Olympia Coffee Roasting Co.
Olympia Coffee Roasting Co. — usually just Olympia Coffee — is an independent, small-batch coffee roaster and café operator based in Olympia, Washington, on the southern end of Puget Sound in the United States.12 It roasts its own coffee, sells it wholesale, and runs a string of cafés across Olympia, Tacoma and Seattle.
Its one hard, independently documented credential is a trade award: Roast magazine named it Micro Roaster of the Year for 2013, alongside Gimme! Coffee in the macro category.3 “Micro” simply means the small-volume half of the award — Roast splits its Roaster of the Year into two size classes so a garage operation isn’t judged against a company shipping millions of pounds. The award looks at the whole business, not one coffee: sourcing, quality control, staff, community work.
Beyond that, and this is the honest summary of what follows, very little about Olympia Coffee is documented in primary sources. There is no verified founding year, no verified ownership, and no auction lot, cupping score or price paid that could be traced to a public record.
What is established
| Attribute | Detail |
|---|---|
| Base | Olympia, Washington, USA — mailing address given as 108 Cherry Street2 |
| Business | Independent small-batch roaster with retail cafés and wholesale12 |
| Reach | Cafés in Olympia, Tacoma and Seattle2 |
| Stated ethos | ”Quality-of-Life” — the company ties cup quality to the wellbeing of producers, staff and customers1 |
| Sourcing | Describes long-term direct relationships with producers1 |
| Recognition | Roast magazine Micro Roaster of the Year, 20133 |
The company presents itself as independent — no corporate parent — on its own “Our Story” page.1 It is also listed as a stop on the South Sound Coffee Trail, a regional tourism route through Washington roasters and cafés,4 and a hospitality listing describes it as a “small batch artisan organic coffee roaster” offering coffees “seasonally from around the world”.5 Read that last one carefully: it is a directory blurb, not a certification, and it is the only place the word organic appears in anything consulted here.
Cafés
The company’s own LinkedIn profile lists these locations.2 Café footprints change constantly — treat this as a shape, not a directory.
| City | Address |
|---|---|
| Olympia | 108 Cherry Street, WA 98506 |
| Olympia | 1706 Harrison Ave, WA 98502 |
| Olympia | 2824 Capitol Boulevard, WA 98501 |
| Tacoma | 2601 N Proctor St, WA 98407 |
| Seattle | 3840 California Ave SW, WA 98116 |
| Seattle | 4824 Rainier Ave S, WA 98118 |
| Seattle | 1805 Queen Anne Ave N, WA 98109 |
| Seattle | 1420 5th Ave, Suite 103, WA 98101 |
To verify — the café list and the Cherry Street address
Every address above comes from one source, the company’s own LinkedIn listing, and was not confirmed against the company’s website — olympiacoffee.com returned HTTP 429 (rate-limited) on every attempt made for this note, including the “Our Story” page the report itself quotes. This is the same failure recorded on Equator Coffees. The Cherry Street ZIP code is also inconsistent between sources: LinkedIn gives 98506, while a hospitality listing gives 108 Cherry St NE, Olympia, WA 98501-6937.5 Probably a formatting difference rather than two buildings, but nothing consulted settles it. A separate Olympia address — 600 4th Ave East — appears in local tourism material.4 It may be an older or alternate site. The same tourism page lists 4211 Pacific Ave SE, Lacey under Olympic Crest Coffee Roasters, a different company with a similar name; do not attach it to Olympia Coffee.
Growth, as far as it is recorded
No source consulted gives a founding year or a corporate history. What exists is a run of trade-press headlines in Sprudge’s article archive, which at least fixes the shape and rough timing of the company’s expansion.6 These are headlines only — the underlying articles were not read for this note.
| Date | Reported by Sprudge as |
|---|---|
| January 2013 | Announces a third location |
| January 2015 | ”A major expansion” |
| August 2015 | Featured in Sprudge’s café build-out and design series |
| October 2015 | New headquarters opens |
| May 2017 | Opening a café in Seattle |
| June 2017 | Coming to Tacoma’s Proctor District |
| December 2023 | New brand identity and packaging |
Two things follow. First, the 2013 Roast magazine award landed on a three-café company — which is what “micro” is meant to capture. Second, the Seattle and Tacoma cafés are 2017 or later, so the eight-location footprint above is a recent shape, not the one that won the award.
To verify — founding year and ownership
- No founding year is established. The company’s own “Our Story” page narrates growth from a small local roaster to a multi-location business but, in the excerpt available, gives no dates at all.1 Any year attached to Olympia Coffee elsewhere should be treated as unsourced until the company’s own page can be read.
- No owners are named in any source consulted. “Independent” is the strongest ownership claim that can be made.1 Sprudge’s archive contains a 2020 “Sprudge Twenty” interview headlined “Oliver Stormshak Of Olympia Coffee Roasting Company”,6 which strongly implies Stormshak is a principal — but the headline states no role, the interview itself was not read, and no second source names him. Do not state him as founder or owner on this evidence.
- The original roastery location and the date of the 2015 headquarters move are likewise undocumented here.
Competition and awards record
| Year | Award | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2013 | Roast magazine Micro Roaster of the Year | Confirmed on Roast’s own award archive3 |
| 2 | 2024 | Good Food Awards — two awards, one for its “Little Buddy Blend” | Unconfirmed — see below |
To verify — the 2024 Good Food Awards
The Good Food Awards note in this wiki records Olympia Coffee as a 2024 winner of two awards, with its Little Buddy Blend singled out as the only blend among that year’s coffee winners. That entry rests on a single trade-press report which returns HTTP 403 and cannot be re-read, and it is already flagged as unverified on that note. The Good Food Foundation’s own winners page was searched for this note and returned no Olympia Coffee entry — but the search may simply not have applied, since the same fetch also failed to surface entries the archive is known to contain. Treat 2024 as a claim, not a fact.
Beyond those two, the research behind this note looked specifically for Specialty Coffee Association competition placings, Cup of Excellence and Alliance for Coffee Excellence auction wins, Best of Panama buyer credits, and Coffee Quality Institute Q certificates tied to Olympia Coffee or its staff, and found none in primary records.
That absence is worth stating plainly rather than papering over. Compare Klatch Coffee or Angelino’s Coffee, US roasters whose place in this wiki is essentially the price they paid at auction, or Equator Coffees, whose case rests on part-owning a farm. Olympia Coffee’s public record is a trade award and a café estate — no lot IDs, no scores, no dollars per pound.
What is not documented
For the avoidance of doubt, none of the following could be sourced for this note: named producers, farms or cooperatives; altitudes; varieties; processing styles (washed, natural, honey); cupping scores; retail, wholesale or subscription prices; minimum prices paid at origin; or any specific staff-welfare policy behind the “Quality-of-Life” language. The phrase is the company’s own framing, and no independent audit or certification stands behind it — the same caveat that applies to Direct trade generally.
Related
- Roast magazine — the award that anchors this note; see its full Roaster of the Year table
- Good Food Awards — where Olympia Coffee’s disputed 2024 wins are recorded
- Klatch Coffee · Angelino’s Coffee · Equator Coffees · Onyx Coffee Lab · Counter Culture Coffee · Stumptown Coffee Roasters — other US roasters in this wiki
- Espresso Vivace — the other Washington State roaster documented here
- Direct trade · Premiumisation · Third wave coffee · Coffee scoring · Cupping
- Sprudge — the trade outlet that supplies most of the timeline above