Poverty Bay Coffee: 23 Years of Brewing Eco-Conscious Coffee and Beyond
Coffee roasts named after famous local landmarks in Washington State sound interesting. Looking for white coffee or the best sustainable coffee brands you can get in Washington? Check out Poverty Bay Coffee Company Federal Way. Here’s our review of their fantastic coffee.
Poverty Bay Coffee Review 2025 Summary
Poverty Bay Coffee is a sustainable coffee brand that focuses on sustainability, lasting relationships, and authenticity. It’s a micro coffee roaster in Seattle, WA that practices ways of eco-conscious living that make their coffee business sustainable.
Pros
Cons
An Overview
Poverty Bay Coffee is a small batch micro-roaster hailing from Seattle, WA. Founded by Dan Olmstead in 1997, this environmentally conscientious coffee roaster only wants to care about the environment, the employees, and its local community through ethically roasted coffee beans.
The coffee beans roasted in Poverty Bay Coffee’s facility are sourced from small coffee farmers, who cultivate coffee under the natural shades of trees in a lush forest, through Direct Trade. For 23 years of delivering only the best beans, Poverty Bay focuses only on sustainability, lasting relationships, and authentic business operation as its business’ core.
Sustainability
From green coffee beans to packaging, Poverty Bay Coffee always finds ways to lessen their carbon print in the environment. On a daily basis, they follow practices and habits to make their business sustainable. That includes:
- Integration of all of the coffee grounds and chaffs into the composting process of Cedar Grove.
- Coffee grounds amounting to over 35,000 lbs end up in gardens throughout the Pacific North West
- Recyclable materials like paper, aluminum, plastic, Styrofoam, and metal are recycled in a designated facility.
- Lighting installed throughout the facility is energy efficient.
- All of their coffee beans are sourced from sustainable and Shade-grown coffee farms through Direct Trade.
- Their entire marketing materials are printed on recycled paper.
Features of Poverty Bay
Poverty Bay Coffee Company features coffee blends with a taste profile that is incomparable to regular blends we typically see in the market. One of the interesting coffee blends worth brewing is White Tornado, which is a white coffee bean roasted in half the time of typical coffee roasting. When they ship their coffee blends, they do not use plastics or papers. Most of their coffees are delivered packed in a burlap.
Cafe
To make their coffee beans readily available to most coffee drinkers, Poverty Bay Coffee Federal Way also established a cafe where their coffee blends are offered along with pastries, sandwiches, soups, and gourmet salads that go incredibly delicious when paired with their coffee.
The Poverty Bay Cafe Federal Way is located at 1108 S 322nd Pl, Federal Way, WA. It is warmly received in TripAdvisors by people who love this cafe, especially their gluten-free food options that taste delectable with any coffee blend they offer.
Coffees Offered
If you want to try their sustainable coffee blends, Big Cup of Coffee highly recommends the following roasts:
White Coffee Beans
White coffee beans feature a whitish color and nutty flavor as a result of the roasting process used for the beans. It is “roasted half of the way through at low temperature”. Meaning, the coffee beans are half-baked to around 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
The beans can be either Arabica or Robusta but the quality of the coffee beans to be roasted using the same process is vital to achieving an interesting flavor profile. Lastly, it has 50% more caffeine so it’s not recommended for people with low caffeine tolerance.
The White Tornado is a white coffee product from Poverty Bay Coffee Co., available in 1lb, 2lb, or 5lb bags, specially ground for optimal brewing. It is roasted to 325 degrees, which results in 50% more caffeine compared to fully roasted coffee. The coffee is characterized by a nutty and sweet flavor with a mellow finish.
Alice Lake Organic
Alice Lake is a dark roast organic coffee with a full body and hints of spice and bold roasted notes. It’s a smooth yet powerful coffee, which makes it a good joe to drink to start your day. This coffee roast is suitable for any brewing device you have at home. You can brew it with a drip-coffee machine, French Press, espresso maker, pour-over, Moka pot, and Aeropress.
This French Roast coffee features robust, strong, and bold flavors, with a sweet and bitter coffee finish, and is never bitter. This USDA Certified Organic coffee is named after the matriarch of Poverty Bay Coffee Company and is inspired by Alice Lake near Fall City, Washington.
