Best Independent Coffee Roasters in Chattanooga, TN (2026)
Chattanooga has 5 active independent coffee roasters anchoring a downtown that has reinvented itself more than once over the last twenty years. Chattanooga Coffee Company opened on Market Street on September 11, 2002 — the founders had walked away from a travel business that morning. Mean Mug helped pioneer the Southside in 2011. Mad Priest opened in 2015 with a refugee employment mission. The roasters in this guide built their businesses across the same period of riverfront redevelopment, gigabit-fueled tech relocations, and a steady tourism flow off Lookout Mountain and the Tennessee River.
Chattanooga is the kind of city that surprises people on the way in. Tucked into the southeastern corner of Tennessee where the river bends around Lookout Mountain, it spent most of the late twentieth century as an industrial town. The downtown reinvented itself starting in the 1980s, accelerated through the aughts with the Tennessee Aquarium and the riverwalk, and then accelerated again after the 2010 gigabit internet rollout pulled in remote-work transplants. The coffee scene grew alongside that arc: small enough to know personally, deep enough that all five active roasters have a distinct identity.
We've mapped 5 independent coffee roasters in Chattanooga proper, plus Velo Coffee Roasters on East Main Street operating in the same downtown orbit. What follows is a guide to the Chattanooga coffee roasters worth knowing about, organized by neighborhood and roasting program.
The Chattanooga roastery anchors
Mad Priest Coffee Roasters
Mad Priest is the Chattanooga roaster most coffee people outside Tennessee have heard of. Michael and Cherita Rice founded the company in 2015 as a specialty roaster and social enterprise, with a mission line — "Craft excellent coffee. Educate the curious. Champion the displaced." — that has shaped hiring from the start. Through a partnership with Bridge Refugee Services, Mad Priest has hired multiple displaced employees. Tarig Idris, a Sudanese refugee who joined as the company's first official hire, became a partner and part-owner. The roastery and drive-thru sit on Cherokee Boulevard in East Chattanooga, with cafe operations across the city. Daily Coffee News covered the program in 2017, and the Times Free Press has run multiple features since.
See their full profile on Roast Local | Visit their website
Mean Mug Coffee Roasters
Mean Mug is the Southside anchor that grew into a wholesale roastery. Matt Lewis and Monica Smith opened the original Mean Mug Coffeehouse on Main Street in 2011, in what was then a still-emerging Southside corridor. After six years of running the cafe, the team launched Mean Mug Coffee Roasters in 2017 — Monica Smith owns the roasting operation, and Dean Johnson serves as head roaster. The roastery on Manufacturers Road in the North Shore now supplies wholesale accounts across the Southeast, with the Southside cafes still running as the public face of the brand.
See their full profile on Roast Local | Visit their website
Goodman Coffee
Goodman Coffee is Ian Goodman's second act in Chattanooga coffee. Goodman ran Greyfriar's Coffee & Tea Co. as a college senior and operated it for about a decade before stepping away from the cafe business. He launched Goodman Coffee Roasters in 2016, opening first at Warehouse Row in the renovated 11th Street rail-warehouse district, with a Market Street follow-on. The roasting program leans into single-origin work alongside a small set of blends, and Goodman has been publicly identified as one of the early modern specialty operators in Chattanooga — somebody who was running a specialty cafe in this city before most of the customer base knew what specialty meant.
See their full profile on Roast Local | Visit their website
Downtown and the Market Street corridor
Chattanooga Coffee Company (Chattz)
Chattanooga Coffee Company has the most unusual founding story of any roaster on this list. Evelyn Wheeler and Eileen Mason founded the company on September 11, 2002 — the same week the original location opened in the Park Plaza building on Market Street. The two had run a travel business arranging Middle East itineraries; the post-9/11 collapse of that market pushed them into coffee. Chattz on Market ran for fifteen years on the original block before closing in early 2018 during a building renovation. The brand reopened in February 2021 on Broad Street, and the wholesale roasting arm — Chattanooga Coffee Co. — has run continuously through the entire arc, supplying cafes, restaurants, and offices across Southeast Tennessee.
