Wolfe Club Coffee Roasters

Wolfe Club sits near 129th and Pacific Avenue, about three minutes from Pacific Lutheran University, and the ownership story is the hook. Mark Larkin's mother bought the business in 2008. He started working there at fifteen while he was still in high school, and he bought it from her himself around late 2022. He is open about what he is doing with it: feeding his own passions, art and creativity included, into a coffee stand.

The coffee is roasted in house, which is rare for a drive through at this scale, and the energy drinks are craft built rather than poured from a can. Two house drinks come up by name: the Honeymoon, white chocolate and cinnamon, and the Dream Machine on the fruit side. Seasonal drinks land in mid November, and past runs have included a molasses gingerbread latte and a chocolate orange mocha.

Set expectations on the format: this is a drive through only operation, so there is no room to sit, no wifi to work on and no table to meet at. What it has instead is a 4.9 rating across more than 700 reviews, which is the highest of any coffee business in this directory's Tacoma set, and branded merchandise for people who want to wear the place.

It opens at 5:30am on weekdays, which is early enough to catch a commute rather than a morning off, and runs to 6pm. Larkin has talked about opening two more locations while keeping the quality where it is, so the count may not hold.