What counts as COGS for a coffee or subscription box brand

For measuring POAS, "cost of goods" means every cost that scales with each order you sell. Ad spend is not included, because it's the other side of the ratio. For a coffee brand, the biggest input is green coffee, and its price moves with weather, harvests and futures markets rather than with anything you control.

The price of green coffee

The figure above is the International Coffee Organization's composite indicator price for green (unroasted) coffee: 287.29 US cents per pound on average in August 2026, effectively unchanged from July. Even a flat month hides movement. The ICO's August report describes a mid-month rally on El Niño concerns and tight arabica supplies, reversed as favourable rainfall in Brazil eased the pressure.

The composite covers four groups of coffee: Colombian Milds, Other Milds, Brazilian Naturals and Robustas. Some groups cost much more than the composite. In the same month, Colombian Milds averaged 387.46 cents per pound and Other Milds 361.31. A roaster buying specialty arabica pays its importer's price, not the composite, so treat the figure above as a direction of travel, not your cost.

What goes in

Cost	Count it?	Why
Green coffee, at your importer's price	Yes	The base of unit cost
Weight lost in roasting	Yes	You pay for green weight, and sell roasted weight
Roasting labour and energy	Yes	Per batch, spread per bag
Bags with degassing valves, labels	Yes	Per unit
Other box contents in curated boxes	Yes	Every item in the box is a cost of that order
Shipping box and postage per delivery	Yes	Paid on every renewal
Payment processing fees	Yes	A share of every order
Subscription discounts	No, they lower revenue	Counting them as cost double-counts them
Roaster equipment and cupping	No	Fixed costs and overhead
Google Ads spend	No	It's what POAS divides by

Building one bag's cost

Postage on every renewal is why coffee subscriptions live or die on shipping cost. On a single bag, it can cost more than the coffee.

Three levels of accuracy

Selvra OS works with three tiers of cost data and shows which one a figure is based on.

T1: one flat margin (labelled "estimated")

One percentage for the whole range. This is workable for a single-origin roaster selling one bag size. It misleads once multiple origins, bag sizes and curated boxes sit together.

T2: margin by category (labelled "approximate")

A margin per product type: single origins, blends, bag sizes, curated boxes. Origins can differ widely in green price, so they deserve separate categories.

T3: cost per product (labelled "verified" once synced)

Shopify's Cost per item field, per variant, read directly. Update it when you buy a new lot of green coffee, since each lot can arrive at a different price.

Common COGS mistakes in coffee

• Costing green coffee at roasted weight. Roasting loses weight, so you need more green coffee than the bag holds.
• Leaving postage out. It is paid on every renewal.
• Setting Cost per item once. Green prices move; your costs should follow each new lot.