Boon Boona Coffee

This is the roastery floor, not a branch. Efrem Fesaha started the business in 2012 sourcing green Ethiopian coffee after a trip to Asmara, moved into roasting in 2016, and opened this room in 2019 as the first brick and mortar. It is still where the roasting happens, and everything the company has become since grew out of it.

The sourcing is African and only African, across Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya and other growing countries, with a stated focus on woman owned farms and cooperatives. Single origins on the bar have included Adado, Dur Feres, Karehe and Nyamyumba, and the Jebena Blend is the house whole bean. The Africano, their own name for espresso and water, is the pour to order if you want to taste what the roaster is doing without milk in the way.

Fesaha built the place around the Eritrean and Ethiopian coffee ceremony he grew up with, and the Renton shop has run those ceremonies on weekends, with freshly roasted coffee brewed in a jebena. That is the part no other coffee business in the city can offer, and it is a good share of why the national coverage exists.

The room itself is large and full of light, with real workspaces and plenty of seating for individuals and for groups, open 7 AM to 6 PM every day of the week. Parking is the one catch and it is a real one: street only in downtown Renton, and people consistently report it as hard. Give yourself a few extra minutes.