About Big Easy Roasting

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New Orleans runs on coffee. For more than two centuries, this city has woken up to the smell of dark roast and chicory drifting through the French Quarter, poured strong from a chipped café cup alongside a plate of beignets. Coffee here isn't just a habit, it's a vital part of our heritage and the essence of Gulf South coffee culture.

Big Easy Roasting carries that heritage forward, and we come by it honestly.

Our principal owner, Mike Bearden, spent his career running the plants that built New Orleans coffee culture, from the Folgers plant in Gentilly to Vice President of Operations at Reily Foods, the New Orleans institution behind French Market Coffee. If you've sipped coffee in this city, chances are Mike had a hand in roasting it. Decades inside the biggest names in American coffee taught him something simple: great coffee starts with operational excellence.

Mike's wife, Kim, shares that same hands-on instinct. The two met at the University of Central Florida, long before coffee ever entered the picture. Kim picked up the habit later, after their twin boys arrived and she needed the fuel to keep up with them. These days she runs point on cupping, grinding, and packaging at the roastery, tasting and refining every batch before it reaches your cup.

Then there's Lionel, the guy telling you all this. He grew up on coffee milk down Bayou Lafourche, then graduated to drip coffee with chicory and café au lait like everybody else's grandmother made it. Now he handles the marketing and spends his time experimenting with new blends and telling their story one bag at a time.

Coffee for everyone

Coffee is personal, and we build the whole experience around that. Drink it black, add cream and sugar, or dress it up your own way. There's no wrong way to drink a cup, only your way. You choose the flavor. You choose the roast. You decide how far you take it once it hits your kitchen.

That's why we don't stop at our signature lineup. Big Easy Roasting also crafts private blends for individuals who want something built just for them, a custom roast profile tailored to their taste. Tell us how you take your coffee, and we'll roast it that way.

Where we come in

Freshness drives every decision we make. Peak flavor happens between three and twenty-one days after roasting, so we roast to order instead of stockpiling bags on a shelf. Every order ships close to its roast date, which means you get the freshest, fullest, most vibrant cup we can send you.

That's Big Easy Roasting. We specialize in small-batch coffee, roasted with big-plant expertise and New Orleans soul, and roasted to order so it reaches you at its peak. Every blend we craft honors the city that taught us how, from the neighborhoods we name our roasts after to the chicory tradition we refuse to let fade. And if none of them are quite right for you, we'll build one that is.

Welcome to the Big Easy. Pull up a cup.