Cultivar Coffee

Cultivar Coffee was founded in 2009 by Jonathan Meadows and Nathan Shelton, who met working the bar at Dallas's White Rock Coffee and Pearl Cup before striking out on their own. Meadows went on to become the first Dallas-based barista to compete on the United States Barista Championship stage, in 2010 — a credential that shaped the roastery's early identity as a serious, competition-literate operation rather than a casual coffee shop.

The company built slowly: an East Dallas roastery storefront in early 2011, a first retail foothold inside the Good 2 Go Taco restaurant that same year, then a second location in 2014 inside Denton's Hypnotic Donuts doughnut shop. It wasn't until 2016 that Cultivar opened its first standalone café, at 313 W. Jefferson Boulevard in Dallas's Oak Cliff neighborhood — seven years after the roastery itself began.

Today the roastery sources coffee from Peru, Mexico, Honduras and Ethiopia, including Cup of Excellence competition-winning lots, and runs a subscription program alongside wholesale and catering accounts. The Oak Cliff café remains the clearest expression of the roastery's slow-build approach: rather than opening a flagship first and building sourcing credibility after, Cultivar spent seven years proving the coffee inside other people's businesses before opening a room of its own.