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I hope it okay to ask for suppliers on here, but while in London recently I found an online retailer who sold small quantities freshly roasted coffee beans to order, or even just green unroasted beans. I don't have the most discerning of palettes but the aroma and bean quality really did seem that much fresher and better. I wonder if there are some US suppliers that will roast fresh to order too that anyone would recommend?

I'm in Philadelphia and I will look for a local supplier too as I imagine there must be one. I eventually want to roast the beans myself though I'm a long way from doing that.

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I thought about Reading Market in Philly, and there is a roaster that sells there. oldcitycoffee.com – Doug Johnson-Cookloose Jan 28 '11 at 22:48
Closing this question because it's starting to attract spam and spam-like answers and is pretty highly localized anyway. As the top answer says, Yelp and the various local business directories are better than a Q&A site for this sort of thing. – Aaronut♦ Feb 23 at 17:14

closed as too localized by SAJ14SAJ, BaffledCook, Aaronut♦ Feb 23 at 17:14

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

3 Answers

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I'd have to imagine that in Philly there is no shortage of quality coffee roasters. You could look to Yelp, though it's hard to parse the real reviews out of the planted ones. Actually, the best advice I could give would be find a quality coffee shop, make friends with the owner, and try to glean the source of his/her coffee beans. I did that with my local barista, and found a great coffee roaster in town as a result.

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No doubt Sean, I gotta do a bit of leg work. – kelly Jan 28 '11 at 21:13
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I agree you should investigate your neighborhood more thoroughly. Just googling I found in Philadelphia La Colombe Torrefaction (whose coffees in the cafes are roasted in Philadelphia), Chestnut Hill Coffee (also roasted in shop), and Old City Coffee (again, roasted in shop).

As for online and shipped, I received a few shipments from Portola's Coffee Club, and they had good, fresh shipping (every first week of the month), decent prices, and flexibility in plans (i.e. tailoring the type of coffee you receive).

Sweetmaria's is a fantastic site with good prices, sourcing, and descriptions of what you will be buying if you are interested in buying unroasted beans. If you're ever in Columbus, OH, I would strongly recommend stopping at Brioso's downtown (fresh-roasted in the cafe, yes it's ventilated).

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+1 on Sweet Maria's. I've been getting my green beans from them for years. Don't back off of roasting your own. If you use the hot air popcorn method it is really really easy, and cheap, and, as the blog I was reading when I started said, "Your amateur roast will be better than most any other roasted bean you will find." It is cheap to start and easy to do. Go for it. The only downside is that you will, eventually, be unable to drink anyone else's coffee. – Doug Johnson-Cookloose Jan 28 '11 at 22:45
@Doug I 100% agree, that's why I couldn't not include the link. I've used the popcorn popper method on many occasions and it always yields great results and you can say, 'why yes, I do roast my own beans.' – mfg Jan 28 '11 at 23:08
mfg, what a great start. Thanks very much. I'm super close to Chestnut Hill so that will be my first stop. I put the word out to some friends locally and they recommend Joe's phillyfairtrade.com I guess he had a coffee shop but went into roasting full time and supplying Fair Trade coffee to local houses. And I was wondering why popcorn poppers where appearing in my search for roasters! I can't wait to pass that along... Thanks for all the great links and tips. – kelly Jan 30 '11 at 5:03
Yes, Sweet Maria's is the place you need to go, I'd say. Excellent service, excellent products, and very helpful. I started roasting with their help (and a thrifted hot air popper, too), and they were awesome. – franko Feb 23 at 7:30
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We are really fond of the freshly roasted beans from Peet's Coffee. When you order from them, the bags arrive with a "roasted on" date which is usually about 2-3 days before the day you get the package.

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