Stauf's Coffee Roasters

Stauf's opened in 1988 as Columbus' first micro-roaster, founded by Tom Griesemer after he moved to the city from Berkeley, California. The original Grandview Avenue shop landed its first wholesale account, King Avenue Coffeehouse, within a year of opening, and Stauf's has kept its roasting in-house since day one — a point of difference from cafes that buy pre-roasted beans from someone else's roastery. Coffee is roasted by hand on gas-fired drum roasters in small batches, sourced as specialty-grade green arabica, and shipped or sold within 48 hours of roasting to keep it close to the roast date. The company has since grown to multiple Columbus locations — Grandview, German Village (its second-oldest shop), Victorian Village, the Discovery District, and a stall in the North Market — each doubling as a working roastery where beans are roasted and bagged on site rather than shipped in from a central plant. That local footprint has earned repeated "Best Coffee Shop" recognition from Columbus publications including ColumbusAlive, 614 Magazine, Columbus Monthly and Columbus Underground across multiple years between 2010 and 2017. The company's own line — "the proof is in the cup" — sums up an approach built around freshness and in-house control rather than scale.