A Portland coffee roaster that started as an online-only operation in June 2023 is putting down roots on NE Broadway, taking over the space at 2005 NE Broadway that Saint Simon Coffee Co. vacated in June 2026. Cosmopolis Coffee is aiming for a mid-October opening, though owner Conor Carrigan has not locked in an exact date. The move brings a mission-driven roaster with direct ties to Colombian coffee farmers into one of Irvington's most established retail addresses.
According to Bridgetown Bites, Carrigan trained for about a year and a half before launching the business, despite having no prior food-industry coffee experience. He previously worked as a lawyer in New York City, did human rights work in Colombia, and spent time working in Switzerland and Latvia before turning to coffee full time. That backstory shapes much of what Cosmopolis is built around: direct relationships with Colombian growers, including the late Rafael Parga Cortés, a Tolima department farmer who owned the La Montaña farm and promoted polyculture, or planting coffee alongside other crops, per the same outlet's report.
Cosmopolis sources its beans primarily from Colombia, working with roughly three suppliers there, and pays above market rates and fair-trade standards when possible, according to Bridgetown Bites. The company works with small farmers and cooperatives that use sustainable and regenerative agriculture, and Colombian growers supplying Cosmopolis reportedly use prolonged and early fermentation processes in their coffee production. The roaster also plans to add Ethiopian beans alongside its existing Guatemalan and other origin offerings.
Why Tolima Matters to the Menu
The Tolima department, which anchors Cosmopolis's Café Tolima offering, is Colombia's third-largest coffee-producing region, accounting for roughly 13.3% of the country's total output, according to The Colombian Way. High-altitude microclimates there are known for yielding sweet, fruit-forward specialty Arabica. For decades, coffee farming in Tolima was severely restricted due to FARC insurgent occupation, and it was only through peace agreements over the past decade that smallholder farmers and indigenous communities were able to return and revive specialty coffee production, according to Sustainable Harvest. That history underpins the region's rise into one of Colombia's premier specialty coffee hubs.
Colombia's broader coffee supply is also rebounding. The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service projected in a May 2026 forecast that Colombia's green coffee production for the 2026/2027 marketing year would reach 13.4 million 60-kilogram bags, a 7.2% increase as growing weather normalized, according to the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. Colombia remains the largest source of washed Arabica imported into the United States, a detail that matters for a roaster as dependent on Colombian relationships as Cosmopolis.
Bringing In Industry Experience
Carrigan is working with Mike Nelson, who is helping train Cosmopolis staff as the company prepares for its retail debut. Nelson founded Portland's Guilder Cafe and Junior's Roasted Coffee, where he pioneered a farmer-focused “Cost of Production Covered” pricing model, before selling both operations in April 2024, according to Daily Coffee News. Nelson had operated Guilder in Northeast Portland for seven years before passing ownership to new local buyers.
Cosmopolis has already built a retail footprint around Northeast Portland ahead of the café launch. Its bagged coffee is available at Alberta Co-op, Barbur World Foods, Kaah Market on SE Foster, and Cafe Eleven in Woodlawn, per Bridgetown Bites' reporting, and the PDX Coffee Club has also featured the roaster. Cosmopolis expanded onto Alberta Cooperative Grocery's shelves in March 2025, placing bagged coffee inside the community-owned Northeast Portland market that has operated since 2001. Prior to landing its own storefront, the company also donated brewed coffee to Saint Andre Bessette Catholic Church in downtown Portland in January 2025 to support its community meal programs for low-income and unhoused residents.
A Neighborhood Corridor Built for Foot Traffic
The new café sits on NE Broadway, described by Bridgetown Bites as a relatively busy thoroughfare backing onto Irvington, and the timing lines up with recent street changes designed to make that stretch friendlier to people on foot and on bikes. Between 2024 and late 2025, the Portland Bureau of Transportation completed a “Pave & Paint” redesign of NE Broadway along Irvington, reducing travel lanes from three to two, lowering the speed limit to 20 mph, and adding protected buffered bike lanes and five new pedestrian crosswalks, according to Portland.gov.
The redesign followed a stretch of safety concerns along the corridor. PBOT safety studies found NE Broadway recorded 251 vehicle crashes and 27 pedestrian crashes between 2013 and 2023, with nearly half of pedestrian incidents concentrated at key neighborhood intersections along the commercial strip, per the city's own data. That crash history made the corridor a priority for Portland's Vision Zero initiative, and the resulting upgrades give Cosmopolis a calmer, more walkable frontage than the one Saint Simon Coffee Co. operated on for years.
Filling a Storefront With a Long Reputation
Saint Simon Coffee Co. had built a strong local following at 2005 NE Broadway before departing the space in June 2026. In a 2019 Hoodline roundup, the café ranked as the second most popular business in Irvington based on customer reviews, holding a 5-star rating on Yelp at the time. Cosmopolis plans to keep the existing coffee-bar location and seating placement largely intact while reworking the interior with warm off-white walls and an earthy-red color scheme, aiming for a bright, warm space optimized for both baristas and customer seating.
The shift arrives amid a broader reshuffling of Portland's specialty beverage scene this year. Tea Bar closed its final Portland storefront and pivoted to wholesale, as Hoodline reported, while North Portland's Blend Coffee shut down after a decade on Killingsworth, and Puff Coffee moved into the former Stumptown space on Belmont. Against that backdrop of closures and turnover, Cosmopolis's expansion from grocery shelves into its own storefront stands out as a rare case of steady growth.
Once open, Cosmopolis plans hours of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on operating days, serving hot and cold beverages, tea, chai, and matcha alongside rotating batch brew. The menu will include soy and oat milk options, along with muffins, scones, and possibly quiches, plus bags of its beans for customers who want to brew at home. The roaster, which is a small Portland operation, produces roasts up to dark-medium and does not make dark roasts, aiming to position itself as a community and neighborhood gathering space as much as a coffee counter.
