Our inbox is flooded with rumors that Stumptown Coffee is shutting down its Seattle roasting operation. Stumptown Coffee currently roasts coffee in Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles, California; New York City; and Seattle, Washington…for now!
This story has played out behind the scenes here at Sprudge over the last 12 hours. An anonymous tweet was sent to us late last night:
The Twitter account—a grammar-adverse Twitter Egg if there ever was one—appears to have deleted all of its communications this morning. But could there be truth behind the Egg?
Sprudge followed up and received unconfirmed reports from within the company that support @TrumpTown420‘s assertions. According to our source, Stumptown Coffee’s Seattle roasting program will shut down soon, and roasting for Stumptown’s two Seattle cafes and Seattle wholesale clients will now take place in Portland. “Roasting staff has been offered jobs and no one is being laid off,” quoth the tipster.
Stumptown VP Matt Lounsbury confirmed the news to Sprudge moments ago, saying that the decision was made in part due to longterm building challenges with truck access and roaster size. Stumptown will “utilize the space to focus on training, distribution and retail,” Lounsbury tells Sprudge.
Stumptown’s Seattle headquarters opened with much fanfare in 2007; the brand’s 12th Street cafe sits above the current roastworks, while its Pine Street cafe operates as a stand-alone. Stumptown Coffee was founded in Portland, Oregon, in 1999 by Duane Sorenson, a Puyallup, Washington native with deep roots in the Seattle and Tacoma coffee scenes. Stumptown was sold to the investment firm TSG Consumer Partners in 2011 before being sold again to Peet’s Coffee & Tea (parent company JAB Holding) in 2015.
This news comes a few short days after Seattle Weekly named Stumptown Seattle’s favorite coffee.
We will update this post as more news come in.
This story is developing…
Stumptown Coffee is an advertising partner on Sprudge.
Top image via Wikimedia.
