Jet Black Coffee Company is an all-vegan café and coffee roaster in Portland, Oregon, run by Karla and Travis, two friends who grew up in the South and have lived in the Pacific Northwest for more than twenty years. The first shop is in the Gateway District, beside Food Fight! Vegan Grocery, and the second opened in Concordia on 20 March 2023. Music runs through both. The name comes from Jawbreaker, one of Travis’s favourite bands, and the house blend, Dear You, is named after one of their albums. Some of the walls are painted jet black, under high ceilings, with big windows, art and plants.
Pastries and baked goods come from Catscratch Vegan Bakery and Jen’s Pastries, bagels from Bowery Bagels and New Cascadia, a gluten-free bakery, with Vtopian cashew cheese and cookies from Sweetpea Baking Company. The kitchen makes an “Egg & Cheese” sandwich all day, with Mama Lil’s spicy peppers and a gluten-free sausage patty as extras.
Jet Black roasts its own coffee in Portland. Dear You is a blend of Mexican and Brazilian coffees, and Unfun is a sugarcane-process decaf from Colombia. The coffee drinks use Holy Kakow organic syrups and chocolate sauce, with coconut, almond, oat and soy milk, and the baristas will mix two milks on request. Beyond coffee there is Tanglewood Beverage’s ginger spiced chai and organic teas from ohQua. Beans, T-shirts and travel mugs sell through the online shop. The current retail range is listed below.
Coffee on the shelf
Photograph: Jet Black Coffee Company