About Ember & Oak — We Roast Coffee. We Keep Promises.

A Roastery Born from a Question We Couldn't Stop Asking

In 2014, our founder Lena Harlow made her first sourcing trip to the Sidama region of Ethiopia — not to buy coffee, but simply to understand it. She sat with a farmer named Tadesse Bekele on his hillside farm and watched him sort beans by hand, one by one, with the kind of patience that only comes from pride. She asked him what he earned per kilo. The number she heard stopped her cold.

She came home and spent three months restructuring everything. Ember & Oak was the result — a roastery designed from the ground up around one guiding principle: the people who grow exceptional coffee should be compensated exceptionally. We now pay an average of three times the fair trade floor price to every farm partner we work with. It's not a premium tier. It's our starting point.

Today, Ember & Oak works with fourteen farming families across Ethiopia, Colombia, Guatemala, and Indonesia. We know their names, their children's names, and the specific microclimates that make their lots singular. We visit. We return. Some of these relationships are now in their second decade. When you buy from us, you're not purchasing a product — you're continuing a conversation that began in a field somewhere, with someone who poured themselves into what you're about to drink.

The Values That Make Us Non-Negotiable

We don't use the word 'sustainable' lightly. For Ember & Oak, sustainability isn't a chapter in our brand guidelines — it's the operating system. Every sourcing decision, every roast profile, every packaging choice runs through the same filter: does this honor the land, the farmer, and the person who will eventually hold this cup? If it doesn't, we don't do it. That means we've turned down exceptional coffees because we couldn't verify their growing practices. It means we use compostable packaging even when it costs more. It means we move slowly and deliberately in a market that rewards speed.

Traceability is our deepest commitment. Every bag Ember & Oak sells carries a QR code that links to the specific farm, the harvest date, the processing method, and the farmer's own story in their own words — translated carefully, never sanitized. We believe that transparency isn't just an ethical obligation; it's what makes the cup taste better, because you know it's real.

We are not trying to be the biggest specialty roaster in the world. We are trying to be the most honest one — the roastery that, ten years from now, a farmer like Tadesse can point to and say that this relationship changed things for his family. That's the only metric that keeps us up at night.

We Roast Coffee. We Keep Promises.

A Roastery Born from a Question We Couldn't Stop Asking

Good Coffee Is Only Good if It's Good for Everyone Involved