Our story
Twelve years of
roasting one bag at a time.
We started with a trailer, a loaned grinder and a slightly optimistic plan. What we kept was the part that mattered: knowing the people who grow what we roast.
- Roasting since
- 2014
- Farm partners
- 38
- Kg roasted / yr
- 31k
- Neighborhood cafés
- 04
Nadia & Theo
Founders & roasters
It began as a favour for a friend's bakery.
In 2014 we were roasting on a borrowed 5kg drum in a garage off Alberta, mostly because a baker down the street couldn't find a house coffee she liked. Word spread faster than we could keep up with, and by the end of that year we were selling bags out of a bike trailer every Saturday.
The roastery came next, then the first café on Alder in 2017 — a narrow room with twelve seats and a bar that faces the street. We still roast on the same block, still cup every batch three times, and still buy whole harvests so a farmer can plan a season instead of a shipment.
What's changed is scale, not method. Twelve kilos a batch. Four days of rest. One ratio we trust. If a cup isn't right, it doesn't leave the bar.
"We never wanted to be the biggest roaster in Portland. We wanted to be the one people walk to."
The long version
A few dates that stuck.
-
2014
A garage, a drum, a trailer
First roast on a borrowed 5kg Probat. Bags sold from a bike trailer on Alberta every Saturday morning.
-
2017
The Alder Street bar opens
Twelve seats, one espresso machine, and a queue that wrapped the block on the first weekend.
-
2019
Our first direct harvest
We bought the whole lot from Finca La Esperanza in Huila — 42 bags, paid before harvest, at nearly double the commodity price.
-
2021
The 12kg Loring arrives
More control, less smoke, and finally enough capacity to supply the wholesale accounts we'd been turning down.
-
2024
Cup-loan program & refill tins
A deposit cup you can return to any café, plus tins that take 20% off every refill. 18,000 cups kept out of landfill so far.
-
2026
Four cafés, same bar
Alberta, Hawthorne and Slabtown joined the family — each with the same menu, the same beans, and its own regulars.
Three things we won't trade away.
Written on the roastery wall in 2016 and still true.
Pay for the work
Transparent contracts, pre-harvest payment, and a published price floor. Coffee is agricultural work before it's a beverage.
Roast for the bean
No house profile stamped onto every origin. Each lot gets its own curve, cupped three times before it reaches the shelf.
Leave it lighter
Compostable bags, reusable tins, a cup-loan scheme, and spent grounds free by the door for anyone's garden.
Behind the bar
The people who'll remember your order.
Nadia Okafor
Co-founder · Roast
Green buyer and head roaster. Will talk about fermentation for as long as you'll listen.
Theo Hale
Co-founder · Cafés
Runs the bars, the build-outs and the playlist. Believes a café is furniture plus attention.
Priya Shah
Head barista · Alder
Two-time Northwest Latte Art finalist. Ask her for the V60 recommendation — she's never wrong.
Luis Marín
Bakery lead
In at 4:30am, laminated dough by five. The cardamom buns are his, and he knows it.
Better over a cup.
Come by any of the four bars, or read what we've been writing about on the journal.