Great Bend Blend
Great Bend blend is a medium-dark roast with a medium bot and hints of chocolate and subtle caramel flavors that end with a robust finish. Definitely the best coffee for black coffee lovers. You can brew this ground coffee using a drip coffee machine, French Press, espresso maker, pour-over, Moka pot, and Aeropress.
The Great Bend Blend from Poverty Bay Coffee Co. is a medium-dark roast coffee known for its chocolate and caramel flavors with a robust finish. It is popularly used for espresso but also a great black coffee pick.
Poverty Bay Espresso Classic
Poverty Bay Espresso Classic is a medium-dark roast coffee with medium body and sweetness and depth that leaves home espresso drinkers with a slight caramel finish. It’s gourmet coffee that brews well with any coffee machine. That includes French Press, Pour-over, Moka Pot, espresso maker, Aeropress, and drip-coffee machine.
The Poverty Bay Espresso Classic Medium Roast is a versatile coffee, suitable for both home espresso machines and larger cafe equipment, offering a balance of sweetness and depth with a caramel finish. This medium-dark roast is adaptable to various brewing methods.
Dan’s Cold Brew Coffee
Poverty Bay Coffee’s version of cold brew is smooth and strong and tastes great up to the last drip even if the ice in the coffee drink melts. The coffee roasters use the highest quality Arabica coffee beans.
Dan's Cold Brewed Espresso is meticulously prepared through an exclusive large-scale steeping process. This method begins with the selection of freshly-roasted, premium coffee beans, leading to the creation of a highly concentrated coffee essence. The final product is strikingly robust yet remarkably smooth, offering an exceptionally invigorating and potent espresso experience.
What the Community Says
Alternatives to Poverty Bay Coffee
Here are other coffee brands to consider:
Fresh Roasted Coffee
Fresh Roasted Coffee engages in Direct Trade practices for their coffee procurement, establishing direct exchanges with individual growers, family-run farms, and small local entities. This approach allows them to bypass intermediaries, ensuring fair and premium payments, and fostering mutually advantageous partnerships. These relationships contribute to enhanced coffee quality while ensuring more competitive pricing.
This Sumatran coffee is described as peppery, earthy, and chocolatey, featuring a bold body and a chocolate finish. It also has USDA Organic, Fair Trade, and Rainforest Alliance certifications.
Volcanica Coffee
Volcanica offers a diverse selection of over 130 coffee types, encompassing single origin, estate, peaberry, decaf, and globally sourced flavored coffees. Each coffee is freshly roasted in Atlanta, Georgia. Explore their range of Organic, Fair Trade, Shade Grown, and low-acid coffee options.
A dark roasted blend featuring sweet caramel flavor with dense spices like nutmeg and clove, designed to complement milk and pastries.
This blend combines South and Central American coffees to create a robust flavor profile. The coffee offers a bright yet rich espresso shot, characterized by balanced acidity, thick crema, and notes of caramel and cocoa.
Tiny Footprint Coffee
Tiny Footprint Coffee, a pioneering coffee roaster, is dedicated to environmental stewardship and ethical practices. This innovative company holds the distinction of being the first in the world to produce coffee with a carbon-negative impact. Committed to sustainability and fair labor practices, they collaborate with farmers who prioritize the well-being of coffee plants and the conservation of their natural habitats.
Tiny Footprint Coffee offers a dark roast with chocolate, apricot, fig, and spice notes, and is the world's first carbon-negative coffee. The company supports reforestation in Ecuador's Mindo Cloud Forest, offsetting more CO2 than it emits in its production process. In addition to its environmental efforts, the coffee is sustainably sourced, often organic or fair-trade certified, and is crafted in a carbon-negative roastery.
Verdict
Poverty Bay Coffee is a sustainable coffee brand that focuses on lasting relationships and authenticity. It’s a micro coffee roaster in Seattle, WA that practices ways of eco-conscious living that made their coffee business sustainable. Not only do they offer delicious coffee blends sourced ethically from small coffee farms, but they also sell delicious pastries, sandwiches, gourmet salads, and soups that go well with their coffee drinks. It’s definitely a must-try sustainable local coffee brand.
