Four Barrel Coffee is in San Francisco’s Mission District. It is an independent, locally owned roastery, and it sources almost all the coffee it roasts, for its own cafés and for its wholesale partners, directly from third-generation farmers and mill workers in Latin America, Indonesia and East Africa. Its team spends months of every year on the road at origin, working with the people who grow and process the coffee.

Four Barrel roasts in San Francisco on a vintage German roaster built to hold steady heat, with airflow controlled by hand. The roasting relies on trained people rather than computers, and its style aims to show the qualities that led Four Barrel to buy each coffee in the first place: cleanness, sweetness, acidity and complexity. The shop also sells the de la Paz blends, along with instant coffee, brewing equipment and art.

Four Barrel runs its café in the Mission and is a partner in The Mill. Both take private events, parties and buy-outs. The wholesale programme draws on the team’s past as café managers, baristas, cooks, servers and dishwashers: it starts with consulting on café and bar design, moves on to training, and continues with education, technical help and support. Four Barrel also runs coffee classes.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Four Barrel Coffee