Spokane’s Roast House celebrates turning 13 with a nod from the Good Food Foundation

BY ERIN HUT

Even before the first sip, you know what you’re getting in a cup of Roast House coffee.

Bold, complex flavor, roasted to perfection.

But for the local roastery, it’s so much more than just a good cup of coffee.

Roast House is celebrating its 13th year in the Inland Northwest. In all of those years, they have committed to goodness. Not just in the sense that every cup of joe will be a good one, but one made on the foundation of prioritizing good ethics when sourcing every ingredient that goes into it.

“We focus on being a sustainable, specialty coffee roaster,” Head of Operations Aaron Jordan said.

He laughed, adding that “sustainable” has become a buzz term some like to throw around.

It is a term we hear often, but what does it really mean?

“Sustainable is a cute marketing word, but we’ve really honed in on what that means and what it means to run a business through a set of values that are deeply rooted in who we are as humans and what we believe is the right thing to do,” Jordan said.

At Roast House, that means not only taking the environment into account when sourcing products, it means ensuring everyone they work worth – from farmers to baristas – have truly liveable wages.

“Coffee is a third world to first world economy supply chain. It’s produced by countries that often get exploited,” Jordan said.

So, Roast House made a promise to do it differently and that presents itself in every level of their process.

Jordan said owner Deb Di Bernardo laid the foundation when she started Roast House all those years ago. He practices what he preaches through building and handling the company’s supply chain relationships. Head Roaster Evan Lovell dials in on each coffee to find its full potential. And you also see it in the smiles of the baristas who greet you at the coffee bar.

It is this business model that helped Roast House win a Good Food Award (GFA) in 2014 and has them in the running again in 2023.

The GFAs recognize that truly good food (and coffee!) bring people together and build strong, healthy communities.

That could not be more accurate to the story behind Roast House’s winner.

Honey Geisha was produced by the Daza family at La Pradera in Santander, Colombia. Roast House has been working with the coffee producer for five years and has built a relationship with them that Jordan describes as “near and dear” to his heart.

Geisha coffee, or Gesha, is a varietal named after an indigenous plant from its home country of Ethiopia. The sought-after coffee was then cross-planted across the world and ultimately made its way to La Pradera.

Jordan describes it as complex and floral in taste, while having an almost champagne-bubbly crispness.

When the GFA judges got their hands on it, they described it as feeling “like a hug.”

Now, Roast House wants to make sure everyone can get in on that hug.

Honey Geisha will soon be available for purchase, but in the meantime, Roast House is setting their priorities for their new year.

“Continuing to take care of the planet, be good stewards, buy organic coffee, take care of people.”

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