Stumptown opening doors soon at downtown cafe and roastery

Stumptown Coffee Roasters, the Portland, Ore.-based pioneer of third-wave coffee, has arrived. After two years of searching for a downtown L.A. space for its new roasting plant, the coffee company is nearly ready to open its Arts District facility.

It’s the first L.A. location for Stumptown, which was founded by Duane Sorenson in 1999 and now has several cafes in Portland, Seattle and New York. “We’ve been selling coffee [wholesale] in L.A. for the better part of five years,” said Stumptown director of operations Matt Lounsbury. “Coffee in the last year here has even more legs. There’s so much good energy in L.A.”

Construction in L.A. began in January, and the Santa Fe Avenue Stumptown will house both a roaster and cafe. “We have a hub-and-spoke model and set up roasteries where we have cafes,” Lounsbury said. The L.A. roastery will service California and the Southwest.

The front of the space features the retail cafe, with a glass wall that allows customers to look into the roasting area, equipped with a customized 60-kilo Probat.

The company plans to get the cafe open “as soon as humanly possible,” said Lounsbury, as early as the end of August. “We just got gas today,” he said on Thursday, as he walked through the 7,000-square-foot warehouse, trailed by artist Retna, who stopped by from his nearby studio and deemed the roasting works “fresh.”

810 S. Santa Fe Ave., Los Angeles, www.stumptowncoffee.com.

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