Portland, Oregon-based Pastime Coffee is heading full bore into professional production with the opening of a new 1,000-square-foot roastery in a former Northeast Portland flower shop. 

At the center of the new facility is a 15-kilogram-capacity Sivetz SRM-15 fluid-bed roaster paired with a VortX EcoFilter that uses atomized water to treat the roaster’s exhaust in place of a gas-powered afterburner. A forklift carries green coffee through a garage door at the front of the space and has its own parking spot in the paved backyard.

“Everyone likes to overestimate how much space they need, because what if you need more? And it’s really at the sacrifice of day-to-day efficiency in production, so we did the opposite,” Pastime Coffee Founder Justin Dedini told Daily Coffee News. “We were like, what’s the smallest space we can get away with so we can be efficient but also have the tools and the back stock of coffee and things that we need to operate day-to-day without any friction?”

Prior to launching Pastime, Dedini honed his skills roasting for Portland companies including Heart Coffee and Roseline Coffee. As a roaster for a now-defunct cafe he managed in Northwest Portland, Dedini was an early client of the shared roastery Buckman Coffee Factory, where he also returned in 2024 for the launch of Pastime. 

“I know the Buckman people really well, and when I decided to start Pastime they were so enthusiastically accepting of the project,” Dedini said. “The community there is so great. The biggest thing that I miss about being in Buckman is the community aspect of it, but [Pastime] has grown to a point where it’s starting to get a little bit uncomfortable in the shared space.”

Pastime Coffee Co-Owner Erica Schwager, a former Roseline colleague, joined the company just over a year after Dedini founded it. Before moving to Portland, Schwager worked in management and training for Gimme! Coffee in New York. She later worked at Portland’s Nossa Familia, Roseline and Coava Coffee in training and administrative roles.

Today, Schwager contributes to production roasting and wholesale sales at Pastime while also leading operations at Thatcher’s Coffee, a cafe across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, that Pastime acquired in 2025. Thatcher’s former owner had gotten to know Dedini and Schwager as a Roseline wholesale customer. 

The ownership transition coincided with Thatcher’s 15th anniversary, and Pastime has so far kept the cafe largely unchanged.

“It’s not ever going to be a Pastime cafe. It’s a great shop with its own built-in community, its own built-in vibe. It’s really dialed, high volume,” Dedini said. “We really didn’t want to mess with that equation, and we wanted to continue to serve the people that like going to that shop for what it is.”

That emphasis on continuity also informs Pastime’s green coffee sourcing approach, which prioritizes repeat purchases and price stability for producers.

“We’re working toward partnering with communities and single producers to provide some stability with good pricing and buying a whole lot,” Dedini said. “The more we can buy a single producer’s entire harvest, the more we can have price stability for them and be a consistent buyer year over year.”

Pastime turns to importers including Shared Source, Atlantic Specialty Coffee and ICT Coffee for sourcing and logistical support, including shipments of coffees Dedini selects directly from producers.

“We go to great lengths to make sure all of our relationships have consistency,” Dedini said. “We try to be a reliable partner for everyone along the supply chain.”

With its own equipment and production space now operational, Pastime plans to offer cuppings by appointment and is considering a limited-hours pop-up coffee cart in the open garage bay at the front of the building. For now, Dedini and Schwager are focused primarily on growing the roasting business.

“Our goal with having our own production space is to serve our wholesale and retail partners better, more consistently and more predictably,” Dedini said. “This space will allow us to do that more effectively, and we want to just keep doing what we’re doing and doing it the best we can.”

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