Bellwether

November 14, 2022

Bellwether Launches Cloud-Powered Small Batch Coffee Roasting-on-Demand

Bellwether, a maker of electric ventless coffee roasters for small-batch roasters and coffee shops, has launched a cloud-connected roasting service that enables coffee shops and retailers to roast coffee via a sharing economy model.

The new service – called Bellwether on Demand – allows anyone interested in roasting a batch of coffee to do so via its newly launched Bellwether Hubs. The Bellwether Hubs, the first of which is located at Bellwether’s headquarters in Berkeley, California, are software-controlled multi-roaster systems that enable anyone to roast a small-batch of coffee at scale.

From the release: “Each roaster in the Hub is controlled by a single interface that allows for flexibility to roast multiple SKUs at once, or fulfill large orders across multiple roasters simultaneously. The system’s software-powered precision can reproduce identical roasts on any roaster, giving retailers the ability to roast large volume orders with the freshness, quality and consistency of a small batch operation.”

This new offering from Bellwether is a natural evolution of the company’s small ventless roaster business that, as I wrote in 2019, moves “coffee roasting from the roastery into the coffee shop with their tech-powered coffee roasters.”

This new business takes the idea even further, adding a sharing-economy wrinkle to a platform already focused on democratizing coffee roasting beyond the big guys. In other words, the company is offering an easier on-ramp to wannabe roasters by offering coffee-roasting-as-a-service to smaller roasters who don’t have the resources to buy their own roaster or those who want to add their own custom-roasted coffee as a business but don’t see the need to invest in their own micro-roaster.

For now, the roasting service is only available through the company’s HQ-hosted Bellwether Hub, but Bellwether says it will soon be rolling out new hubs at customer locations across the country. For Bellwether customers with their own roaster, this offers them a new avenue to monetize their investment in a Bellwether through launching their own roast-on-demand services.

One such Bellwether customer is Daniel Levy, owner of Latitude Coffee.

“The additional revenue that comes from the Bellwether Network is very important to our business because it covers a lot of overhead expenses,” Levy said. “It covers the days that are a little bit slower. It covers the roaster, and it even covers the green beans we buy for ourselves. It’s a consistent revenue stream, and it also helps us be part of the larger Bellwether Community, so there is kind of a belonging to it.”

To use the Bellwether On-Demand service, roasters visit the website, and select their preferred coffee and roast level from the Bellwether Marketplace. From there, orders go directly to the nearest Bellwether Roaster Hub. Roasters can create and save custom profiles.

April 6, 2021

Bellwether’s Coffee Roaster Blossomed During the Pandemic, Doubling Installations

Independent coffee shops were hit hard by the pandemic last year. In October, Euromonitor International predicted that the U.S. would have just 25,307 coffee/tea specialty outlets by the end of 2020, a 7.3 percent drop year-over-year and the first such decline since 2011. While giants like Starbucks had the resources to weather the pandemic, smaller independent chains bore the brunt of COVID-19 fallout.

Given this dark backdrop, you might think that Bellwether had a bleak year as well. The startup makes a compact, connected, electric and ventless professional coffee roasting machine meant for independent cafes — like the ones that shut down last year. But actually, Bellwether didn’t just survive the pandemic, it thrived.

“We ended up having a really good year,” Bellwether CEO, Nathan Gilliland told me by phone this week. “We grew revenue a bit over 100 percent last year and installations doubled.”

Gilliland attributed this growth to a number of factors. First, at the start of last year, the company introduced a rental model. Previously, coffee shops could only buy or long-term lease Bellwether’s machines. The new rental model is more expensive than the leasing option, but it also comes with just a one-year commitment (as opposed to five), which proved more enticing to customers. Gilliland said that the majority of new installations in 2020 were rentals.

Another reason for Bellwether’s growth was who its customers were selling to. During COVID, in-house dining/drinking operations were shut down across large swaths of the country. With their consumer traffic down, cafes started selling their roasted coffee to local grocers.

Perhaps sensing and opportunity, in the fourth quarter of last year, Bellwether itself decided to start targeting grocers as potential customers. Since the Bellwether is the size of a vending machine and runs automated roast programs from the cloud, the device is relatively plug-and-play. You don’t need to have a staff of coffee experts to operate it. Roastery (née Carbine Coffee) was another electric ventless roaster that launched around the same time as Bellwether, also targeting grocers. (Roastery’s fate is unknown at this point as its website is just a picture of the device with no text, links or other information.)

