ABOUT BEANSPARADE

BeansParade began the way most honest things begin — with obsession. In the spring of 2018, in a converted garage on Portland’s east side, two former baristas started roasting green coffee on a cast-iron skillet. The batches were tiny, often uneven, and occasionally catastrophic. But a handful were transcendent — floral Ethiopian Yirgacheffes that tasted like jasmine tea, dense Guatemalan lots that revealed layers of dark fruit and cacao over days of resting.

The name came from a late-night conversation about what specialty coffee really is: not a commodity, not a lifestyle brand, but a procession of singular lots — each with its own altitude, its own varietal, its own farmer, its own harvest window. A parade of beans. Each one unrepeatable. The name stuck because it described the philosophy before we had the language for it.

By 2019 we had outgrown the garage, acquired a 12-kilo Probat UG-22, and moved into the brick-and-timber building on Roastery Lane that we still call home. The drum is the heartbeat of the operation — everything we roast passes through it in batches small enough that we can taste each one before it ships. We roast four days a week, rest the beans for forty-eight hours minimum, and ship within seventy-two. Nothing sits on a shelf. Nothing is blended to mask inconsistency.

SOURCING PHILOSOPHY

From soil to cup, fully traceable

We buy coffee the way we think it should be bought: directly from farmers or through importers whose supply chains we can verify down to the lot, the washing station, and the harvest date. Every bag we sell carries its full provenance — not as marketing, but as accountability. If we can’t tell you where a coffee came from, how it was processed, and who grew it, we don’t roast it.

Our relationships are long-term. We’ve worked with the same families in Huila, Colombia, for four consecutive harvests. We return to Guji, Ethiopia, each season because the washed lots from the Shakiso cooperative consistently produce the clarity and florality that define our house profile. In Guatemala, we partner with Finca El Injerto — a fourth-generation farm whose anaerobic-washed experiments push processing science forward without sacrificing terroir.

Traceability isn’t a badge we pin on after the fact. It’s the architecture of the entire operation. We publish FOB prices on every lot page so customers know what we paid. We share cupping scores, altitude ranges, varietal breakdowns, and processing timelines — not because the average buyer needs all of it, but because hiding any of it would make the rest meaningless.