portland micro roasters fueling the local economy (p3)

Photo by Jelani Memory

As the weather turns colder and wetter and the days shorter and darker, it’s time for Portlanders to cozy up at coffee shops with a hot beverage loaded with caffeine. Therefore, it’s also appropriate to spotlight Portland's coffee culture, specifically our local micro roasters who are small businesses producing small batch, crafted coffees and sharing them in their own coffee houses as well as cafes across town.

Why frequent corporate coffee chains when every quadrant of this city features not only an abundance of local coffee shops but also locales where you can see your beans roasted before they become your brew?

With more than 30 local micro roasters in Portland, here are a couple more local alternatives to Starbucks that support local and in turn energize our economy through collaboration.

Sterling Coffee Roasters + Coffeehouse Northwest

Making his home in NW Portland, micro coffee roaster Adam McGovern is the man behind two compact coffee shops: Coffeehouse Northwest, which began in 2007, and Sterling Coffee Roasters, which opened on Valentine's Day 2010 as a 50-square-foot stand next to Trader Joe's on NW Glisan Street. But as the grocer looked to expand, McGovern teamed up with friend Jeremy Campbell, who owns the equally petite M Bar around the corner, and moved into a newly devised collaborative location on Father's Day 2012.

While we've loosely used the word "collaboration" in this series to signify local businesses and individuals supporting one another, whether that's selling local baked goods or featuring artists on coffee shop walls, McGovern likes to "reserve the word ‘collaboration’ for times where we work in some equal capacity with another business or individual to produce a good or service we both offer at a retail level, or at least to which we both supply branding.”

With that in mind, McGovern and Campbell’s shared space is truly collaborative and decidedly unique. Sterling is open each morning and afternoon while M Bar takes over each night.

“Because the space is so small,” McGovern explains, “Sterling will set up and break down the entire service area, except for the espresso machine, every day.”

From a handshake to a sublease and lease negotiation, the process “ultimately strengthened our commitment to working together,” McGovern says. “The lease gave us a chance to consider every aspect of the partnership and to codify the ways in which we'll support each other.”

Another Sterling collaboration includes the Coffee Roasters United project “where several small roasters pool buying power to purchase micro-lot coffees each could not afford on their own,” McGovern explains. Partners include Portland coffee shops and roasters like Red E Café, Case Study Coffee, Seven Virtues, and Clive Coffee.

But, there’s one other venture that McGovern would also consider, by his definition, a collaboration—and it has nothing to do with coffee. Sterling recently launched a “line of men's and women's ties, designed for us by Crispin Argento of PINO,” McGovern says. “We hope to continue collaborating with designers to produce apparel and accessories as we grow.”

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Read the rest on Sterling and Coffeehouse Northwest plus Coava Coffee Roasters on Neighborhood Notes.

portland micro roasters fueling the local economy (p2)

Proudly spotlighting Portland's coffee culture, we published a roundup of local micro roasters last month.

Hopefully a full month has given you time to visit each Courier, Ristretto and Stumptown location, but now it's time for the second installment in our micro roaster series.

Why frequent corporate coffee chains when every quadrant of this city features not only an abundance of local coffee shops but also locales where you can see your beans roasted before they become your brew?

With some 30 local micro roasters in Portland, here are a few more local alternatives to Starbucks.

Heart

Leave it to a Finnish pro snowboarder to stop seeking adventure on the slopes and start one of SE Portland's most beloved coffee shops and roasteries. In 2009, an inexplicable love for coffee fueled Wille Yli-Luoma with more thrill than riding big mountains, and he put his energies into opening Heart. Alongside wife Rebekah, the need to take risks and face the unknown manifested itself in the business of coffee roasting, and the Yli-Luoma's have succeeded as an integral part of Portland's collaborative coffee culture.

"Collaborating with other local businesses is a great way to develop a stronger sense of community and economy," Rebekah Yli-Luoma says. "On one level of collaborating, we serve baked goods and sandwiches that come from local businesses across the city: Bakeshop, Florio, Fressen, Lauretta Jean's (kiosk), and Meat Cheese Bread. Each of these businesses compliment Heart coffee and we stand behind each of them. We also use Sunshine local dairy.

