We’re back again with another fabulous edition of Sprudge Maps Spotlight, a global compendium of coffee bars featured as part of our Sprudge Maps guide to coffee bars near and far. Want your cafe to be considered for a Sprudge Maps Spotlight? All you have to do is register your shop for Sprudge Maps, our user-driven compendium of coffee shops around the globe. And the best part is, it’s completely free! Sign up today!
For this Sprudge Maps Spotlights selection we’re checking out Makeworth Coffee Roasters in Bellingham, Washington, home to heaps of Mahlkönig grinders, a spiffy La Marzocco Strada, and much more, all housed in a charming historic building with original wooden floors. Let’s learn more!
Sprudge Maps is presented by La Marzocco and Pacific Barista Series.
As told to Sprudge by Tim Shenkin.
Introduce yourself to our readers—tell us about your cafe!
Makeworth Coffee Roasters is cafe and roasting space based in downtown Bellingham, WA. We launched in May of 2019, and since the start have been focused on creating a space for our community to feel at home, to dream, and to create together. Our cafe is situated in a beautiful historic building with original wood floors with natural light that has been updated with a modern and intentional design approach to bring natural warmth to the Pacific Northwest setting. In addition to roasting exceptional coffee, we take our hospitality practices to the heart—ultimately we believe craft coffee and genuine hospitality belong perfectly together. We love sharing our curated roasted coffee, exceptional breakfast menu and warm space with our community.
What equipment do you use in your shop?
Espresso grinders all Mahlkönig:
E65s GbW: the newest Mahlkönig grind by weight series grinder used for our house espresso blend “State St”
K30 Twin: used to feature our more nuanced/single origin coffee options and our decaf option
EK43: used for our batch brewing, cold brewing, and single serve pour-over
M5 Puqpress: a true wrist-saver automatic tamping addition that is fitted to our e65s
Espresso machine:
La Marzocco Strada three-group AV custom white and black
Batch Brew:
Curtis G4 batch brewer
Which roaster or roasters do you serve?
We roast in-house on and onsite with a 2022 San Franciscan SF-10 black and gold.
What is the neighborhood like where you’re located? What’s some other cool stuff nearby?
We are located in the Southeastern part of Downtown Bellingham, WA at the corner of Chestnut and State Street. About five minutes drive away from Western Washington University. Downtown Bellingham is such an incredible collection of small businesses. From new and innovative food and drink options like Carnal and Nomad Charcuterie to some Bellingham staples of Old World Deli and Old Town Cafe Bellingham has lots to put in the belly. Not to mention the seemingly immeasurable amount of tasty breweries throughout town. Bellingham has a small town feel with some big city food and drink.
Then when you leave the city, you are surrounded by some of the most iconic outdoor spots to visit, from the trails around Lake Whatcom, to the scenic drive down Chucknut Dr, to the peaceful farm area of Skagit Valley, to the eastern routes to the North Cascades AND Mount Baker as well as a short drive to both Vancouver BC AND Seattle… it’s impossible to be bored here!
What’s something cool or unique about your cafe you want folks to know?
As mentioned above, we are so proud of our cafe space. It’s such an honor to create a space that invites warmth and connection in every detail of the way to space has been designed. We believe that the impact of a well designed space creates experiences that positively change people. We hope to share this space with anyone and everyone!
Second, we love to highlight that we roast our coffee in house and sourcing nearly all of our coffees as direct from farm as possible. Our coffee is meticulously evaluated before being purchased to ensure that its quality standards are of true specialty grade. But MORE IMPORTANT than our evaluation standards is our heartbeat to be a part of the movement of coffee roasters that work to sustainably support our farm connections.
Is there a community organization or charity you’d like to shout-out as part of this feature?
So much heart is going into an exciting season to continue to evolve as a community space. First, want to shout out our incredible importers: Kula Project (Atlanta based coffee importer working with Rwandan woman farmers), Honduran Coffee Alliance (works exclusively with some really exceptional Honduran coffee producers), Onyx Coffee Importers (located in Bellingham, WA), and the good people down at Bodhi Leaf in Anaheim, CA.
Second shout out is all of the local Bellingham artists that have/will participate in our art residency program. Each month Makeworth features a local visual artist where 100% of sales of their pieces go back to the artist. We LOVE supporting our creative community
Last, we have some really exciting local community initiatives being built out for 2023—not there yet, but REALLY STOKED for whats to come for some opportunities to provide the much-needed support to some unique community organizations in our city and surrounding area. Stay tuned on this!
Thank you!
Want your cafe featured in a Sprudge Maps Spotlight? Register your shop for Sprudge Maps, our user-driven compendium of coffee shops around the globe. It’s completely free. Sign up today!
Sprudge Maps is presented by La Marzocco and Pacific Barista Series.
Photos by Makeworth, used with permission
