Specialty Coffee Wiki

Onyx Coffee Lab

Properties3
descriptionThe Northwest Arkansas roaster and café group that turned a small-town roastery into the most decorated competition team in American coffee — two US Barista Champions, two world runners-up, and a published record of what it pays for green coffee.
tagsorganization, roaster, cafe, usa, arkansas, competition
aliasesOnyx, Onyx Coffee

8 min read

Onyx Coffee Lab

Onyx Coffee Lab is an American specialty coffee roaster and café company based in Rogers, Arkansas. It was founded in 2012 in Springdale, Arkansas, by Andrea Allen and Jon Allen, and has grown into a business that roasts, runs cafés, sells wholesale and online, and trains people.12

Why it belongs in this wiki: most roasters here are known for a coffee they bought. Onyx is known for the people who brewed it. Between 2020 and 2022 its staff won the US Barista Championship twice and finished second at the World Barista Championship twice, plus a US Brewers Cup title and two world podium finishes in the World Brewers Cup. No other American company in this wiki has that competition record. It sits in a town of 70,000 people, four hours from the nearest major coffee city.

The company

AttributeDetail
Founded2012, in Springdale, Arkansas
FoundersAndrea Allen and Jon Allen
Headquarters / roastery101 E Walnut St., Rogers, Arkansas 72756
BusinessRoasting, cafés, wholesale, e-commerce, education
RegionNorthwest Arkansas — Rogers, Bentonville, Fayetteville, Springdale
CertificationCertified B Corporation (2025)

In 2019 the company moved into a large headquarters building in downtown Rogers that put the roastery, a training lab, a bakery, event space, offices and green coffee storage under one roof.1 That combination is the shape of the business in miniature: it is not only a roaster, and the training lab is not decoration — it is where the competition record below comes from.

Onyx became a Certified B Corporation in 2025, an audited standard covering social and environmental performance rather than anything about the coffee itself; the company calls the certification “more than a symbol—it’s a statement of who we are.”31 See B Corporation certification for what the audit actually measures.

To verify — how many cafés there are, and where

Sources do not agree on Onyx’s café count. The company’s Wikipedia entry describes cafés in Rogers (the headquarters), Bentonville (downtown and at the Momentary arts venue), Fayetteville (Gregg Avenue and Fay Square), and Springdale (Emma Avenue), plus a three-storey chocolate-focused café opened in Springdale in 2025.1 The company’s own homepage names Bentonville, Rogers, Fayetteville and Springdale “plus The Preserve, Momentary, and Doyenne.”3 Onyx’s LinkedIn page says four café locations in Northwest Arkansas.2 Onyx’s official locations page — the one source that would settle it — returned HTTP 429 (rate limited) on four attempts while this note was written and could not be read. The Rogers headquarters address above comes from that page as quoted in the research report, not from a direct read. Treat the exact roster, the count and the address as unconfirmed.

The competition record

This is what Onyx is best known for, and it is unusually well documented because world championship results are published in full.

YearCompetitorResult
12020Andrea AllenWon the US Barista Championship
22021Andrea Allen2nd at the World Barista Championship, Milan — 487 points
32021Elika Liftee3rd at the World Brewers Cup, Milan — 159.4 points
42022Morgan EckrothWon the US Barista Championship
52022Morgan Eckroth2nd at the World Barista Championship, Melbourne — 469.5 points
62022Elika LifteeWon the US Brewers Cup; 2nd at the World Brewers Cup, Milan — 150.55 points

The world-stage placings and scores in that table match the results tables already held in this wiki on the World Barista Championship and World Brewers Cup notes, which is independent confirmation of the Wikipedia account.1 Andrea Allen lost the 2021 world title to Diego Campos of Colombia; Morgan Eckroth lost the 2022 title to Anthony Douglas of Australia.