"On another level, Heart has recently worked with Holden. We are both locally owned and operated companies that aim to bring the best product to our consumers that we can." The superior snowboarding outerwear designers recently teamed up with the micro roasters to create an environmentally conscious coffee from sustainable Brazilian farms packaged in "the first biodegradable, one-way valve coffee bags available in the Pacific Northwest," according to Transworld Snowboarding.

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Read the rest on Heart plus other PDX micro roasters, including Extracto and Cellar Door, on Neighborhood Notes.

portland micro roasters fueling the local economy (p1)

Portland's micro coffee roasters and our D.I.Y. spirit in the press is nothing new. And last week The New York Times' travel section gave another tip of the hat to what it called Portland's "D.I.Y. coffee culture."

Did The NYT cover a few of our great, local micro roasters? Yes.

But our D.I.Y. coffee culture? Not so much.

As Mr. Green Beans, Portland's "Do-It-Yourself destination" where you can learn to roast your own beans or take classes from coffee coaches, was quick to humorously point out via Facebook:

Not sure how they are defining D.I.Y.! The only roasters mentioned are commercial roasters. Really good roasters, Sterling Coffee Roasters, Coava, and Heart, but they produce coffee for others, not really the idea behind do-it-yourself. Maybe 'buying your own' is how they define D.I.Y. in New York.

Still, being the proud Portlanders that we are, it's nice to see some of our local favorites noticed by one of our nation's most prestigious news outlets. But beyond the rich coffee and trendy culture, there's a better reason for all this back patting.

The New York Times taking note of Portland micro roasters highlights another facet of our robust, small businesses community—one that not only fuels our city with java but also economically. And, you too can stimulate our local economy with your money, voting with your dollars by supporting local coffee roasters rather than corporate coffee like Starbucks.

It'd be quite a task to feature them all (one count put the list at more than 30 local micro roasters), but we have to start somewhere. So, here are three Portland micro roasters with coffee shops that support local and in turn energize our economy through collaboration.

And, must we say it again? Each is a superior, local alternative to Starbucks.

Courier

Local and sustainable (it's called Courier because most deliveries are made by bicycle!) have been fundamental practices for Courier roaster Joel Domreis for eight years. Even though the coffee beans may come from afar, all of the shop's baked goods are made from scratch on-site using as many locally sourced products as possible—except the bananas, of course. Fresh produce often comes from the PSU Farmers Market and includes what's in season (strawberries, blueberries, cranberries, mushrooms), honey from Sauvie Island, and other ingredients from around the northwest, like Shepherd's Grain flour or organic products from Portland's Dovetail Bakery and GloryBee Foods in Eugene.

The shop also support local artists, whether that's featuring prints from rotating artists, hosting small events, or letting friends sell items, like the Pendleton wool mason jar koozies currently available. Courier's traditional brown coffee cups may be exported from Italy, but "we've been getting batches of cups from [local ceramic artist] Gretchen [Vaudt] for a year and a half," Domreis says. And the Oregon-harvested, walnut bar came from "no more than 100 miles away," according to Domreis.

With almost 100 regular wholesale clients, Domreis' product never leaves the city of Portland. You can find his joe at some 15 bars, restaurants and coffee shops and more than a handful of private businesses, but most of his clientele are individuals and Domreis' bike delivery team will leave a fresh bag of beans on your doorstep if you'd like. Those custom cargo bikes and parts come from the Eugene-based Center for Appropriate Transport while Courier itself tries to support other roasters by servicing espresso machines.

"People know that we have parts inventory for certain things, so other roasters and other owners of businesses will call me up to borrow things," Domreis explains. "We're going out and helping other people out with their equipment problems."

Courier is currently helping the local economy by employing seven people, creating seven local jobs—two part-time and the rest full—and making those jobs as busy and sustainable as possible. Without much money for an advertising budget or extraneous operating costs, Courier does what it can to save money on its own.

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Read the rest on Courier plus other PDX micro roasters, including Stumptown Coffee and Ristretto Roasters, on Neighborhood Notes.