In addition to the machine itself, Bellwether also makes money through its green coffee bean marketplace. Gilliland said that 85 percent of Bellwether’s customers order green beans through Bellwether, and 65 percent of those order more than half of their green beans through Bellwether. The Bellwether machine roasts six pounds of coffee at a time, and the average Bellwether customer roasts 100 lbs of coffee per week.

With the pandemic receding, Gilliland and Co. are looking ahead to the rest of this year. In addition to more people actually sitting inside coffee shops, another reason the future looks bright for Bellwether could be stricter environmental regulations. Cities like Seattle and San Jose have banned natural gas from being installed in new commercial constructions, creating an opportunity for the all-electric Bellwether to step in as a way for small shops to have their own roaster.

Gilliland is also looking abroad. The company will begin expanding outside of North America this year, with machines going to Southeast Asia and Japan. Additionally, Bellwether is looking to create an iTunes-like experience for its roasting recipes. Coffee shops will be able to upload and sell their particular roast programs via Bellwether, which others could pay for to download and use. Specifics have yet to be determined, but there would be a rev share for roast creators.

Without a doubt, 2020 was a bad year for independent coffee shops. But perhaps Bellwether’s growth could be, well, a bellwether for better times ahead for the industry.

June 22, 2020

The Premium-ization of Coffee and Taking Roasting to the Edge

Bellwether Coffee makes ventless, electric coffee roasters the size of a fridge that automate the roasting process. It’s an interesting play to take coffee roasting away from centralized producers and bring it closer to the edge. At least in theory, that means fresher java for consumers, and bigger savings for Bellwether customers (which range from cafés to grocery stores).

To learn more about how coffee roasting is evolving — and where the coffee market is headed in general post-COVID — I spoke with Bellwether’s CEO Nathan Gilliland.

This long-form interview is exclusive to Spoon Plus subscribers. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here.

May 4, 2020

Will Bellwether Coffee’s Plug-and-Play Roasters Help Cafés Survive COVID-19?

Every Tuesday, before I make my weekly outing to grocery shop, I stop by my favorite coffee shop and get a black coffee and a donut. The shop used to be a hubbub of activity — freelancers hanging out on their laptops, friends catching up, kids running around — but now it’s quiet, with a masked barista serving up to-go coffees to patrons who line up outside to be served.

Like most other foodservice establishments, coffee shops are feeling the pain of COVID-19. To compensate some are cutting hours, reducing staff, or trying to incorporate new revenue streams, like selling local products, flowers, and emphasizing bagged coffee.

Bellwether Coffee, a company that makes electric, ventless zero-emissions connected commercial coffee roasters that can go into cafés, is trying to help coffee shops supplement their income by roasting their own beans. To try and get more partners during the pandemic, they’re offering to waive the first two months of roaster fees — provided the shop installs it between May and July. The roasters can be delivered in as little as a week.

On the one hand, coffee shops who are struggling to stay afloat probably aren’t able to commit to purchasing a pricey coffee roaster (the machines cost $75,000 to buy or can be rented for a monthly fee), even with the deal. On the other, Bellwether roasters could offer these shops a new revenue stream as they sell bagged beans roasted in-house. The coffee shops could also use their house-roasted beans in their drinks, so they don’t have to purchase coffee from other roasters.

The only reason this is actually feasible is because Bellwether’s roasters don’t require any special setup or expertise. The device, which is about the size of a standard fridge, is automated, so baristas or café managers don’t have to have any roasting experience to figure out how to use it. It runs on electricity and is ventless, so coffee shops don’t have to build out expensive ventilation systems to start roasting — something which would be especially tricky given the limitations around the pandemic.

The software that controls Bellwether’s roasters also features a marketplace where users can browse and purchase green coffee beans in 22-pound boxes. That way, shops don’t have to worry about setting up relationships with suppliers or buy massive amounts of beans if they’re just trying to set up a temporary roasting solution.

With all of that said, the roaster is still pricey. The Bellwether website notes that shops can lease the roaster for $1,150 a month for 60 months, but that’s still cost-prohibitive for small, local coffee shops — coronavirus or no.

Since coffee shops already have to-go infrastructure set up — takeaway cups and containers, etc. — they might actually have a better chance of surviving the pandemic than, say, full-service restaurants. They can also operate pretty easily with a bare-bones staff, since a single barista could take orders, make coffee, bag up pastries, etc.

