We roast about forty kilograms a week. We'll probably never roast more than eighty. This is not a growth business — it's a craft business, and we think there's still room for those.
Ember & Oat started in a garage in Northwest Portland in the spring of 2019, between a table saw and a bicycle rack. Noa Ruiz, a former pastry chef, had spent two years working nights at another roaster and decided she wanted to do it her own way. She bought Mabel — a 1978 Probat L12 — off Craigslist from a retired roaster in Tacoma, drove her home in a U-Haul, and spent three months re-wiring the gas line and re-gasketing the drum before she roasted a single green bean.
The first bag sold to Claudia, a friend from the restaurant world, on a Tuesday morning in June. Claudia asked what it would take to make this a real business, and six weeks later she'd quit her job and joined as co-owner.
We moved into the current space on NW 23rd in late 2021. Added the café in January 2022. Hired our first barista — Dev — in June. Published our first journal issue that November. We've been doing approximately the same things in approximately the same way ever since.
We buy green coffee from seven family-run farms we've worked with, in most cases, since our first year. We pay above Fair Trade — typically 2 to 3× commodity — because that's what makes this kind of coffee possible to grow.
We rest the green for two to three weeks. We roast twice a week in twelve-kilo batches. We hand-pack, we hand-label, and we ship everything within 48 hours of roasting. We also run a small café where, on a good day, you can watch us do it.
We don't have a flagship store. We don't do brand collabs. We haven't raised outside money, and we don't plan to. We don't wholesale to more than a dozen places, and we've turned down about a hundred grocery accounts because we can't produce at that volume without changing everything about the way we roast.
None of this is meant as a virtue. It's just what's true. If we did those things, we'd be a different company, and we like this one.
Pastry chef for seven years in San Francisco and Portland before this. Cups three times a day. Teaches a Saturday roasting class we never advertise.
Ran front of house at three restaurants before coffee called. Handles the books, the wholesale accounts, and the impossible logistics of importing from seven countries.
Twelve years behind a bar in Seattle and Portland. Placed third at the 2024 regional Barista Championship. Will never admit which drink is his favorite.
✱ The values, if we must
"Pay the farmers well. Roast the coffee carefully. Be kind to the person ordering a cup.
That's the whole business"
✱ Stay in touch