Worth explaining what these titles are, because the two are often confused. The barista championship judges espresso, milk drinks and an original signature drink, served with a spoken presentation — it rewards showmanship and craft together. The Brewers Cup is filter coffee only, brewed by hand, and is closer to a pure extraction contest. Winning a national title in either qualifies you for the world round the following season. Both sit inside the World Coffee Championships family run by World Coffee Events and the Specialty Coffee Association.

Morgan Eckroth is a second kind of famous — a TikTok-first coffee creator posting as @morgandrinkscoffee, whose audience dwarfs the competition circuit’s. That crossover is covered on the Coffee YouTube note.

Awards outside competition

  • Good Food Award, 2021, for a Panama Lamastus Family coffee.1 The Good Food Awards judge the cup and the roaster’s sourcing documentation together — a threshold test, not a ranking. The Lamastus family are the Panamanian growers behind Elida Estate; see Wilford Lamastus.
  • Sprudge Design Award, 2024–25 cycle — Outstanding Design Achievement: Print Materials.4 Already recorded on the Sprudge Design Awards note.
  • James Beard Foundation Award finalist, 2026, for the Rogers location.1 Onyx’s own site gives the category as Outstanding Bar.3 The James Beard awards are the main American restaurant-industry prizes; a coffee business reaching the finalist stage is rare.

To verify — the "#1 coffee shop" ranking

Two sources describe the same Food & Wine recognition differently. Wikipedia says Food & Wine ranked Onyx #1 on its World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops list in 2026.1 Onyx’s own homepage claims “#1 coffee shop in North America (2025-2026)”.3 World-best and North-America-best are not the same claim, and neither was checked against Food & Wine’s original published list, which was not consulted for this note. The recognition is real; its scope and year are not established.

Sourcing and transparency

Onyx publishes roast data and origin detail per coffee: each roast is “meticulously tracked, cupped, and published,” and product pages name individual producers and their processing methods.3 The company’s stated mission is to “seek quality, truth and accountability in coffee.”3

That is the same published-transparency posture described on Direct trade and Green coffee buying — a company disclosing its own practice, with no outside auditor behind the disclosure. What makes it checkable is specificity: a named producer and a named lot can be traced back. It is worth noting that the B Corp certification, unlike the transparency reports, is externally audited — but it audits the company, not the coffee.

To verify — prices paid, cupping scores, and ownership

The research behind this note looked for auction results, lot IDs, cupping scores and prices paid tied to Onyx and found none in Best of Panama, Cup of Excellence, Specialty Coffee Association or Coffee Quality Institute records. One near-miss exists inside this wiki: the Cup of Excellence records by country note lists Onyx among the joint buyers of the 2024 Honduras top lot — a washed Geisha from Benjamín Paz Muñoz scoring 91.21, sold at $136.50/lb alongside Proud Mary Coffee, Black & White and Verve. That entry comes from the existing note, not from any source read for this one, and Onyx’s exact share of the lot is not recorded. Separately, no source documents Onyx’s legal ownership — no entity name, no shareholders, no corporate filings. Andrea and Jon Allen are documented as founders; do not describe either as “the owner” on the strength of the sources below.

Footnotes

  1. Onyx Coffee Lab — Wikipedia — read via WebFetch; source of the 2012 Springdale founding, the founders, the 2019 Rogers headquarters move, the café roster, the competition results, the 2021 Good Food Award, the 2025 B Corp certification, the 2026 James Beard finalist placing and the Food & Wine ranking ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  2. Onyx Coffee Lab — LinkedIn company page — source of the four-café figure and the company’s self-description as independent roasters and baristas shipping worldwide ↩ ↩2

  3. Onyx Coffee Lab — official homepage — read via WebFetch; source of the B Corp statement, the mission wording, the roast-transparency claim, the homepage location list, the “Outstanding Bar” James Beard category and the “#1 coffee shop in North America” claim ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  4. Announcing The Second Annual Sprudge Design Award Winners | Sprudge — the results announcement recording Onyx’s Print Materials award ↩

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