That said, coffee shops, like all foodservice joints, still have a significant amount of overhead. Just like restaurants, we’ll continue to see cafés get creative to figure out new ways to cut costs and spark new revenue streams. Roasting their own beans could help coffee shops do both of those things. The question will then become whether or not cafés want to keep their Bellwether roasters after they’re able to reopen their doors post-pandemic.

April 23, 2019

From $200 Bottles of Coffee to Wrist-Saving Espresso Machines: 8 Fascinating Things From Specialty Coffee Expo 2019

April 12th launched the 2019 Specialty Coffee Expo in Boston. As the leading industry event for the western hemisphere, there was no shortage of new gadgets and interesting products to discover—like $200 bottles of coffee, data-driven espresso machines and frozen coffee pods—all while caffeinated beyond reason.

Here are eight coffee tech innovations we loved seeing.

Third Wave Water’s Cafe-Sized Water Maker

Most coffee shops treat their water source to enhance coffee flavor and keep their equipment healthy. This usually involves reverse osmosis, then trying to add some minerals back into the water—but most of the time it’s terribly imprecise. Even with expensive commercial-grade gear, shops often find their water quality to be inconsistent and the coffee disappointing.

Third Wave Water (as seen on Shark Tank) solved this problem for home brewers a few years back with mineral packets designed to create the exact water mineral profile recommended by the Specialty Coffee Association. At the Expo, TWW finally unveiled their cafe-sized solution: the Tethys.

Designed for small to medium-size cafes, the Tethys can create precisely-mineralized water for up to 250 gallons per day.

Elemental Beverage Co’s $200 Bottle Of Coffee

Last year we wrote about IceColdNow’s electric chiller that could make cold coffee in seconds from any hot brew. The company has since rebranded to Elemental Beverage Co and expanded its ambitions.

Not only can cafes use the proprietary Snapchill Technology to insta-chill coffee, Elemental has upsized the tech and added a vacuum-sealer that allows the company to seal and preserve the coffee like wine.

You’ll soon find canned cold coffee on grocery store shelves, but more impressively, Elemental Beverage Co is also releasing limited-batch bottles of super high-end coffees. Graded at a score of 90+ (the top 0.1% of coffee beans in the world), these coffees are meant to be uncorked like a fine wine and enjoyed in fancy tasting glasses.

They popped one of these ~$200 bottles open on Sunday for a tasting. I was a few rows down and missed out. I’ve been mourning ever since, because everyone standing at the booth nearly 30 minutes after the tasting was still in shock at how tasty the coffee was.

Duvall’s Data-Driven Espresso Machine

Training baristas in specialty coffee shops involves a lot of writing. You write down each espresso shot’s time, yield, taste, and try to discern what kinds of recipes will produce good flavors. It’s a long, confusing process—largely because you can’t remember where you put your sheet of notes in-between customers.

Duvall’s new espresso machine doesn’t only store data from every shot pulled. It enables baristas to program precise recipes into the device, then uses volumetric measurements to make adjustments mid-shot if necessary to match that recipe.

Introducing data into the espresso machine has a variety of benefits that have never been possible before, like allowing coffee roasters to push out espresso recipes to all of their cafes at the same time, or enabling managers to see which baristas are the slowest at pulling shots, or helping trainers connect the dots between recipes and shot flavor for new hires.

La Marzocco’s Wrist-Friendly Espresso Machine (Finally)

There are many reasons baristas burn out (resulting in high employee turnover), but among the top of the list is the bodily wear and tear that comes with the job. Barista wrists, in particular, are subject to much abuse from twisting portafilters in and out of the espresso machine.

It took La Marzocco 20 years to come up with a solution to this problem, and they finally unveiled it this year: the KB90 espresso machine. The straight-in portafilter design is extremely fast to use and feels natural on the wrists.

As someone who experienced life-disrupting wrist pain when I was a barista, I can’t describe how happy it made me to slip the portafilter straight into the machine without having to twist or turn. This sets the new bar for cafe ergonomics.

Bellwether Coffee Roasted On-Site

Our friends at Bellwether were awarded the coveted Best New Product for Commercial Coffee or Tea Preparation & Serving Equipment this year—and we’re not surprised.

