships.
Explore your options as there are many coffee roasters out there that will also do order fulfillment for you. When you are ready, test out Shopify with a 2-week free trial. It literally is one of the easiest to use shopping carts.
