Evermore began in 2008, when Eline Sandberg and her son Lowik Pieters started selling loose tea under their own brand, with a black raven as its logo. The name comes from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, which Eline’s English teacher used to recite: the raven’s “Nevermore” became Evermore, and, as the family puts it, you can always drink more tea. Lowik was thirteen when they registered the company.

A year later his father, Ian Pieters, started roasting coffee with his other son, Aito, mostly in a shed in the back garden. When the house overflowed with coffee and tea, the roasting moved to STROOP in Delfshaven, and then to a site of its own, also in Delfshaven, where Evermore and KookstudioMix converted two old garages into a roastery, a cooking studio, a tea-packing room, a coffee and tea bar and a shop.

Ian roasts the coffee every week. Evermore roasts only single origins from one cooperative or even one farm and does not blend, so that each coffee’s flavour can be traced to its origin and harvest, as with wine from one château. Almost every coffee carries an organic, Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance certification, and Evermore looks for contact with the farmers where it can: in 2015 Ian visited Joy Tushabe of the Ishema Women’s wetmill in Rwanda. The loose teas are almost all organic. The chocolate is single origin, and Evermore also sells bars from the Dutch maker Mesjokke and the Belgian Coup de Chocolat. Orders are delivered by bike in Rotterdam Centrum-West, and the back room, shared with KookstudioMix, is used for tastings and dinners and can be hired for meetings, workshops and small concerts.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Evermore