The ventless coffee roasters make roasting great coffee easier than it’s ever been in history (no, really). Nathan Gilliland, Bellwether’s CEO, helped me roast a batch myself and I was stunned at how simple it was. The coffee turned out incredible, too.

Nathan also showed me their ‘Tip The Farmer’ feature, which just went live a few weeks ago. With a tap on the tablet, I was able to send a $1 tip directly to a coffee producer (minus credit card fees, of course). Nathan hopes to integrate this feature with popular POS platforms in the coming months to help give consumers easier access.

Odeko’s Auto-Replenishing Scales And Software

With coffee shops being low-margin establishments, software and automation companies have largely steered clear from developing targeted solutions designed for the cafe. Odeko, however, is all-in with coffee shops.

Their new automated inventory management platform uses connected scales to track inventory and usage, creates predictive models, and then orders on the cafe’s behalf to ensure they never run out of cups / croissants / coffee / whatever.

Their booth was particularly striking, with a never-ending conveyor belt of coffee beans and oat milk that earned a double-take from every passerby.

Bonaverde’s Green-To-Cup Home Machine

It’s been a couple of years since our video review of the Bonaverde Roast-Grind-Brew coffee machine, so we checked back in at the Expo. Hans Stier, the founder and CEO, roasted and brewed a batch of coffee that had been picked just 72 hours prior to the event. It was certainly the freshest coffee I’ve ever tasted—and will probably ever taste again.

The machine has gone through some design iterations that make it easier to roast, grind, and brew modularly, without having to go through all three steps in one session. Hans is also looking to expand Bonaverde’s unroasted coffee offerings to US-based roasters, who can send their roast profiles and green beans to customers.

Frozen Coffee Concentrate That Actually Tastes Good

The hottest gossip of the Expo surrounded a new concept: frozen coffee extract in Keurig-compatible capsules. At first glance, Cometeer appeared to be just another pod distributor, but with a closer look, I realized they had some really big names on their capsules, like Counter Culture, George Howell, and Equator Coffee.

The idea is that Cometeer sends you frozen coffee extract pods by mail, you slip them into your freezer, and then you have on-demand coffee from well-known specialty roasters. You can pop the aluminum (fully recyclable) pod in your Keurig, or just rip off the top and mix with hot or cold water to bring it to a drinkable strength.

I was skeptical at first. Could frozen coffee concentrate really maintain its delicate flavor? The sample impressed me—sure enough, it was just as delicious as the freshly brewed coffee I’d tasted in ‘Roaster Village’ around the corner.

It’s difficult to say whether the shipped-frozen model will appeal to regular coffee lovers at home, but Cometeer definitely showed up strong in the eyes of industry professionals.

We loved seeing coffee being served in new and interesting ways (frozen pods, high-end cold brew), but the main coffee tech trend was clear: data.

Data for espresso machines. Data for roasters. Data for inventory and purchasing. Data for sourcing coffee. The coffee world, it seems, is finally embracing a higher-tech future.

See anything else fascinating or quirky at the Specialty Coffee Expo? Tell us in the comments or tweet us @thespoontech!

Bellwether Roaster in Firebrand Oakland CA

February 19, 2019

Bellwether’s Ventless Coffee Roasters Are Headed Across The US

Last April, Bellwether Coffee announced their new ventless coffee roaster designed to help cafes and grocery stores roast in-store without having to install complex ventilation systems. Ten months—and $10m in additional funding—later, roasters are finally showing up around the country.

Bellwether began distributing roasters to cafes in the Bay Area (where the company is located) in the last quarter of 2018. The idea was to start close to home to ensure those customers were having a great experience before expanding further away.

The feedback must have been positive, because the first device to leave the Bay Area ended up in Sump Coffee’s Nashville location late January.

In the coming months, Bellwether will have roasters set up in Austin, Portland, Denver, and New York as well, but with sales reps being hired for eight more cities, it’s only a matter of time before that list becomes much larger.

“From our standpoint, for a company that just announced its product in April, the floodgates feel like they’re opening now.” Nathan Gilliland, Bellwether CEO, told me when I asked what it would take increase demand for Bellwether roasters.

And it makes sense. There are thousands of cafes in the US alone that would love to roast their own coffee in-house, but when they look at the labor overhead, the ventilation required, and the training they need, it feels overwhelming. “That’s really where our pre-orders have come from: those folks who said they’re interested in roasting, but who feel overwhelmed by the usual route”.

