The fruity aroma of freshly brewed coffee fills the air as people stream in and out of Sump Coffee in south St. Louis. Baristas brew coffee behind a long bar where customers order lattes and quick shots of espresso. Others opt for pourover coffee served in a glass pitcher. The menu details where each coffee originates, including from Sumatra, Colombia and Kenya.
The pourover list here is more extensive than at the high-volume coffeehouses barista Layne Graham worked in for half-dozen years. She started at Sump about a month ago and, during a recent visit, noted the precision and reverence behind each cup.
Sump has been a destination for serious coffee drinkers — and a symbol of St. Louis' vibrant coffee scene — for nearly 15 years. Its tenure parallels the growth of craft coffee culture in St. Louis, the latest chapter of a story that stretches from riverfront landings where beans first arrived centuries ago to today's small roasters connecting directly with farmers continents away.
All of the beans brewed at the cafe on Jefferson Avenue are roasted a few miles north in an unassuming warehouse in St. Louis’ Old North neighborhood. This is where owner Scott Carey’s meticulous approach to coffee starts.
Inside, dozens of bags of green coffee beans are stacked near a coffee roaster and a cacao roaster, both brandished with the Sump Coffee logo. He receives samples from producers all over the world. If it's up to par, he’ll order about 10 bags of beans. Each usually weighs more than 100 pounds.
Then, about 20 pounds of beans go into the roaster. It whirs loudly. Carey said if you listen closely, you can hear the beans cracking as they roast.
Carey started using a fluid airbed roaster this year, so the beans roast much faster than they would in a traditional drum roaster — it only takes 3 to 5 minutes. When the beans are done, they come out of the roaster, transformed from green to a deep brown.
Carey opened Sump in 2011, and he has been roasting his own beans since 2012. He moved the roastery into this north city warehouse about a year ago.
“If we did a good job with somebody else's coffee, all it meant is that we didn't screw it up,” Carey said. “If we went a little higher and started sourcing and roasting, then it … felt like we were contributing to the dialogue at that point.”
St. Louis’ rich coffee story
The beverage most typically associated with St. Louis is beer, not coffee. But the city has a lesser-known history as a major coffee producer.
In 1920, St. Louis was considered the largest inland coffee hub in the United States.
“You had the east coast, the west coast, and then you had St. Louis,” said Katie Moon, who curated a coffee exhibit at the Missouri History Museum in 2015. “Because they could use the Mississippi and they could use railroads, and it was really a connector.”
As a coffee drinker before starting research for the exhibit — “Coffee: The World in Your Cup & St. Louis in Your Cup” — Moon said she was excited to dive into learning about the city’s coffee history, which dates back to the 1700s.
The coffee business really took off in St. Louis in the mid-19th century. Ships would bring green coffee beans up the Mississippi River from New Orleans, and people had to roast and grind the coffee themselves — be it at home or at their restaurants. During the Civil War, Moon said soldiers began relying on coffee, and roasting businesses started popping up in the late 1800s.
The business grew from there. One big name in St. Louis coffee roasting that is still around today is Ronnoco. When brothers John P. and James J. O’Connor saw a demonstration of a gas-powered coffee roaster at the 1904 World’s Fair, they started Ronnoco — their last name spelled backward. The company, still based in St. Louis, distributes coffee nationwide.
Specialty coffee fell to the wayside in St. Louis during the Great Depression and World War II. At this stage, Moon said national companies started roasting, grinding and selling coffee.
Despite the coffee industry declining in the city, Ronnoco was still booming. According to the company’s website, the O’Connor brothers sold Ronnoco to the Guyol family in 1919. By 1960, the company was providing coffee to hotels and the foodservice industry, and by the '90s it had expanded to the convenience store sector.
As Ronnoco continued to expand its national commercial reach, Howard Lerner and Suzanne Langlois opened the first Kaldi’s Coffee location on DeMun Avenue in Clayton in 1994. This marked a turning point in the St. Louis coffee scene — it was one of the first modern-day coffeehouses in the city.
Now, the Kaldi’s roastery sits on what its marketing director Rob Wilhelm called “roasters row,” less than a half-mile from Ronnoco’s massive roastery, just across Interstate 64.
“It's kind of this cool little hub,” Wilhelm said. “When you drive past on 40, you just smell coffee in the air, because so much is happening in that tiny little spot.”
Kaldi’s now has 13 cafes in the St. Louis area and four in Atlanta.
Wilhelm said many people who now work at roasters around St. Louis started at Kaldi’s.
“There's a passion about coffee, and it's cool to know that Kaldi’s kind of paved the way for that in the St. Louis area,” Wilhelm said.
