Lamplighter Roasting Company

Lamplighter Roasting Company opened in December 2009 inside a converted gas station at 116 Addison Street in Richmond's Fan district. It was co-founded by Jennifer Rawlings, who had been roasting coffee since 1998 and had previously run a Richmond coffee shop called 17.5, alongside Noelle Archibald and her husband Zach, who built out the food menu. The three recognized a shared obsession with coffee and decided to combine it into a roastery and cafe rather than separate ventures. From the start, the goal wasn't rapid expansion but a gathering place -- a small, scrappy operation built around the neighborhood it served. The gas-station shell shaped the cafe's layout and gave it an identity distinct from a purpose-built coffee shop, something regulars still reference when describing the space. Since opening, Lamplighter has continued to roast its own coffee on-site and serve it across the same counter where the original crew started, keeping the operation independent through Richmond's growth as a coffee city -- one of the city's founding third-wave roasters, still running out of the same repurposed filling station where it first opened.