Bluestem Coffee Roasting Co.

Bluestem Coffee Roasting was founded in 2024 by Matt Knott and his wife Casey, but Matt's roasting career runs back much further — he learned the craft in the late 1990s at North Pole Coffee in Alaska, then founded Minnesota Coffee Roasting Company in 2006 and served on the board of the Midwest Roasters Guild. He moved to Iowa in 2008, and Bluestem, launched sixteen years later, is the venture he and Casey built once they'd settled there.

The company keeps its operation deliberately small: coffee is roasted to order and shipped within 48 hours rather than held in inventory, with free local delivery across the Des Moines metro area. Single-origin lots come from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Colombia, Costa Rica, Brazil, Honduras and El Salvador, sold alongside a small set of blends — House, Breakfast, Classic Espresso and French Roast — and a Swiss Water decaf.

The company's stated approach, 'coffee roasted with intention,' shows in the roasted-to-order model itself: rather than roasting ahead for a shelf, Bluestem fires a batch once an order comes in, controlling temperature and airflow to bring out each origin's specific character. It's a small-batch discipline built on roughly three decades of Matt Knott's own roasting experience, applied at a company barely a year old.