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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

roaster

The Kelvin Home Coffee Roaster Enters Production, Ships To Backers in August

Back when the Kelvin, a countertop home coffee roasting appliance, launched on Kickstarter in March of 2018, their promo video made a simple but powerful statement:

“The roast of the bean, the most important factor in our coffee’s flavor, has always been completely out of our control.”

While that’s a bit of an exaggeration – there are plenty of home roasting machines available at the click of a button – the idea of a simple, small countertop appliance was enough to entice me to back the Kelvin. With an estimated ship date of December 2018, I had hopes I’d be roasting my own coffee beans by Christmas.

Two years later, I’m still without my Kelvin. When I’d checked in last August with the CEO of IA Collaborative (the company behind the Kelvin), Dan Kraemer told me via email he expected shipment in November, but another Christmas came and went and still no Kelvin.

But this week, a light at the end of my coffee roasting tunnel appeared in the form of an update that said the Kelvin had entered full production.

From the update:

Now that most parts are made for mass production, the team will begin assembling roasters and loading onto pallets to be shipped in the coming weeks. While our team was testing roasters from pilot production, our manufacturing team was preparing the Kelvin packaging.

Anyone familiar with the hardware crowdfunding knows delays are almost expected nowadays. Still, a year and a half delay is a long one, especially when it seemed much of the research and development of the product appeared completed by the time it showed up on Kickstarter.

I shouldn’t complain too much. Some products never make it to the customer, and other delays can take the better part of a half-decade (I’m looking at you Spinn), so just getting a product you backed on Kickstarter nowadays, no matter how delayed, can feel like a win.

While it might be a couple years later, here’s to hoping I’ll be roasting beans by Christmas.

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.