One drum, a corner of Southeast Portland, and a stubborn idea.
That coffee should taste like the place it came from, and that the people who roast it should be the people you can call.
A roaster in the back of a borrowed bakery.
Dana Mercer started Ravenwood in 2014 with a five-pound sample roaster crammed into the back of a friend's bakery off Hawthorne. The first customers were neighbors who could smell the roast from the sidewalk and knocked on the door asking for a bag.
The bakery turned into a small storefront, the storefront turned into a real roastery, and the one drum turned into a route that now serves cafes across the city. What never changed was the batch size, the cupping table, and the rule that nothing ships unless it tastes right.
A decade, told in milestones.
First roast
Dana fires up a five-pound sample roaster in the back of a Hawthorne bakery and sells the first bags to neighbors.
Our own roastery
Ravenwood moves into a dedicated space in Southeast Portland and adds its first production drum.
First wholesale partner
Alder & Oak Cafe puts Raven's Roost on the bar. The weekly delivery route is born.
Direct relationships
We begin buying select lots through direct and importer relationships built on repeat visits and fair pricing.
Forty cafes and counting
Ravenwood now supplies more than forty cafes, bakeries, and grocers across the Portland metro, still roasting five pounds at a time.
Fair to the farmer, honest in the cup.
We pay above commodity for the lots we buy, and we go back to the same producers year after year. Good coffee is grown by people, and the price has to make sense for them or the whole thing falls apart.
We are not chasing trophies. We are chasing coffee that makes someone's morning better and a cafe owner's job easier. That is the bar we measure ourselves against.
"I never wanted to be the biggest roaster in Portland. I wanted to be the one people trust to get it right. Ten years in, that is still the only goal."Ravenwood Coffee