A Love Letter to Coffee Roasters ☕

Shoutout to the jingle writer who came up with “the best part of waking up, is Folgers in your cup.” Long ago, before we were all fourth-wave coffee evangelists with Chemex coffeemakers and pour-over kettles, the red plastic coffee bin was the norm. Starbucks introduced us to vanilla lattes, flat whites, and frappuccinos over time, and then Blue Bottle Coffee swooped in to bring us perfectly roasted beans with complex flavor profiles delivered by mustachioed hipsters on bikes. Blue Bottle has since detoured from Bryant Park onto practically every other street corner in San Francisco. The company sold majority ownership to Nestlé back in 2017 at a $700MM valuation.

Trends in the industry include subscription-based e-commerce retail, canned and bottled coffee beverages, infusions of coffee and healthy ingredients (like ashwagandha), and cold brew. Today, we’re praising the roasters who celebrate good beans and strong coffee.

• Nguyen is a woman-founded company bringing Vietnamese coffee and culture to the masses. The company's award-winning robusta beans pack more punch, with more caffeine than your average Arabica joe. The coffee roaster is based out of Brooklyn, New York, and offers subscription deals for its beans and Vietnamese phin coffee filter.
• Four Sigmatic makes coffee infused with mushrooms like Lion’s Mane and Chaga. For the more health-conscious coffee lovers, the company promises a jitter-free cup of coffee without the midday crash. The Santa Monica-based company has taken a mix of venture capital and a PPP loan to reach its $20MM valuation.
• Bellwether Coffee is a tech company enabling coffee shops to roast their beans in-house using an electric, fully automated roaster that looks like a modern vending machine. The company rents its coffee roasters for $1.5K a month without a long-term contract from its Berkeley, CA outpost.
• Compound Foods is removing beans from the equation, creating a coffee-esque solution using synthetic biology. Its founder, a native Costa Rican, was concerned with the sustainability of the world’s massive coffee consumption. She brought food science and coffee culture together to its San Francisco headquarters. 

For more buzz-inducing startups, check out our database using the keyword “coffee.”