Autonomy Coffee Lab Establishes Itself with Tampa Co-Roastery and Bar – Charm

The new bar at Autonomy Coffee Lab in Tampa. All images courtesy of Autonomy Coffee Lab.

In-house roasting operations are not unusual alongside specialty coffee bars, but few offer production on the scale of Autonomy Coffee Lab in Tampa, Florida. The public cafe is the newest element inside the 8,000-square-foot Autonomy co-roasting facility and warehouse.

Roasting launched inside the building late last year with a row of three Diedrich roasters — two 12-kilogram machines and one 35-kilogram machine — lining the north wall. A destoner is paired with the 35-kilogram roaster, while tables equipped with scales, scoops, bag sealers and other packaging tools sit between the stations.

A wall of rack shelving holds sacks of green coffee for client roasters, along with spot coffees sold by select green coffee trading partners. A three-piece mobile coffee bar serves as the cupping lab. The warehouse’s only enclosed room is a soundproof, fully equipped podcast and video production studio.

The coffee bar along the east wall has been serving espresso, drip coffees and light bites to walk-in customers since January. Guests can take in the production spectacle while enjoying the final results among couches and tables set between the retail bar and the roaster row.

“There’s not a ton of seating because the cafe space is not the main focus of what we do, but we do want a place for people to sit, chill, hang out, get a good coffee and see the full coffee experience,” Autonomy Coffee Lab Co-Founder Jonathan Mitchell told Daily Coffee News. “People get to come in while roasting is happening, while cuppings are happening, and get served.”

The couches also give resident roasters and other coffee professionals a place to socialize between work sessions or during events inside the space.

“There’s belief that every roaster is kind of gatekeeping profiles and stuff. I just think we don’t talk to each other because we’re all stuck in our dungeons of roasting and don’t get to actually hang out with each other,” Mitchell said. “One of the goals here is to kind of build that community up.”

Fourteen local roasting companies currently use the facility, which grew out of a collaboration between Mitchell, who founded Elevation Coffee in 2019, and Tom Pestock, a former NFL player, current professional wrestler and founder of Open Air Coffee.

After starting his company with a Bellwether roaster during the COVID-era disruption to his athletic career, Pestock turned to Mitchell for training on a traditional drum roaster. As word spread, former Elevation employees and others in the community also began renting time on the Elevation roaster to produce coffee for their own startup companies.

“[Tom] and I just started looking at each other like, ‘dude, we need to turn this into a business model.’ This is what I wished existed before I started Elevation Coffee Roasters,” Mitchell said. “I wanted to only roast. I didn’t want to have to pay for permits for the roaster and all those things.”

In addition to storage and equipment time, Autonomy Coffee offers training and educational sessions on brewing, roasting and sourcing topics. Importers partnering with Autonomy for spot coffee warehousing include Honduras-focused 504Café, Yellow Rooster Coffee Imports and Unblended Coffee.

The latter two companies have participated in events at Autonomy, including a recent public roundtable featuring producers, importers, roasters, cafe owners and equipment technicians. Expanding those and other industry-focused events is a key focus for Mitchell going forward.

“One of my goals with this location is to have more coffee events that are not barista events. It seems like every coffee event is a barista-forward event, a latte art throwdown, a brewing competition — and those things are amazing,” Mitchell said. “But there’s not really a lot of stuff for roasters, producers, importers, green coffee buyers. I really think that those people getting to meet each other and hang out with each other and learn from each other is what’s missing in coffee.”