I thought about buying a supercritical CO2 extraction machine from Alibaba and having a small business around making decaf beans for roasters, but the numbers didn't work out great. I believe it was around $20k usd for the medium sized ones.
Well it's not too complex. Say $25k for the machine amortized over 5 years is about $400/mo. Let's say $500. Cost of goods would be around $7.50/lb for some nice unroasted beans. Let's say you sell for $10/lb. Fixed costs would be rent ($5k?), utilities (1k?) and whatever other costs to package etc. not even touching salaries. So at $2.50/lb revenue you'd have to process and sell 2,400 lbs per month just to break even on fixed costs. That's a lot...
