News Stumptown, the iconic and fiercely independent company that helped define coffee in this city, has been sold to a New York investment firm, according to records and interviews with industry officials. A coffee industry executive has confirmed for WW that Stumptown’s new investors claimed to have bought 90 percent of the Portland company. The sale ends the company’s 12-year life as a local brand ...   More

News Another coffee industry executive has come forward to confirm Stumptown Coffee's sale to investment firm TSG Consumer Partners. Tony Dreyfuss, co-owner of Chicago’s Metropolis Coffee Company, told WW that he was also approached by TSG in early May, and he also was told that the investment firm owns a controlling stake of Stumptown. “They mentioned that they had an ownership stake in Stumptown,” ...   More

Food & Drink Stumptown Coffee officials say the company remains under the control of founder Duane Sorenson, though a document filed with the state of Oregon shows that Alexander S. Panos, a managing partner of the New York private equity fund TSG Consumer Partners, is now the authorized representative for Stumptown. The document sheds a bit of light on a day's worth of online rumors that the beloved Portland ...   More

Food & Drink Twitter is blowing up in the wake of a post on Esquire magazine's website, written by coffee importer and critic Todd Carmichael, alleging that Stumptown Coffee Roasters has been sold "to the highest bidder.""So what will become of culinary coffee's nemesis, Stumptown, now that it's a big-money "brand" — even if its founder does remain as frontman?" Carmichael wrote. "Will it continue its role ...   More

News Stumptown Producers Panel, Leftbank Cafe, Thursday, Oct. 8 We gathered in the airy, chi-chi industrial environs of Leftbank Café—before Stumptown's first-ever Producers Panel—for a coffee tasting. Hundreds of us did, and it occurred to me that even 10 years ago this would have been unthinkable, or at least absurd: fodder for a Seinfeld episode. “Coffee and what?” “Just ...   More