Starting a Coffee or Tea Brand on Shopify in India
Coffee and tea look like simple products to sell online. They are light, they ship well, and customers reorder. But they are food, so FSSAI rules apply from the first pack, coffee blended with chicory has its own labelling rule, and a tea brand that buys directly from estates or auctions can need a Tea Board registration. This guide covers the compliance first, then the Shopify setup that makes a coffee or tea brand work: grind variants, freshness, subscriptions and product pages.
Regulatory details are from the FSSAI order of 13 March 2026 on turnover thresholds, an FSSAI press release of 1 April 2022 on coffee-chicory labelling, and the Tea (Marketing) Control Order, 2003 as updated to 2024 and published by the Tea Board. All checked on 5 November 2026. This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm your own case with FSSAI, the Tea Board or a food licensing consultant.
Do you need an FSSAI licence to sell coffee or tea online?
Yes. Coffee and tea are food, and every food business in India needs either an FSSAI registration or a licence. Selling from your own Shopify store does not remove that. What changes is which one you need.
By an FSSAI order dated 13 March 2026, effective from 1 April 2026, the turnover bands are:
| Type | Turnover band from 1 April 2026 |
|---|---|
| Registration | Up to Rs 1.5 crore |
| State licence | Above Rs 1.5 crore and up to Rs 50 crore |
| Central licence | Above Rs 50 crore |
Turnover is not the only test. Activity matters too. A roaster, a blender, a repacker and a brand that only sells a co-packer's product have different obligations, and some activities sit in the central licence category regardless of turnover. Our post on selling food from your own Shopify store explains the licence categories and the FoSCoS eligibility check in more detail. Run your exact activities through it before you apply.
Sort out who holds which licence before you design packaging. If a roaster or co-packer makes your product, both of you have obligations, and the licence number printed on the pack has to be the right one.
What labelling rule applies to coffee with chicory?
This is the coffee-specific rule founders most often miss. An FSSAI press release dated 1 April 2022 says the FSS (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations, 2011 "clearly specifies standards for Coffee and Coffee-Chicory mixtures separately", and that "every package containing a mixture of coffee and chicory shall declare on its label the percentage content of Coffee and Chicory."
The same release says FSSAI examined 42 active centrally licensed coffee-chicory manufacturers and found 13 compliant and 29 non-compliant. So this is a rule FSSAI checks.
For a D2C brand that means three things:
- A filter coffee blend with chicory must show the coffee and chicory percentages on the pack, and your product page should show the same figures.
- Do not describe a chicory blend as pure coffee anywhere on the site, including in product titles, collection names and ads.
- FSSAI has since revised how the coffee-chicory declaration must be presented on the pack. Check the current format and its compliance date with your food consultant before you print packaging.
For everything else on the label, Regulation 4(2) of the FSS (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020 says that when food is sold through e-commerce, the mandatory label information must be provided to the consumer before sale. Your product page has to do the job the pack does on a shelf.
Photo: Guillaume Paumier via Flickr, CC BY 2.0
Does a tea brand need Tea Board registration?
It depends on where you buy your tea. The Tea (Marketing) Control Order, 2003, in the consolidated version updated to 2024 on the Tea Board website, says no buyer shall carry on buying tea "from any public tea auction licensed by Tea Board or directly from manufacturer of tea" except under a valid registration.
The definition of buyer is what decides it. The Order defines a buyer as a person or business with a place of business in tea in India that purchases or procures tea from public tea auctions or directly from tea manufacturers. It then excludes "those who buy only instant tea and other value added products of tea viz., tea bags, packet tea, flavoured tea" and "secondary buyers who do not source their teas either from auctions or from manufacturers".
In practice:
| How you source | What the Order suggests |
|---|---|
| You buy loose tea at auction or directly from an estate factory | You are likely a buyer and need registration |
| You buy finished packet tea or tea bags and sell them under your brand | Excluded from the buyer definition |
| You buy from a trader who sourced it at auction | Likely a secondary buyer, excluded |
| You manufacture tea in your own factory | Separate manufacturer registration applies |
The consolidated Order lists an application fee of Rs 9,000 for buyer registration and Rs 1,20,000 for registration of a manufacturing unit. Confirm the current fee with the Tea Board when you apply. For coffee, ask the Coffee Board whether anything applies to your activity, particularly if you plan to export.