He said almost anywhere you can get coffee in St. Louis might have someone who went through Kaldi’s training program. Since he started at Kaldi’s in 2015, Wilhelm said he has seen more interest in specialty coffee in St. Louis and many more places open that sell it.
Carey, the Sump owner, recalls St. Louis before that boom.
“When we opened in 2011, it felt like I had to. There was specialty coffee in New York, but it didn't really feel like that was happening here,” Carey said. “Now, if I went back in time and I moved here in 2025, I would not feel like St. Louis needs another coffee shop."
Carey said the specialty coffee market has become increasingly saturated. The barrier to entry lowered with the opening of co-roasting spaces like First Crack. Staff there walk people through the coffee roasting process, making it easier for more people to learn how to do it and access the equipment required.
Before the roasting
There are quite a few steps before coffee makes it to your cup — or even Carey’s high-tech roaster.
Some of the main countries that grow coffee are Brazil, Colombia and Ethiopia. Carey orders beans from different countries depending on the time of year. Ethiopia is one of the world’s largest coffee producers and is often cited as the birthplace of coffee.
“Coffees don't all come to market at the same time,” Carey said. “Ethiopia coffee, let's say, isn't ripe the same time Costa Rica is, or Colombia, or other other places.”
Local importing partner Moii Coffee is striving to make it easier for roasters to connect with Ethiopian coffee farmers.
“We pretty much connect the coffee roasters to trusted producers,” said Moii Coffee co-founder Firaol Ahmed. “Because we do the due diligence ahead of time to make sure that these are producers you can trust and work with.”
Ahmed was born in Ethiopia and moved to St. Louis when he was 14. He started Moii from his dorm room at St. Louis University and used First Crack to sample coffee.
“By the time I realized how hard it was to be a student and also run a business, I was too deep,” Ahmed said. “I had customers waiting on my coffee every week, so I couldn't back out.”
Sump is one of those customers. Ahmed said he has also sold coffee locally to Coffeestamp and Upshot. Moii also ships coffee nationwide.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that in 2022, more than 15 million smallholder farmers and other people in Ethiopia relied on coffee for their income. Ahmed said these producers go largely unrecognized and underpaid.
“All these coffee shops, coffee roasters, have this amazing brand, but the people that they get coffee from have no brand, right? No one knows their name,” Ahmed said. “And what that means is they're not earning as much as they should be.”
For Ahmed, coffee is community — and culture. He said in Ethiopia, almost nobody drinks coffee alone.
“Every day, if someone in the neighborhood is brewing coffee, all the neighbors come. They sit and talk over coffee for two, three hours,” Ahmed said. “So having grown up in that, I see coffee now as a way to connect with people.”
He said he wants Moii to put producers at the forefront of the coffee industry and celebrate their stories.
“That’s our north star,” Ahmed said. “Be the place where roasters could get the best of the best African coffees, and help African farmers earn more money for their coffee in doing that.”
This starts with the website. Ahmed's business partner and SLU classmate, Andy Irazoke designed the company’s website and online ordering platform. The site allows producers to make a profile so roasters can connect with them directly. Irazoke and Ahmed help both producers and roasters through the process of shipping internationally.
“Buying coffee’s as easy as possible when you don’t have to be always using emails or going through spreadsheets,” Irazoke said.
Where to sample St. Louis coffee culture
Since her history museum coffee exhibit in 2015, Moon said she’s seen the specialty coffee world explode in St. Louis.
“That's really cool to see that St. Louisans are really committed to this specialty coffee and are willing to spend a little bit more for really amazing coffee,” Moon said.
Now, there are countless places to get a cup of coffee in the St. Louis area, and quite a few of them roast their own beans.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever had bad coffee in St. Louis,” Moon said. “So if there’s one by you, just go.”
Some local favorites where you can sample St. Louis coffee culture:
- Sump Coffee: 3700 S. Jefferson Ave., St. Louis
- La Finca: 4440 Manchester Ave., St. Louis; 104 S Central Ave., Eureka
- Blueprint Coffee: 6225 Delmar Blvd., 3301 Washington Ave., 4206 Watson Road, St. Louis
- Kaldi’s Coffee: 13 locations
- Northwest Coffee: 4251 Laclede Ave., St. Louis; 8650 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves
- E61 Cafe: 307 Belt Ave., St. Louis
- Goshen Coffee Roasters, 910 Geyer Ave, St. Louis
- Coffeestamp: 2511 S. Jefferson Ave., St. Louis
- La Cosecha Coffee Roasters: 7360 Manchester Road, Maplewood
- Maeva’s Coffee: 1320 Milton Road, Alton
- Picasso’s Coffee: 101 N. Main St., 1650 Beale St., St. Charles
- Revocup Coffee: 9200 Olive Blvd., Suite 100, Olivette
- Made. by Lia: 610 Rue St. Francois St., Florissant