Nathan says Bellwether doesn’t really consider itself as a competitor to traditional roaster manufacturers. They not stealing customers away from that kind of coffee roasting equipment. They’re not having people rip out older, chunkier roasters in exchange for Bellwether’s vending-machine-sized device. They’re adding roasting capabilities for the first time in places where it would have never been possible before.

“For all of our customers to date, there is no way that a traditional roaster could have been put in there. They’re in urban locations and multi-story buildings. No way they could get the right permits or do ventilation in those stores.”

Roughly 40% of Bellwether customers are small cafes. Another 40% are multi-location chains—many of them ordering more than one roaster. The goal is to put an end to the ‘hub-and-spoke’ model of roasting, where a single facility supplies beans to a wide area of cafes, by enabling each location to roast its own beans using the same roast profiles stored online. This engages customers of each location with the roasting process, as well as results in better consistency and freshness for each cafe.

The remaining 20% of Bellwether’s orders is a “large national grocery chain”. Nathan’s been teasing us on who this chain is for months now, but we’ll have to wait a little longer.

“We hope to do an announcement with them in a month or two,” he said. “It’s a large chain,” he teased, once again.

One thing Nathan’s thrilled to roll out in the next couple of months is the ‘Tip The Farmer’ feature. Cafe and grocery customers will be able to walk up to the Bellwether roaster and add a tip that goes directly to farmers, rather than just tipping their baristas.

With coffee farmers often receiving under $0.75/lb of coffee (sometimes much, much less), even just one in twenty-five customers tipping $1 can double a farm’s revenue per pound—a dramatic jump. Nathan hopes to have more data on how this feature can impact farmers and customer experiences in the coming months.

Bellwether’s not the only startup working toward ventless roasting technology. Roastery (formerly Carbine Coffee) is also working on a cloud-connected roaster that doesn’t require ventilation, and Nathan believes it’s only a matter of time before the big players in traditional roasting equipment, like Loring and Diedrich, also start working toward more user-friendly, portable gear that can fit in cafes and grocery stores.

December 27, 2018

Video: Bellwether Cuts Out the Coffee Roasting Middleman

“A lot of people don’t realize just how big coffee is,” said Nathan Gilliland, CEO of Bellwether Coffee at the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit. Seriously, though: according to him, coffee is the most consumed beverage in the U.S., with people drinking more cups of joe than bottles of water, wine, and beer combined.

Not only are people drinking a lot of coffee, they’re also drinking better coffee. Consumers — especially millennials — are looking for fresher, higher-quality beans that are roasted locally. And they’re willing to pay for it.

But getting that freshly-roasted product into the hands of consumers isn’t easily done. The majority of coffee today is roasted at a highly centralized place and then shipped all over the world. This “hub and spoke roasting model,” as Gilliland calls it, is expensive and not condusive to freshness.

Enter Bellwether. The company makes internet-connected coffee roasters that can be installed in cafes, grocery stores, or small local coffee shops, and also has a marketplace for green (unroasted) coffee beans. By roasting in-store, Gilliland explains that the shop can provide more sustainable, fresher coffee and save money by cutting out the roasting middleman. “It’s like a roaster meets an iPhone,” he said.

Watch the video below to get the lowdown on the future of sustainable coffee consumption — and how data and IoT can help us get there.

From Soil To Sip: Disruptions In The Coffee Value Chain

For more videos of panels, fireside chats, and startup pitches from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit head to our YouTube channel!

August 27, 2018

Bellwether Coffee Brews up $10 Million Series A for its Roasting Tech

Bellwether Coffee, the startup behind the electric and ventless coffee roaster that’s roughly the size of a vending machine, today announced that it has closed a $10 million Series A round of funding led by Congruent Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Bellwether to $16 million.

We’re pretty excited about Bellwether’s technology because it could drastically change how batch coffee is created and distributed, shortening the supply chain for smaller coffee chains and other outlets looking to get into craft coffee. As we wrote back in April:

Basically, Bellwether provides a complete roasting solution in a box for a coffee shop. With the accompanying iPad, owners can order green beans from different sources, select from pre-set flavor profiles (or customize their own) and simply press a button. Bellwether does the rest to ensure that the roast is correct and consistent every time.

