A visit to Lighthouse Roasters for a cup of coffee is a daily ritual for many Fremont and Phinney residents. A hidden oasis for the coffee lover and aficionado, Lighthouse has been serving the "best coffee in town" for the last 10 years.
Located on the corner of North 43rd Street and Phinney Avenue North at 400 N. 43rd St., more than half of the customer base are local residents who can walk to the café.
Still, for the occasional passer-by, the bright-orange building catches the eye, as does the red "Lighthouse Roasters" sign above the corner entrance. The café is always filled with a good number of customers, with people spilling out to the sidewalk, sitting down with their dogs or resting on their bikes as they catch up with a friend.
Owner Ed Leebrick has produced a loyal following by priding himself on his roasting process and creating consistently good coffee for his customers. He is nonchalant about the success and confident in the sustainability of a stellar product.
"We don't really do a lot of advertising; we just make really good coffee," he said.
Coffee as an art
Lighthouse Roasters keeps it sim-ple, focusing on the coffee, with a wide selection of blends and varietals to take home, along with the lattes, mochas, cappuccinos (among others) and pastries. The beans are hand-roasted in small batches each day in vintage cast-iron roasters.
Leebrick claims to be one of the first to ever have a roaster inside a café. He and two other roasters rotate shifts, arriving early in the morning to roast a variety of blends in small batches and keeping a watchful eye on the transformation of the beans.
Leebrick is very passionate about what he does and relies on a team of 10 employees with that same passion for coffee. Manager Wolfgang Klinker has been with Lighthouse Roasters for six years and started out as a regular customer. "I used to live right down on [North] 39th [Street] and had been coming to Lighthouse for a while and loved the coffee. I used to [sit] right up at the counter and hung out until they hired me," Klinker said.
In a business where turnover rates are high, the majority of Lighthouse Roasters employees have been with the company for five or more years. Together, they have created somewhat of a family. "We have a good time. Everyone is good friends. We hang out after work and know each other's families," Klinker remarked.
The customers feel that same comfort as well. Jonathon Stuart and business partner D'arcy Gholston both discovered Lighthouse Roasters more than nine years ago and have been faithful ever since. "We have been coming here for so long that we feel like part of the family - whether that's always a positive thing or not," Stuart said, laughing.
The best coffee in town
In 1993 Leebrick bought Lighthouse Roasters from two women who originally had the café in Laurelhurst. He bought the café mainly because it housed a roaster and he had five years of roasting experience under his belt.
Initially, Lighthouse Roasters was a fairly small and obscure business, but he relocated in 1994 to its current location, which used to be the Phinney Street Natural Foods Co-op.
Leebrick approached the building owner, and the co-op approved the sale, therefore establishing his first network of interested customers.
Leebrick did not advertise to get the word out and still doesn't. People just seem to show up, he said, whether they had heard about the café or were just driving through.
"In a town as interested in coffee as it is, it's just natural that people are going to check it out," Leebrick remarked.
Though it may be difficult to find, once they do, customers stay loyal to Lighthouse Roasters. Gholston, who once lived in Fremont and now lives elsewhere in the North End, still commutes for what he describes as "the best coffee in town."
Stuart agreed: "Frankly, the coffee is the best [at Lighthouse]. You [can] go anywhere else and just get disappointed."
Abby Lund writes about places Off the Beaten Path on the third Wednesday of the month. She can be reached at needitor@nwlink.com.
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