Beyond the Roast Episode 1: What Cropster Announced and What Is Coming Next

On May 21, 2026, Cropster CEO and Co-Founder Andreas Idl hosted the first session of the Beyond the Roast series, a live walkthrough of the Cropster Coffee Productivity Platform. Here is what was covered.

The Platform Is Not a Replacement. It Is an Expansion

Cropster started with roasting and quality control. That is not changing. What is changing is everything around it. The platform now covers the full chain from green contracts and production planning to order fulfillment and cafe operations. The goal is a single source of truth across every step of the coffee process, connected to the machines, teams, and business systems roasteries already use. 

Green Coffee Contract Management

One of the most significant new additions is the Green Coffee Contract Management. Roasteries can now manage spot, forward, and futures contracts in one place with document uploads, event tracking, shipping information, and forward traceability linked to green inventory lots in Cropster.

The standout feature is an AI PDF uploader. When a contract arrives as a PDF or scanned image, the uploader extracts the relevant data points automatically and populates the fields. No manual data entry. The first version releases next month, with cost tracking and supplier management following over the summer.

Advanced Planning

Minimum Stock Levels are already live; roasteries can set a floor for each finished goods SKU (stock keeping unit), and the platform generates production orders based on real demand and current inventory. Packaging orders are also live.

Coming in June: non-coffee inventory and Bills of Material management. This means bags, labels, valves, and other consumables will be managed in the same system as roasted goods with minimum lead times, reorder alerts, and automatic connection to the production plan. By the end of the year, the full advanced planning suite will be in place, covering everything from green contracts to packaged coffee in one connected view.

API

Released in February, Cropster’s Business Systems Connectivity (API) has seen rapid adoption, roughly one new company connecting per day. Roasteries are using it to sync order data from web shops, pull inventory figures automatically for month-end finance reporting, and connect ERPs and CRM systems without manual data entry.

The proof is concrete. Tasty Coffee eliminated the need to copy data between Cropster and their financial systems, saving approximately two days per week. If you want to understand the full cost of disconnected systems, the Admin Tax whitepaper covers exactly that.

Cropster Cafe

The Cafe platform was revamped last year and now connects espresso machines and POS systems into a single view across locations. Roasteries and cafe operators use it to track quality consistency, identify waste, and build the data foundation for growth.

Meron, a specialty coffee chain in Romania, identified €2,000 per month in unnecessary waste at a single location in the first days of use: coffee brewed but never sold, now visible and actionable for the first time.

What Comes Next

Episode 1 was the overview. The next two sessions go deeper into the specific modules.

On May 27, Ellis Cookson walks through Minimum Stock Levels and production planning in detail. On June 10, Ellis returns to cover non-coffee inventory and Bills of Material.

If you missed Episode 1, the recording is available. If you want to see the next releases in practice, the next two sessions are worth your time.