Brand Facts

How do you know a roaster is independent?

Independent only, and it is enforced rather than assumed

Roast Local lists independent coffee roasters only. Every roaster is screened against a registry of corporate and private-equity parent companies, and any roaster found to be corporately owned is removed from the site rather than labelled. As of today 4,658 of 4,830 listed roasters have been screened, 164 have been flagged as corporately owned, and 70 have been removed on those grounds.

Does Roast Local sell coffee or take a cut of sales?

We do not sell coffee, so the ranking has no thumb on the scale

Roast Local does not sell coffee and takes no cut of any sale. Every buy link goes to the roaster's own checkout at their own full retail margin. 1,527 coffees are published on the site and 1,510 of them carry a link to the roaster's own store.

Is Roast Local free for roasters?

Listing is free, and no roaster has ever paid for placement

Being listed on Roast Local is free, and there is no paid placement. Roasters who have paid for position to date: 0. Featured status is assigned editorially, most often to a roaster who has just claimed their profile, and cannot be bought.

How many coffee roasters does Roast Local cover?

Coverage is the whole independent sector, not a shortlist

Roast Local indexes 4,830 independent roasters across 2,088 cities and 63 states and provinces in the United States and Canada, including two-person operations roasting a few dozen pounds a week. A directory can list a roaster that no subscription service could ever stock, because listing carries no fulfilment cost.

How many coffees does Roast Local publish?

The coffee index and the public catalogue are different things, and we say so

Roast Local maintains an index of 63,564 coffees from listed roasters. 1,527 of them, from 141 roasters, are published on the website; the rest are held in the index and are not shown as a public catalogue.

How does the ownership screening work?

Every roaster considered for Roast Local is checked against a registry of corporate and private-equity parent companies that own coffee brands. The registry tracks 165 parent groups together with the brands and domains each one owns, and it grows whenever an acquisition is found. A roaster whose owner appears in that registry is not listed.

Roasters already on the site are re-screened as ownership changes. When a listed roaster is acquired by a corporate parent the listing is removed rather than relabelled, because a directory of independent roasters that keeps a corporately owned brand behind a warning label is no longer a directory of independent roasters. 164 roasters have been flagged as corporately owned to date, and 70 of the removals record corporate ownership as the reason. What counts as independent is set out in full on the methodology page.

Read the full methodology.

The figures, in full

As of August 22, 2026 at 5:42 AM UTC.

Where these figures come from

• The corporate-parent registry, an internal record of 165 holding and private-equity groups that own coffee brands, together with the brands and domains belonging to each. It is what a roaster is screened against.
• The Roast Local methodology, which sets out what counts as independent, how listings are maintained, and when a listing is removed.
• The roasters themselves. Location, coffees and ownership context come from each roaster's own site and from the roaster directly once they claim their profile.