Woods Coffee Lakeway

If you only visit one Woods, visit this one, because it is the only one where you can watch the company actually make its coffee. The roastery has occupied the back half of the Lakeway building since 2016, running a 35 kilo Loring roaster and a 300 gallon cold brew system, and there is a tasting bar a few steps from the roasting floor. That is a working production facility with a cafe attached, not a cafe with a bag of beans on a shelf.

It also solves the Bellingham timing problem better than anywhere else in the city. The drive through opens at 4:30am Monday through Saturday and the doors stay open until 8pm. In a town where most independents are shut by two or three, a place open from before dawn until the evening is a genuinely different kind of option.

The company behind it is a Whatcom County family business. Wes and Diane Herman started Woods in Lynden in 2002 with their four kids, out of a homeschool business plan, and it is still family run at roughly two dozen stores, roasting its own coffee and baking its own pastries.

Which makes Lakeway the one to pick if the coffee itself is what you are here for. Boulevard Park has the view, Barkley has the room, King St has the earliest window, and this one has the roaster.