The Story
Slate Coffee Roasters is a family-owned specialty coffee roasting and retail company founded in 2011, and located in Seattle, Washington. Slate came from a love of family and coffee. Lisanne, our mother, and Keenan, my brother, knew that they wanted to start a business together in an effort to support each other and grow as a family.
Keenan has long been passionate about home espresso, and after learning to roast coffee, he decided to turn his love into a profession. Lisanne and Keenan explored different roasters and retailers on the west coast, and then traveled throughout Europe seeking out well-established coffee businesses and more progressive roasters before returning to Seattle to launch Slate.
Launched out of a 1967 Airstream Safari trailer, we introduced ourselves by serving pour-overs and espresso outside of a pizza joint on Capitol Hill. After opening an intimate, bar style shop in May 2013 in East Ballard, we transitioned to a brick and mortar service.
The envelope-pushing Seattle-based company Slate Coffee Roasters has just completed a major retail expansion, opening two new café locations in the Emerald City almost at once. Founded in 2013 by brother-sister team Chelsey Walker Watson and Keenan Walker with a single location in east Ballard that continues to go strong, Slate now has a Pioneer Square location that opened earlier this month, and a third location in the University District officially opened today. However, recent reports suggest some locations have since closed or changed hands.
Growing up in the Seattle area and working in established coffee businesses, we sought to re-approach coffee anew, to start over with a fresh perspective in a saturated market. From producer interactions, to roast profiles, to glassware and even menu size, we wanted to look at established coffee trends and question them. With a mission to elevate specialty coffee in Seattle, this drive for progress has informed our ethos.
Sourcing & Relationships
We pursue relationships with everyone from the producers of our coffee, to our wholesale partners, suppliers, community, and guests. We seek coffees that have a uniqueness or a special characteristic about them, and we try to be as transparent as possible. By providing you information on the region, district, elevation, processing, etc.; we hope to give you a glimpse into the story of your coffee, and the long journey it has made.
Slate Coffee Roasters takes pride in their direct trade relationships with coffee farmers around the world. By working closely with farmers, they are able to establish fair and sustainable partnerships that prioritize both quality and social responsibility.
To us, this means treating coffee like the agricultural product that it is, being transparent about who grows our coffees and rotating our offerings seasonally. It means recognizing that quality is a result of collaboration by pursuing direct relationships with the producers we work with.
Building strong relationships with coffee farmers is a fundamental aspect of Slate Coffee Roasters’ approach. By directly partnering with farmers, they can learn about the unique qualities and challenges of each coffee-growing region. This information helps guide their sourcing decisions, ensuring that they select beans that are cultivated and harvested with the utmost care and expertise.
All of the roasting for Slate’s three locations as well as wholesale accounts will continue to be done on the same 15-kilo capacity Giesen W15A roaster the business has always used, located in an offsite facility in Seattle’s SoDo District. Greens will continue to be sourced through a combination of direct relationships with producers as well as through importers such as Atlas Coffee Importers, Keffa Coffee and JC Coffee, although the hope is to get to a point where the majority if not all of Slate’s coffee is imported directly from the source.
Roasting Philosophy
We roast with a philosophy we call exposure roasting. The idea is to roast the coffee seeds just long enough to highlight the inherently unique characteristics without roasting over these characteristics.
Slate roasts on the lighter end of the spectrum because they believe it helps the distinct characteristics of the process, varietal, and region stand out in your cup. Slate’s approach has made it a favorite at Bean Box coffee tastings, often introducing long-time coffee drinkers to the vibrant flavor potential of a lightly-roasted Ethiopian coffee.
It means roasting coffees to emphasize terroir rather than impose flavor and offering a menu free from syrups, sugars and large beverages that bury the distinctive complexity of each coffee.
Exposure roasting aims to honor and highlight all the hard work the producers put into making their coffee delicious.
He added his belief that coffee has been historically roasted darker through the generations in order to cover up defects, suggesting that the attitude among consumers that darker is “what coffee tastes like” is more of a social construction than “an absolute in the culinary sense.”
But its playful approach and innovative coffee menu isn’t just for show. Slate puts as much care into their coffees, including their sourcing process and how they roast every bean differently to emphasize its unique flavor characteristics. The roasting is done on a 15-kilogram Giesen roaster located in their SoDo facility, maintaining consistency across all their retail and wholesale accounts.
What to Try
Ballard is modeled after a craft-cocktail bar, and most guests linger over their coffee, enjoying beverages such as espresso or hand-brewed coffee, a leisurely tasting flight, or the beverage that put Slate on the international coffee map, the Deconstructed Espresso + Milk.
This set of drinks was invented by Slate. It consists of one shot of espresso, one glass of milk and, of course, one glass of single-shot-size caffe latte. This signature offering allows customers to taste each component separately before combining them.
Aricha, Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia - Light, pillowy and clean, with flavors of dried strawberries, confectioner’s sugar, and breakfast cereal. This coffee tastes like dessert. Soft and velvety like angel food cake, the Aricha offers a remarkably sweet dried strawberry foundation, punctuated by moments of hops and green tea.
The espresso of the day was the “Under Pressure” blend, which was a sweet, syrupy and bright coffee (probably came from the Bourbon coffee within).
We have a very simple menu offering hand-brewed coffee, espresso, espresso + milk, as well as pastries, tea, tasting flights, and an industry favorite: the deconstructed espresso + milk.
There are some signature drinks, but wish they’d provide a brief description handy so you’d know what Linus + Lucy, Royal Treatment and Oh My Gourd were. The minimalist approach extends to their presentation, using clear glassware and avoiding traditional coffee shop nomenclature like “latte” or “cappuccino” in favor of simply “espresso + milk.”