Cora Coffee is a scrappy, small-batch
coffee roaster in love with drizzly Pacific Northwest days
and the simple pleasure of a great cup of coffee.
We believe that coffee is powerful: it can help a farmer in Guatemala put her daughter through school and help a teacher in Tacoma do his best to help his students learn. Coffee can be a simple pleasure to share with friends, or something comforting to hold onto when you have to do something that scares you. Our mission is simple: we want to find great coffees and roast them for our friends and neighbors in Tacoma.
The name CORA comes from COR, the Latin word for heart. So does the word COURAGE.
The very beginning of the seed of Cora Coffee was planted in 2011, when Tara was living in Guatemala and working with coffee farmers in a specialty coffee nursery. The idea was nourished by spending several years in the specialty coffee industry and drinking hundreds and hundreds of cups of great coffee grown all over the world. Eventually, Tara bought a small home roaster in order to dig even deeper into what makes a cup of coffee great. On Saturday afternoons, Tara would share the coffees she roasted with Anton, a friend from college she reconnected with while working together in a warehouse.
Anton’s first experience with coffee (the beverage) was drinking super dark Turkish coffee brewed by his Ukrainian mother. His first experience with coffee (the plant) was on a biology-focused study abroad program in East Africa. Not long after, Anton shared a wildlife research hut with a retired forester. The forester granted himself one luxury: a cheap manual coffee grinder, which enabled his coffee custom each frigid winter morning by candlelight. Anton finally fell in love with the ritual and flavor of coffee during early mornings outside a ridge-top fire lookout as a wilderness ranger in North Cascades National Park.
Saturday afternoon conversations between friends quickly evolved into coffee-fueled Saturday afternoons putting dreams of coffee roasting on paper and, eventually, the decision to leap into small business ownership. Even though it scared us. Because it scared us. Cora Coffee was born.
CORA, like HEART. CORA, like COURAGE.
Cora Coffee: Be Brave.