Oregon coffee history, decade by decade

Oregon coffee history in one paragraph

Oregon's coffee history, as far as the record goes, starts with family roasters in the early 1970s: Allann Bros in the Willamette Valley from 1972 and Kobos in Portland from 1973. Through the late 1980s and 1990s roasters and cafes opened in Sisters, Eugene, Salem, Medford, Astoria and Corvallis, and two brothers in Grants Pass turned an espresso pushcart into a chain. From 1999 Portland became a roasting city, with more than 30 roasters by 2012. Today the Roast Local directory counts 213 independent roasters in the state.

What follows is the longer version, decade by decade. It is a record of dates we could source, not a complete history. Plenty of Oregon roasters have stories we could not confirm, and they are missing here for that reason only.

The 1970s and 1980s: the family roasters

The oldest claim on our list belongs to Allan's Coffee, which started out as Allann Bros Coffee. It calls itself Oregon's oldest family-owned coffee roaster and says its cafes have served Oregonians since 1972. Its cafes are in Corvallis and Albany.

A year later, in October 1973, David and Susan Kobos began roasting in Portland. They had taught school in New York City before they moved west. Kobos is still roasting in Portland more than half a century later.

The next date we can pin down is 1981, in Hillsboro. Longbottom Coffee and Tea started roasting there that year, and it later became one of the first U.S. roasters in the USDA National Organic Program. That detail matters for Oregon: organic coffee is a thread through the state's roasting, from Longbottom to Wandering Goat's all-organic menu in Eugene decades later.

1989 to 1996: coffee spreads across the state

From the late 1980s, new roasters and cafes opened well beyond Portland and the valley towns.

• 1989, Sisters. Winfield and Joy Durham started roasting in a small log cabin with a five pound roaster. Sisters Coffee Company calls itself Central Oregon's first specialty coffee roaster, and the Durhams' sons run it now.
• 1990, Eugene. Cafe Mam began buying certified organic, fair trade, shade grown coffee directly from small cooperatives in Chiapas, Mexico.
• 1991, Salem. The Governor's Cup opened, and it calls itself Salem's longest-running coffee house and small-batch roaster.
• 1992, three corners of the state. Mellelo Coffee Roasters was established in Medford, Columbia River Coffee Roaster started roasting in Astoria, and on February 12 brothers Dane and Travis Boersma founded Dutch Bros in Grants Pass.
• 1993, Corvallis. The Coffee Culture cafe opened. Holderness Coffee Roasters grew out of it and started roasting in 2012.
• 1996, Portland. Mark Stell founded Portland Roasting Coffee Company, now Portland Coffee Roasters. Its first direct trade coffee came from the La Hilda Estate in Costa Rica.

Of all these, Dutch Bros grew the furthest: by 2025 it ran 1,002 locations, according to Wikipedia. The Boersmas' family dairy farm was struggling, and they spent $12,050 on an espresso machine and a single pushcart, which they set up in downtown Grants Pass. By 1994 they had their first drive-through. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange on September 15, 2021, and in 2025 it announced it was moving its headquarters from Grants Pass to Tempe, Arizona. It is a public company now, so we do not list it. It began as an Oregon coffee cart.

In the same decade, in Newberg, Pete Miller opened a small cafe in the garage of an old house near George Fox University. Caravan Coffee calls it one of the first coffee shops in northwest Oregon, and it has been a member of the Specialty Coffee Association of America since 1998. Newberg sits on Oregon Route 99W, about 25 miles southwest of Portland, according to Wikipedia.

1999 to 2012: Portland becomes a roasting city

In 1999 Duane Sorenson opened the first Stumptown Coffee Roasters cafe on SE Division St, in a former hair salon. Stumptown opened in Seattle in November 2007 and in New York in September 2009. Peet's bought it in 2015, so we do not list it as an independent. That same year of 1999, Portland Coffee Roasters started its first project at origin, with Finca El Paternal in Guatemala.

Coffee history also retired to Oregon. Alfred Peet, who opened the first Peet's in Berkeley, California, on April 1, 1966, moved to Ashland in 2001. He died there on August 29, 2007.

