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Olympia Coffee Roasting Company in Tacoma’s Proctor District. Olympia Coffee Roasting Company opens its fifth location today in the historic Proctor neighborhood in the north end of Tacoma, Washington. This is the company’s first retail location in co-owner Oliver Stormshak’s hometown and their second outside of Olympia (their shop in West Seattle opened earlier this year). Stormshak recalls visiting Tacoma cafes growing up in the 90s. “Tacoma cafes played a huge role in shaping me as a coffee professional. Temple of the Bean was my personal favorite while I was in high school,” Stormshak tells us (Temple of the Bean...

In December of 2016, Olympia Coffee Roasting Owner Oliver Stormshak made clear the company’s intention to head up I-5 into Seattle, a goal that has been realized with Olympia’s new coffee shop on California Ave. in West Seattle. It’s the fourth retail location overall for the roasting and retail company, and the first outside its home city of Olympia, Washington, where it operates its flagship roastery and cafe downtown. The new shop in West Seattle. Designed by Olympia’s The Artisans Group and featuring sustainably sourced re-milled wood products from Tumwater-based Windfall Lumber, the small neighborhood cafe includes a La Marzocco Strada AV espresso machine customized...

Olympia Coffee Transparency Report 2017 Introduction In 2017, we continued our mission to improve the quality of life for farmers in each of the origins in which we work. Every coffee we purchased in 2017 met or exceeded our Direct Trade criteria. We also began the process of documenting and following our updated sourcing protocol: Fair for All. We purchased just over 1,100 bags of coffee at an average price of $4.05 per lb. 2017 Highlights We sourced coffees from nine countries: United States, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Burundi.  In addition to our ongoing,...

At Olympia Coffee we believe that we can improve our world through coffee. We believe that everyone in the story of our coffees—from farm laborers to cafe customers and all those in between—should find satisfaction by being a part of what we do. We view ourselves as a Quality of Life company. High-quality coffee is our passion, but seeking a higher quality of life for our farmers, staff, and customers is our mission.    We've witnessed that the coffee trade at origin has the most room for improvement in this story. Both historically and currently, the global coffee trade has...

Olympia Coffee Roasting Company co-founder Sam Schroeder and director of sales Honor Forte discuss the evolution of manual brewing and Olympia Coffee’s decision to move toward automation. BY CHRIS RYANBARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE Photos by Honor Forte The latest issue of Barista Magazine includes the article “The New Slow Bar,” which discusses the evolution of manual brewing in specialty coffeehouses. Manual brewing’s resurgence in the late 2000s led to widespread adoption of many methods—from pourover to AeroPress to Clever—followed by a more nuanced relationship that many shops formed with manual brewing. Due to the potentially lengthy brewing process and erratic results of...