Transparency Report 2023

Introduction to Vote Coffee 2023

The year 2023 was very different for us here at Vote. Our focus and values didn't change but restructuring our entire work environment became necessary.

At the end of 2022, together with Populus Coffee and Jules, we founded and launched the co-roasting facility Communal Coffee. Particularly Philipp, our founder of Vote Coffee, helped to get it up and running. This included all the organisational work around a new roastery, the challenges of a co-roastery, as well as the financial parts to fund the roastery.

The co-roastery came about thanks to our organic growth over the years. We were quickly outgrowing our space at Markthalle Neun in Berlin, Kreuzberg.

Our small team manoeuvred through many challenges during the year. We faced a lot of physical and organisational tasks while maintaining our workflow and consistency in roasting.

We realise we are quite late to publish our Transparency Report for 2023, but better late than never! For our fourth consecutive annual Transparency Report we decided to simplify the numbers and focus on internal data. Please feel free to reach out for any further questions.

Key Stats for 2023

Total Green Coffee Purchased (kg) 25.282
Total Green Coffee Used (kg) 25.220
Total Roasted Coffee (kg) 21.794
Total Cost of Green Coffee Purchased 215.445 €
No. of Lots purchased 47
No. of Origin Countries 13
Average Price Paid by Vote per kg 8,48 €
Average C-Market Closing Price in 2023 (USD/lb) 1,65
Total Revenue of Roasted Coffee (netto) 516.295 €

 

Our values when purchasing green coffee did not change. We sourced our core coffees from Brazil, Ethiopia and Colombia with the same importing partners we've worked with for many years now. We bought coffees in small amounts from different Importers to widen our portfolio and explore new origins. 

Have a look at all our purchased green coffee in 2023

General Finances of Vote 2023

Our numbers and finances reflect our expenses for the year 2023. We've collected all the numbers from our bookkeeping. 

  • Staff costs
    • Laurel - Green sourcing, Headroaster (full time - 3300€ brutto)
    • David - Production roaster, Quality Control (full time - 2500€ brutto)
    • Philipp - General manger, Sales, Communication (full time - 3.500€ brutto)
    • Angel - Production manager, Logistics (half time - brutto 1.300€ brutto)
    • Mars - Roaster, Quality Control from August on (half time - 2500€ brutto)
    • Javi -Bookkeeping / Accounting (Freelance - 600€)
  • Roastery Running Costs
    • Roasting Membership at Communal Coffee
    • Costs of our big move into the new space
  • Coffee tax which is 2,19€ / kg
  • Machinery for clients
    • We help our wholesale partners with purchasing equipment for their café set up. Espresso machine, grinder and else
  •  Packaging
    • We bought our packaging material mainly from Dutch Coffee Pack
    • Boxes and Cartonage for shipping
    • All our labels came mainly from WirMachenDruck
  • Beratung / Accounting
    • Costs for an official tax office for the annual financial statements to the financial department
  • Logistics
    • Costs for green coffee pallet deliveries
    • Costs for deliveries to wholesale partners in Berlin
    • Costs for national and international deliveries with carriers like DHL or UPS
  • Software
    • Our roasting software of choice is Cropster
    • Internal communicational channels is Slack
    • Webshop costs for Shopify and third party apps
  • Marketing
    • Photographer costs
    • Materials like cards, posters, stickers
  • Events
    • Coffee caterings where we serve coffee
    • Set up costs like rentals
    • Cups and Milk
  • Communication & Trips
    • We have two company phones
    • In 2023 David went to Rwanda with Raw Material
    • We also went all together as a team to the World of Coffee in Athens
  • Finance taxes
    • Business taxes (Gewerbesteuer)
    • corporate income tax (Körperschaftssteuer)
  • Contracted Coffees
    • Purchased but unused coffees (contracted / pre-financed)
  • Communal Coffee / Loan repayments
    • Vote is founder of Communal Coffee
    • Initial investments into the company and facility
    • Loan repayments to our bank (GLS Bank)

 

Expenses / Income Overview

Here are our final overview / business numbers:

 Overall income

654.422 €

Overall expenses

610.363 €

Profits 2023

44.059 €

General margin

6.73 %

 

Summary

Vote was founded in Summer 2016. Our business practices have always focused on creating an equitable and transparent value chain. We want to showcase the reality of a specialty coffee roastery business.

We use this tool to share information, hold ourselves accountable and ask ourselves what is our general impact in the coffee industry. We are highly aware that flaws exist in our practices and there's always room for improvement! Nonetheless, the trust that we have gained from our business partners and customers over the years gives us confidence and strengthens our belief that we have chosen a good path.

The year 2023 was the first year of our existence that we had a decline in sales. We faced economic struggle, inflation and trade issues due to war, political unrest and climate issues. Our profits were used to create financial resilience.

Please feel free to reach out with questions or suggestions regarding our work. We wouldn't be who we are without the curiosity and opinions of fellow coffee lovers.

Philipp and Team Vote

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