Bellwether machines can be rented for $1,000 month and include $200 worth of green coffee beans sourced through the Bellwether market. I spoke with Bellwether CEO Nathan Gilliland about today’s announcement and he said that the company has more than $6 million in pre-orders right now, with some customers ordering multiple machines. Breaking that down, Gilliland said that 40 percent of their customers are small cafes with one or two locations, 40 percent are cafe chains with fifteen to twenty locations, and 20 percent of orders are coming from a to-be-announced grocery chain.

It’s the grocery chain customer that is particularly interesting because it points to the customization this roasting model can open up. Grocery store chains big and small could create their own line of coffee suited to the tastes of that region. So far Bellwether has focused its sales efforts in the Bay Area and New York, but is getting pre-orders from places like Michigan, Seattle, Austin and Tennessee.

This notion of consistent, customized coffee for localized distribution is poised to become a real trend in the coming year. In addition to Bellwether’s machines, Roastery (formerly Carbine Coffee) debuted its own electric and ventless roasting machine earlier this year and is going into customer trials this fall.

Gilliland said that the new funding will go towards supporting the growth of the company. This includes adding sales and service people for machine installation and maintenance, software engineers and support staff, as well as capital expenditures like ramping up production.

One cool addition to the Bellwether software is a new “Tip the Farmer” feature. Businesses can put the Bellwether iPad at the point of sale where customers can read about which farm their coffee is coming from, and if they like, use their credit card to tip that farmer directly.

“Tips can make a tremendous difference,” said Gillilan. “The average farmer is making three cents a cup. If one out of every twenty people tips a dollar, that can have a huge impact.”

Armed with this new funding, Bellwether looks like it will be making its own impact as well.

April 23, 2018

Bellwether Unveils its Ventless, Electric Coffee Roaster for Cafés

Bellwether unveiled what it says is the first commercially available ventless, electric coffee roaster to the public this weekend at the Specialty Coffee Expo in Seattle. Aimed at cafés, the cloud-connected roaster is roughly the size of a vending machine and can roast seven pounds of green coffee to specific flavor specifications in ten minutes.

The fact that the roaster is electric and ventless is a big deal, according to Bellwether CEO, Nathan Gilliland. Traditionally, roasting coffee emits harmful gasses and requires special ventilation to be installed, which requires permits and is expensive. Bellwether uses a catalytic process to eliminate those gasses and the need for extra ventilation.

Bellwether Founder, Ricardo Lopez told me one thing most people don’t often realize is that once roasted, different coffee bean types need to rest and off-gas for different periods of time. A certain type may be best 4 days after roasting, for example. Bellwether knows this and will help you schedule accordingly so you are roasting, resting and serving the coffee at its best.

A post shared by Bellwether Coffee (@bellwethercoffee) on Mar 19, 2018 at 9:30am PDT

With this consistency, Gilliland said Bellwether becomes a good option for coffee shops that want to expand to new locations. Rather than shipping beans around, branches can install the relatively small Bellwethers at each location. Because all the machines are connected to the cloud, each remote machine can use the exact same beans and flavor profile to ensure that coffee tastes the exact same at each location.

Bellwether is also packed with sensors that can detect any anomalies with the roast process or sense if a part is failing and alert Bellwether, which can troubleshoot the problem.

A Bellwether machine costs $1,000 a month to rent, which includes $200 worth of green coffee, as well as all the service and software.

If all this sounds familiar, that means you’re an avid reader of The Spoon, as we just wrote about Carbine Coffee’s Countertop Roastery, which also debuted its own ventless electric coffee roaster at the Expo. But there are some big differences between the two, including the bigness. Bellwether’s machine is larger and can roast more coffee at a time (Gilliland says that if pushed it can produce 300 pounds a day). Additionally, from my chats with each company, Bellwether seems further along, as its software was on display and they are actively taking orders for fulfillment this fall.

Between Bellwether and Carbine, however, it seems like we’re on the cusp of craft coffee taking off like craft beer did. The ability to stick a Bellwether in just about any location without the need for building out ventilation, plus the capability to dial in a very specific roast to your taste means more coffee shops (and bakeries, and grocery stores) can create and sell their own signature blends. It’s like B2B coffee for the SMB market.

Founded in 2014, Bellwether is based in the Bay Area, has 15 employees and has raised $8 million in venture funding. Check out a video of the Bellwether in action below.

Bellwether's Ventless, Electric Coffee Bean Roaster from The Spoon on Vimeo.