Junior’s Roasted Coffee is a micro-roastery inside Guilder east, and also a cafe located at 7151 NE Prescott St. It was founded by Caryn and Mike Nelson. In October, 2014 The Nelsons started roasting as Junior’s while living in Tallahassee, Florida. They wished to combine Mike’s background in academia and coffee with Caryn’s background in community service and hospitality in a project that would serve a community and create relationships around quality coffee and sustainability education. After Mike completed graduate school at Florida State University they returned to Portland, where Mike’s family calls home, to join forces with business partners Toby Roberts and Carrie Lind to open Guilder.

There is so much good tasting coffee in the specialty coffee world. When Caryn and Mike started Junior’s they wanted to think deeper about what makes a good roasting company. While quality is about roasting coffee to best suit its terroir, and brewing it to best represent all of the hard work and dedication that poured into that product from seed to cup, they wanted quality or “specialty” coffee to mean more than just excellent taste. They wanted quality to be better sound environmental and social conditions at the farm level, about equitable trade practices between all supply stream partners, about how Junior’s operates as a business in Portland, and about how Junior’s transparently shares that story with the consumer. Junior’s Roasted Coffee aims to make coffee better by helping people make a connection with their coffee in the cafe, at educational events, and through wholesale partnerships. They welcome you to join Junior’s in exploring how to make coffee better.

After the first six years of finding their footing, discovering their own sense of self, and building a team, Junior is currently exploring how their intentions and actions affect the greater communities around them. They’ve learned that making a positive impact is only possible through building trusting relationships, continued analysis and evaluation, and remaining accountable and humble. they launched the cost of production covered project in 2018 with the intention to serve as their guide to green coffee buying practices. Working with importers and exporters that they trust, they aim to identify farms that are willing to collaborate on long term projects. they hope that transparent coffee buying practices will help inform consumers about the hidden costs of other food systems, and will motivate larger coffee companies to buy more sustainably.