How should you set up grind and pack size variants?
Coffee brands usually sell the same roast as whole beans and several grinds, in two or three pack sizes. Tea brands sell leaf grades, formats such as loose leaf and tea bags, and pack sizes. Keep the structure simple:
- One product per coffee or tea, so reviews, story and tasting notes stay together.
- Variants for grind or format and pack weight. These change stock and usually price, so they belong as variants.
- A grind guide next to the selector: which grind suits a French press, a moka pot, a pour over, South Indian filter or espresso. Wrong-grind orders are one of the most common avoidable complaints for coffee stores.
- Collections by brew method and taste, not just by origin. Most buyers know how they make coffee better than they know which estate they like.
If you grind to order, your stock is beans, not grinds. In that case the grind is better captured as a product option on the order rather than as separate stock-tracked variants, otherwise you will show one grind as sold out while the beans sit in the warehouse.
How do you show roast dates and freshness honestly?
Freshness is the main reason specialty coffee buyers come to a brand's own website instead of a marketplace. Show it properly:
- Roast date for coffee, pack date for tea. If you roast weekly, say which day and when an order placed today will be roasted.
- Best before, from the pack. Do not round it up on the website. The date marking on your pack and any claim on your site must agree.
- Shipping time to tier 2 and tier 3 towns. A pack roasted on Monday that arrives eight days later is not the freshness you advertised. Our shipping aggregator guide covers courier choice by region.
Store roast day, tasting notes, origin, process, altitude and brew methods as metafields, not as free text in the description. That keeps every product page consistent and lets you build filters such as "for filter coffee" or "low acidity".
Do subscriptions work for coffee and tea brands in India?
They can, and they suit the category better than most. A customer who drinks the same coffee every morning does not want to reorder manually. But subscriptions in India have their own payment questions, mainly around recurring card and UPI mandates, and the subscription app you choose has to work with your payment gateway. Our guide to subscriptions on Shopify in India covers the payment side and the app choice.
What we would set up for a coffee or tea subscription:
- Frequency choices that match consumption. Offer two, three and four weeks for coffee, and let the customer change it.
- Easy skip and pause. A customer who can skip a delivery from the account page stays subscribed. One who has to email you cancels.
- Roast timed to the renewal date, so subscription orders get the freshest stock rather than the oldest.
- A reason to stay that is not only a discount, such as first access to limited lots or a free sample of a new roast.
What should a coffee or tea product page show?
A practical checklist, built from the label rules and from what buyers ask:
- Name of the food showing its true nature, for example "Filter coffee, coffee 80% and chicory 20%" where it is a blend.
- Ingredients, including every herb, spice and flavouring in a blended or flavoured tea.
- Nutritional information where your label carries it, and the veg logo.
- FSSAI logo and licence or registration number, also in the site footer.
- Manufacturer or brand owner name and address, net quantity, MRP and consumer care details, as Legal Metrology rules require. Our Legal Metrology guide lists them.
- Roast or pack date policy, best before, grind or format, and brew guide.
One last rule for marketing copy. Health claims such as "boosts immunity" or "burns fat" on a tea product page are a fast way into trouble with FSSAI and the advertising code. If the claim is not on your approved label, keep it off the website.
Launching a coffee or tea brand on Shopify?
Free coffee and tea store review. Get in touch or email hello@exactwhy.com with the subject "Coffee Tea Store Review" and your store URL or launch plan. Tell us what you sell, where you source it and who roasts or packs it. We reply within 4 hours with the label, product page and subscription gaps we see, and the questions to take to your food licensing consultant.
If you go ahead. We build your Shopify store with FSSAI label fields, grind and format variants, a brew guide, roast date messaging and a subscription setup that works with your payment gateway. We quote the build after the review, once we know your range and fulfilment, and ongoing store support is available on a monthly retainer.