See their full profile on Roast Local | Visit their website
North Shore and Red Bank
New Wave Coffee
New Wave Coffee is the newest roaster on the Chattanooga map and one of the most decorated. The operation launched in late 2020, founded by the team behind (Be)Caffeinated alongside head roaster Luke Pigott, who has won multiple national roasting medals. The roastery sits at 14 W Kent Street near the North Shore, and the working philosophy is built around a small network of producer relationships and a buying experience organized by flavor profile rather than origin geography. The wholesale program has grown quickly — New Wave is the roaster Chattanooga cafes name when asked who they trust for everyday house coffee that doesn't compromise on green-coffee quality.
See their full profile on Roast Local | Visit their website
Honorable mention: Velo Coffee Roasters
Velo Coffee Roasters belongs in any honest accounting of Chattanooga coffee, and the only reason it sits in a separate section is a slug-normalization issue we are still working through on the directory side. Andrew and Jessica Gage launched Velo as a wholesale roastery in spring 2010, moving within months to 509 East Main Street, where they have stayed ever since. Sprudge profiled Velo in 2018, and Daily Coffee News covered the operation back in 2014. Visit the Velo website for current cafe hours and bag availability — they are very much a working part of the downtown coffee map.
What makes Chattanooga's roasting scene different
The scale is small — five core roasters, six counting Velo — but the bench is unusually mission-driven for a city this size. Mad Priest is a refugee employment program first and a coffee roaster second, by design. Chattanooga Coffee Company exists because two people had to rebuild a business from scratch in the weeks after 9/11. Mean Mug helped pull a stretch of the Southside out of warehouse status into walkable retail. Goodman represents a generational handoff inside Chattanooga coffee, and New Wave is the post-2020 wave — a lean operation built for direct-to-consumer ecommerce and wholesale, founded by an award-winning roaster who already knew the local market.
The geography helps. Downtown Chattanooga, the Southside, the North Shore, and East Chattanooga are all within a fifteen-minute drive of one another. The riverwalk pulls visitors past Mad Priest and the cafes anchoring the Southside. Lookout Mountain and Signal Mountain bracket the city to the south and north, and the tourism flow they generate keeps the cafes busy even outside the workday rhythm.
Browse all 5 Chattanooga roasters on Roast Local's Chattanooga city page, or open the Explore map to see how Chattanooga fits into the broader Tennessee scene. For the rest of the state, see our Tennessee coffee scene guide, the Nashville roasters guide, and the Knoxville roasters guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many independent coffee roasters are in Chattanooga?
We've mapped 5 active independent coffee roasters in Chattanooga proper, with a sixth — Velo Coffee Roasters on East Main Street — operating from the same neighborhood as the rest. For a city of about 185,000, that's a tightly-clustered scene: most of these roasteries sit within a fifteen-minute drive of one another, anchored on the Southside, downtown Market Street, and the North Shore.
What is Chattanooga known for in specialty coffee?
Chattanooga's roasting scene grew up alongside the city's downtown reinvention. Chattanooga Coffee Company opened on Market Street on September 11, 2002 — the same day the founders walked away from a travel business they had built around Middle East itineraries. Mean Mug helped pioneer the Southside in 2011. Mad Priest opened in 2015 with a refugee employment mission that has been covered by Daily Coffee News and the Times Free Press. The result is a five-roaster scene that punches above its size, serving a tourism economy and a wave of remote-work transplants who arrived after the gigabit internet rollout.
Do Chattanooga coffee roasters ship nationwide?
All five do. Mad Priest, Mean Mug, Goodman, Chattanooga Coffee Company (Chattz), and New Wave each run direct-to-consumer ecommerce through their websites. Mad Priest and Mean Mug have the strongest national wholesale footprint — Mean Mug roasts on Manufacturers Road and supplies cafes and offices across the Southeast, and Mad Priest's mission-driven story has earned coverage that pulls in mail-order customers from outside the region. New Wave Coffee, founded in late 2020 by award-winning roaster Luke Pigott, has built a tight wholesale and retail program with national medals to its name.
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Last updated: May 2026