How premium packaging supplier Roasters Only is breaking down the barriers of high MOQs.
For years, small- to medium-size coffee roasters have faced a frustrating dilemma: meeting the high minimum order quantities (MOQs) for custom-branded coffee bags. Traditional packaging suppliers often require orders of 10,000 pieces per design and size, creating a significant financial burden to cashflow.
“At Roasters Only, we recognised this industry-wide pain point and set out to find a solution,” says Ryan Touliatos, Director of Roasters Only.
“After extensive collaboration with leading manufacturers and discussions with coffee professionals across Australia, we have successfully secured a game-changing partnership with a world-class digital printing company. This allows us to offer cost-effective, low-MOQ packaging solutions tailored to the needs of modern coffee businesses.”
The problem with high MOQs
Historically, coffee roasters ordering custom packaging had to commit to massive quantities – sometimes up to 40,000 bags just to accommodate multiple blends. Slow-moving sizes, such as 250 or 500 grams, often became a long-term liability, sitting in storage for years and forcing roasters to rely on plain stock bags with stickers.
Moreover, the rigidity of large bulk orders meant roasters were locked into specific blends longer than they anticipated, stifling their ability to experiment with new origins or seasonal offerings.
The Roasters Only solution
Roasters Only believes its latest partnership brings unprecedented flexibility to Australian coffee roasters. As of late 2024, the company can now offer custom-branded coffee bags with MOQs as low as 1000 pieces, while allowing those units to be split across multiple blends.
“Previously, a roaster with four blends might have had to order 40,000 bags to brand their full range. Now, that same order can be achieved with a significantly lower buy-in. Roasters can now have their entire suite of packaging – from wholesale to retail bags – fully branded without the massive upfront investment,” says Ryan.
He says this shift empowers coffee brands in several key ways: more financial flexibility, enabling roasters to allocate resources more effectively instead of tying up capital in excessive packaging stock; great creative freedom – with lower MOQs, seasonal or limited-edition blends can now have fully branded packaging instead of generic bags with stickers; improved storage efficiency – no more sitting on years’ worth of bags; and consistency across product lines – from wholesale bulk packaging to retail-ready designs, every aspect of a roaster’s brand can be unified.
The future of coffee roasting
Since rolling out the digital print solutions, Roasters Only has seen overwhelming enthusiasm from the roasting community. Ryan says the ability to order smaller, more flexible quantities has already transformed the way many businesses approach their branding and product development.
“Gone are the days of rigid 10,000-piece MOQs. With Roasters Only, coffee roasters now have the freedom to scale at their own pace, adapt to market demands, and bring their unique brand vision to life without compromise,” he says.
“We have seen a huge uptick since our roll out of digital options. Moving from 90 per cent rotogravure printing and 10 per cent digital printing, to now 70 per cent rotogravure and 30 per cent digital with our anticipation for this to keep growing.”
For more information, visit roastersonly.com
This article appears in the 2025 MICE Showguide. Read more HERE.
