Stumptown Coffee Roasters was founded in Portland, Oregon, in 1999. Its first café opened that year in a former beauty parlour called Hair Bender, and founder Duane Sorenson gave the name to the house espresso blend, which is still the espresso in every Stumptown café. The original sign hangs in the Portland roastery. Stumptown started with one employee, a Ford Pinto for deliveries and a single small vintage Probat, and it still roasts on Probats, several of them refurbished vintage machines.

In 2003 Stumptown began buying directly from the Aguirre family of Finca El Injerto in Guatemala, the first of its Direct Trade relationships. Prices are tied to cup quality, assessed by Q-grading, and a coffee is called Direct Trade only after three consecutive years of buying from the same producer. More than 90 per cent of the coffee it bought in 2025 came through such relationships, and Enveritas verified every purchase against 30 sustainability criteria. Long-standing partners include Haile Gebre’s Mordecofe in Guji, Ethiopia, since 2006, and the women-led Ketiara Cooperative in Aceh, Sumatra, since 2013.

The original café, Division, is still the flagship. Portland also has the Downtown café, opened in 2003 and the largest, with rotating shows from Stumptown’s Artist Fellowship series; a café in the West End, opened in April 2024 with Japandi-inspired interiors; and cafés at Portland International Airport. In New York, the café in the lobby of the Ace Hotel in Midtown opened in 2009, and the Greenwich Village café, opened in 2013, fills the former Eighth Street Bookshop. The Brooklyn café has a hand-painted La Marzocco by Melanie Nead and a rotating artist series. In the Los Angeles area there is an inside-outside café in Pasadena, opened in February 2024 with a roll-up door, and a newer one in Lincoln Heights. The first café outside the United States is inside Ace Hotel Kyoto, the former Kyoto Central Telephone Office of 1926, redesigned by Kengo Kuma.

Spirit Tea is on the menu in the New York cafés and the Portland city cafés. Pastries come from Pain D’Avignon in New York and from Sparrow Bakery and Shoofly Vegan Bakery in Portland, and the New York cafés add breakfast tacos from King David Tacos.

Partner cafés

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Stumptown Coffee Roasters