Most of the roasters we list today date from this stretch:

• 2003: Bruce and Matt Milletto, father and son, opened the American Barista and Coffee School in Portland. They later set up Water Avenue's roaster in the same building.
• 2004: Augusto Carneiro sold a container of his family's Brazilian coffee in Portland on consignment, the start of Nossa Familia. In Eugene, Wandering Goat began roasting.
• 2006: Dave Beach, who had roasted on a popcorn popper on his back porch in college, started roasting in Bend. That became Backporch.
• 2007: Jared Rennie started Noble in his garage with a Probat L12 roaster. He opened the Ashland coffeehouse and roastery in the Railroad District in May 2009.
• 2008: Matt Higgins started Coava in his North Portland garage, fixing motorcycles on the side to keep it going. The first cafe, on SE Grand Ave, opened in 2010.
• 2009: a crowded year. Lone Pine opened in Tin Pan Alley in downtown Bend. Heart opened on East Burnside. Water Avenue began roasting near the Willamette on a 1974 Samiac roaster. Trailhead started roasting, and its Guatemala has been its most popular coffee ever since.
• 2012: Marty Lopes started Roseline in October as a small wholesale roaster on SE 10th Ave. Nossa Familia opened a roasting facility in the Pearl District.

By February 2012 The New York Times counted more than 30 roasters in Portland. That year the Specialty Coffee Association of America brought its annual convention, billed as the largest coffee industry gathering in the world, to the Oregon Convention Center.

2013 to today: more roasters, new owners

New roasters kept opening outside Portland. Flag & Wire was founded in McMinnville in 2013, the same year Watershed started roasting on the Deschutes in downtown Bend and Coffee Plant Roaster opened in Eugene. Lionheart followed in Beaverton in 2015. Still Vibrato moved its roastery from Portland to Bend in 2016. In 2017 Bohemian Roastery began wood-fire roasting in Bend, and Paul Thornton, in coffee since 1982, founded Thornton Family Coffee Roasters in Beaverton with his daughter Rachel.

The established roasters grew up. In 2018 the U.S. Small Business Administration named Coava's Matt Higgins its Oregon Small Business Person of the Year, and Food and Wine named Noble the best coffee in Oregon, an honor it repeated in 2022. Nossa Familia opened a zero waste cafe at Seven Corners in summer 2018. In 2020 former Boston Red Sox player Kevin Youkilis opened the Loma Coffee Company roastery in Portland.

Some roasters changed hands. Water Avenue was sold to Harder Day Coffee in August 2024. Others shared the load: in 2022 Sterling, Spella Caffe and Cascadia Coffee Roasters announced plans to share one production facility in northeast Portland so each could grow.

The newest date on our list is from this year. McMinnville's Mikava Coffee lists a 2026 Good Food Awards win for its Gesha Hybrid.

Key dates at a glance

What the timeline means for your next bag

Read the dates again and a pattern shows. Most of Oregon's roasters started small: a log cabin, a garage, a back porch, a container of a family's coffee sold one account at a time. They lasted because people nearby kept buying. Sisters Coffee is still one family's business after more than three decades. Backporch now employs more than 40 people in Central Oregon.

That is the plain case for buying from them now. The money pays roasting and cafe wages in Oregon towns, the coffee travels a short way, and you can find the person who roasted it. Why local roasters matter makes the longer argument. For a map of who roasts where today, start at the Oregon coffee hub or the Oregon roasters list.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Coffee in Portland, Oregon (the 2012 roaster count, the 2012 SCAA convention, Loma Coffee in 2020)
• Wikipedia: Stumptown Coffee Roasters (1999 opening, Seattle and New York, the 2015 sale)
• Wikipedia: Dutch Bros. (1992 founding, the pushcart, 1994 drive-through, 2021 listing, 2025 headquarters move)
• Wikipedia: Alfred Peet (Berkeley in 1966, Ashland in 2001 and 2007)
• Wikipedia: Newberg, Oregon (Route 99W and the distance from Portland)
• Roast Local, roasters by state (213 Oregon roasters, pulled September 2026)
• Founding dates for Allan's, Kobos, Longbottom, Cafe Mam, The Governor's Cup, Mellelo, Columbia River Coffee Roaster, Holderness, Caravan, Flag & Wire, Watershed, Coffee Plant, Lionheart, Still Vibrato, Bohemian, Thornton and Mikava come from each roaster's own pages, read in September 2026. Details for the roasters we list are on their profiles.