Cartel Roasting Co.

Cartel Roasting Co. launched in Tempe, Arizona in 2008 and has since grown into one of the state's most recognizable specialty coffee operations, now spanning roughly eleven locations across the region. The company operates as a community-owned enterprise—an uncommon structure in specialty coffee—and has built its identity around sourcing relationships and transparency from seed to cup.

Originally operating under the Cartel Coffee Lab name, the company grew from a single Tempe outpost into a multi-city Arizona presence. The community-ownership model shapes how the business presents itself: less as a brand than as a shared project, with subscription programs, a palate-matching quiz, and brewing education built around the premise that good coffee need not be complicated or exclusionary.

On the sourcing side, Cartel works with specific mill-level partners rather than buying generic lots. A current offering—a washed Colombia from the Aguablanca Wet Mill Project in Huila's Valle de Laboyos—illustrates the approach: the lot traces to 30–50 smallholder producers and a state-of-the-art wet mill opened in 2024, with the company citing direct impact on 600 producing families in southern Huila. Tasting notes on that particular lot run white grape, green tea, and red apple.