Grounds & Grace started in 2016 with two people who believed that specialty coffee in Portland deserved better. Better sourcing, better transparency, better hospitality. Eight years later, we still believe exactly that.
Mae Chen had been roasting at home for six years. Marcus Webb had been managing cafés for four. In 2016, they converted Marcus's garage in Northeast Portland into a roasting space and opened a window to the street to sell coffee on weekends.
The first bag they sold was a Kenya Kirinyaga that Mae had sourced directly from a farmer she'd been in email contact with for two years. That directness — that relationship — is still the basis of everything we do.
The garage is long gone. The three cafés are real. The Sunday roasting sessions with music playing too loud are still very much a thing.
Our oldest partnership. Washed and natural lots from a cooperative of 200+ smallholder farmers. Consistently the most floral, brightest coffees we roast.
Direct relationship with the Lasso family since 2018. They experiment with fermentation — some of the most interesting processing we've seen anywhere.
The coffee that started it all. Double-washed AA grade from the Gikanda Farmer's Cooperative. Complex, assertive, unforgettable.
High-altitude lots from indigenous Mayan farmers. Rich body, chocolatey, excellent for espresso. One of our most popular for the house blend.
Natural process from a family farm we've been buying from since 2020. Lower acidity, full body, perfect for decaf processing. Also the base for our cold brew.
A volcanic, high-altitude farm growing Bourbon and Pacamara varieties. The Pacamara lots are amongst the most distinctive coffees we've ever tasted.
We roast on a 12kg Probat drum roaster in our Northeast Portland facility, five mornings a week. Everything you buy in our cafés was roasted within 48 hours of it hitting the bar.
We don't roast dark. Dark roasting hides the origin character that we spent years sourcing. We roast light to medium, always chasing the flavour in the bean rather than the flavour of the roast.
We buy directly from farms or from trusted importers with direct trade relationships. No commodity coffee. No mystery origins.
We roast 5 mornings a week. Everything in our cafés is within 48 hours of the roaster. We don't sit on old stock.
Three locations in Portland neighbourhoods we care about. Wholesale to cafés we believe in. Events that bring people together.