Pricing Model

FOB is the largest component of an offer price and includes all costs prior to export. FOB (“free on board”) is the point at which Crop to Cup takes possession—at the port of export when the coffee is loaded onto the vessel.

FOB results from farmgate price, domestic transport, milling quality/efficiency, export costs, currency exchange, and financing at origin. It can be influenced by commodity and currency markets, country-level differentials and regional dynamics, historical and current market conditions, and quality. Because FOB is in USD/lb, we factor local exchange rates to reflect suppliers’ currency exposure through the export cycle to insulate them as much as possible from further currency volatility.

We research and share indicative pricing across qualities and regions throughout each active harvest. Combined with trade information and best practices (e.g., the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide), this provides benchmarks against which we evaluate supplier offers in the context of other options at a given quality.

While we don’t buy every grade, purchasing across the specialty spectrum lets us price in the context of the overall harvest, establish baselines to which we add quality premiums, and increase volume with individual producers or groups—so roasters can buy with transparency and traceability across quality needs.

To us, what matters most is not only the FOB price itself, but its relationship to farmgate and to landed price. We treat farmgate as an indicator of, and lever for, farmer agency over time—its relationship to export pricing improves as farmers participate more directly in specialty markets.

FOB EXPORT → FARMGATE: While countries and supply chains vary, we look for outturn-adjusted farmgate to be ≥70% of FOB, and up to 85% in the most favorable conditions. We define farmgate as the smallest organizational unit receiving receipts. In more remote contexts—where poverty, multilayered cooperative bureaucracy, regulatory hurdles, or limited financing force sales through many intermediaries—these targets can be aspirational. Still, we publish them with every partner in every supply chain to keep accountability from crop to boat.

FOB EXPORT → LANDED: Depending on FOB and lot size, we expect FOB to represent ~70–85% of landed. Lower-volume imports (e.g., airfreight, light containers) can fall below this range, but the guideline helps maintain accountability from port of export to destination warehouse.

Most coffee ships via ocean freight. Logistics costs fluctuate by origin and route, but always include ocean freight and insurance, customs clearance, port fees, port-to-warehouse trucking, unloading (“stripping”) into the destination warehouse, first-month storage, and logistics administration (export and import). We calculate this using a frequently updated trailing average that absorbs inevitable overages, damages, demurrage, and delays.

Cost and complexity are shaped by origin, route, destination, number of cargos per container, and container dimensions. Consolidated containers (multiple producers or ICO numbers) restrict lanes and increase administration. When a container carries one lot only, our costs are lower—allowing us to discount shipping on full-container loads to 52¢/lb.

Beyond the offer menu, we arrange imports upon request. These use a buffer system: shipping is quoted per container, invoiced with a small buffer against potential increases, then trued-up on arrival to actual cost.

Behind the scenes, we work with top-tier carriers for best-available rates, container tracking, and automated updates from export through arrival.

While international travel is a small direct cost (<0.5% of revenue), our U.S.-based sourcing team works year-round with in-country teams and agents. Field agents connect the chain—labs ↔ field technicians, producers ↔ exporters, banks ↔ mills—to calibrate, build capacity, improve quality, and add value, reliability, and trust.

At origin, our programs invest in people and in communities, taking different forms by context. We follow a sequenced approach: start with work that integrates into a group’s existing operations yet lifts both price and competitiveness—through lot separation, improvements to processing and drying, and cupping calibration. As quality becomes competitive and repeatable at scale, we shift focus to efficiencies that help producers retain a larger share of export revenue while building more direct, durable customer relationships. In more mature partnerships, premiums are directed toward governance, education, community well-being, and sustainability.

Rather than funding origin work supply-chain by supply-chain, we dedicate 5¢ of every imported pound to these expenses. This sets a budget guideline for each supply chain and gives us flexibility to invest more where need is greater.

See our Code of Conduct for the philosophy behind our Country Strategies and Sourcing Standards for how we implement them on a practical level.

Some expenses are per-lot regardless of volume, which raises per-pound cost for smaller lots.

These include evaluating contract samples, supplier audits, traceability reports, and contract administration (inventory entry and management, invoicing, DOs, Releases).

Each contract furthermore entails samples shipped via DHL, received, roasted, evaluated, and shared with customers. On average, we evaluate ≥4 samples for every imported coffee, and each imported coffee goes through at least 4–5 evaluations. In-country partners typically pay $15–$20 per sample; we cover this via programming or directly through our lab, where each sample takes ~1 hour of team time. Add to that the direct shipping cost and the indirect costs of administration and information management—all fixed regardless of lot size.

For now, we roll all of these operating expenses into a per-lot booking fee of $400.

Ownership transfers to Crop to Cup at export, and the coffee is financed on the water (typically 4–8 weeks) and until it is released from the U.S. warehouse. We build financing into our cost structure: the direct cost of funds (FOB→FOT; release→payment), transactional costs tied to warehouse releases and payment, and a risk premium reflecting the rising cost of credit and hedging as lots move further from their commodity equivalents.

From contract through payment collection we carry market risk (commodity volatility), quality risk (damage or underperformance), contract risk (e.g., late arrival rejections), payment/AR risk, and rate risk (changes in prime/benchmark rates). We manage each and price them based on historical likelihood and cost.