Prices printed on the bag
What we paid the exporter, per kilo, on every label. If it looks low, ask us why — we will tell you.
Mill Lane, since 2014
A small room, a loud drum, twelve lots a year
We are four people and one 1962 Probat. That limits how much coffee we can roast in a week, which turns out to be the whole point: everything we sell was tasted, profiled and bagged by someone whose name is on the door.
How we got here
Eleven years, one room bigger
There was no plan. There was a bike shop with a spare corner and a sample roaster nobody was using.
“If I cannot taste every batch that leaves the door, we are roasting too much.”
2014
A borrowed sample roaster
Marta started roasting 200 g at a time in the back of a bike shop, selling bags to whoever came in for a tube patch. Forty bags in the first month, all of them Ethiopian.
2017
The Probat arrives
A 1962 twelve-kilo drum came out of a closing bakery in Trieste, travelled a thousand miles on a flatbed, and has been running on Mill Lane ever since. It is louder than it needs to be.
2021
Buying direct
Two trips a year, the same six exporters. We publish what we paid per kilo on the back of every bag — usually two to three times the commodity price.
Today
Twelve lots, one shop
Eight coffees on the shelf at a time, roasted on Thursdays and posted on Fridays. Small enough that Marta still profiles every batch by hand.
What we hold to
Three rules we do not bend
Roasted, not stockpiled
We roast against orders, not forecasts. Nothing leaves here older than a day off the drum.
Twelve lots, no filler
A small range we actually taste every month, rather than forty bags nobody has cupped since spring.
Come and taste
The counter is open six days a week
Bring a cup, ask for whatever is on the cupping table. Thursdays you will hear the drum through the wall — that is roast day, and the best time to come.
Order online instead- 14 Mill Lane, Portland
- Two doors down from the bike shop that started it.
- Tue–Sun, 7am–4pm
- Roasting Thursdays from six in the morning.
- Free cupping, Saturdays 10am
- Six coffees on the table, no booking needed.