We're a small team of coffee obsessives in Portland, Oregon. We started in 2019 with a single roaster, six beans, and a belief that exceptional coffee should be accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world.
Orange Brews was founded in 2019 by Mara Voss and Daniel Cho, two former baristas who met while working at a specialty café in Portland's Pearl District. After years of serving some of the finest single-origin coffees in the Pacific Northwest, they kept running into the same frustration: the best beans were nearly impossible to get unless you lived near a specialty roastery. Everyone else — whether in rural Oregon or rural Japan — was stuck with stale supermarket coffee or overpriced, underwhelming subscription boxes.
They rented a 600-square-foot space on Roasters Way in Portland's industrial east side, bought a 5-kilogram drum roaster, and spent six months dialing in their first roast profiles. Their debut lineup was six beans — the same six that form the core of the Orange Brews catalog today. Within three months of launching their website, they were shipping to twelve countries.
The name came from Citrus Bloom, their Kenyan light-medium roast — the bean with the most vivid blood orange and grapefruit character either of them had ever tasted. "It tasted like an orange you could brew," Mara says. "We couldn't think of a better name for what we were trying to do."
Every batch at Orange Brews is roasted in small quantities — typically 5 to 15 kilograms — on our Probat drum roasters. Small-batch roasting gives our roasters precise control over every variable: drum temperature, airflow, drum speed, and development time. These aren't settings you can set and walk away from. Every roast is monitored in real time and tasted on the cupping table before it ships.
We roast to order. When you place an order for Ember Peak or Midnight Slate, those beans do not come from a pre-roasted inventory sitting in storage — your order triggers a roast. The beans go into the roaster, rest for 24 hours to degas, are sealed in nitrogen-flushed bags, and ship within 48 hours. You receive coffee at its absolute peak, not weeks past it.
Our head roaster, Kenji Watanabe, joined Orange Brews in 2021 after fifteen years roasting in Kyoto, Japan. Kenji introduced the practice of roasting each origin separately before blending post-roast (for our Crimson Dawn blend), rather than blending green beans and roasting together. The result is a significantly more even, expressive cup — and it's a technique you'll rarely see outside of high-end specialty roasteries.
We source directly from farming cooperatives and independent farms wherever possible, which means there are fewer intermediaries between the farmer and your cup. Direct trade relationships allow us to pay prices that are meaningfully above commodity and fair-trade minimums — and they give us access to information about the farm, the processing method, and the harvest conditions that simply isn't available through commodity channels.
Our current sourcing partnerships include:
We publish an annual Sourcing Report detailing the farms we work with, the prices paid above market rate, and the on-farm sustainability practices we require from all partners. We believe transparency in sourcing is not optional — it's the only way customers can make informed decisions about the coffee they buy.
Roasting coffee is an energy-intensive process, and shipping it globally has a carbon footprint we take seriously. Here's what we currently do to reduce our impact:
We're not perfect, and we're honest about that. International air freight for express orders carries a significant carbon cost that offsets alone don't fully neutralize. We're actively researching lower-emission shipping alternatives for our core markets and will publish updates in our annual sustainability report.
Co-Founder & CEO
Former head barista. Leads operations, sourcing partnerships, and customer experience. Has cupped over 800 different coffees.
Co-Founder & CTO
Leads technology, the Orange Brews app, and global logistics. Built the roast-to-order fulfillment system that powers the business.
Head Roaster
15 years of roasting experience in Kyoto and Portland. Develops all roast profiles and oversees quality control for every batch.
Sourcing Manager
Manages all farm and cooperative relationships across six countries. Travels to origin farms annually to audit sourcing standards and explore new partnerships.
Our Portland roastery is open for drop-in visits Tuesday through Saturday, 8am–3pm. Watch a live roast, try a cupping session, and pick up beans directly from the source.