Co-founders Alan Spear and Mary Allen Lindemann stand outside the first Coffee By Design coffeehouse on Congress Street in Portland, Maine.
Great Coffee. Real People. Meaningful Change.
Since 1994, Coffee By Design has been bringing people together over great coffee, building relationships that reach far beyond the cup.
We’re proudly Maine-made, 100% woman-owned, and deeply connected to the farmers, makers, neighbors, and communities who make our work possible. Every day, we’re grateful to be part of a coffee community that stretches from Portland to farms around the world.
Our coffee begins with long-standing relationships with farmers who care deeply for their land and their craft. It comes to life through the knowledge, creativity, and dedication of our roasting team. And it finds its way to you through the people who welcome you into our coffeehouse, pack your orders, serve your coffee, and help make Coffee By Design what it is. The many hands that make our coffee and overall experience uniquely Coffee By Design.
For more than three decades, we’ve been proud to help shape Portland’s vibrant coffee culture. Along the way, we’ve supported the arts, celebrated diversity, and invested in the communities we call home while building partnerships that create positive change around the world.
Our commitment to quality, innovation, and purpose has earned recognition, including Roast Magazine’s 2020 Roaster of the Year, a 2025 James Beard Award semifinalist distinction for our founder, and honors from the Good Food and Golden Bean Awards. We’re grateful for that recognition, but what matters most is the trust people place in us every day: farmers, coworkers, customers, neighbors, and friends.
We remain fiercely independent and passionately committed to doing things thoughtfully, from how we source and roast our coffee to how we show up for our communities.
For us, every cup is an opportunity to honor the people who make it possible, strengthen the communities we share, and create a more meaningful future together.
Coffee By Design
History and Timeline
Our Home Town
Portland, Maine, is our home, and over the years we have built an enduring network of friends and neighbors, colleagues and connections throughout the city and surrounding community. Mainers and visitors from all walks of life have come together in our coffee houses and through the programs we support and sponsor , finding the common ground for which coffee can be a catalyst.
Our Diamond St. coffeehouse in Portland, serves as a welcoming, inclusive community hub, and a bustling coffee roastery, where beans are roasted-to-order for over 700 wholesale and mail-order customers around the world.
A Commitment to Community
From the very start, we have used our voice as a successful local business to support positive change in Portland and across the globe. More than just a progressive façade, it’s a spirit that guides every decision we make and every action we take—from how we treat our employees to our stringent coffee-buying criteria and the relationships we build with socially responsible coffee bean farmers across three continents Philanthropy is core to our culture, and we work at living our values every day, supporting the local economy via innumerable donations, sponsorships, and volunteer work.
Back in the ’90s we helped jumpstart Portland’s “Buy Local” movement and inaugurated our Rebel Blend Fund—one dollar per pound sold of our Rebel Blend coffee is used to fund art projects which promote social change. And now, as an established company, we take more seriously than ever our responsibility to make a positive impact, with initiatives like our partnership with the International Women’s Coffee Alliance, which works towards greater equity and empowerment for women in the global coffee community.
Cultivating a Global Perspective
From the day we opened our doors, we have focused on ways to promote economic sustainability at the point of origin, emphasizing long-term relationship building with coffee farmers and co-ops. Through project work in Colombia, Guatemala, India, and Burundi, we demonstrate to coffee-growing communities that we are interested in doing more than just sourcing great coffee—we want to be involved in ways that improve quality of life for all, including future generations.
Honoring Our Past. Envisioning Our Future
Coffee By Design began in 1994 when Mary Allen Lindemann and Alan Spear opened a single coffeehouse on a largely deserted stretch of Congress Street in downtown Portland, Maine. At the time, nearly 40% of downtown storefronts stood vacant, and the city was struggling to recover from a devastating recession. They believed in Portland’s potential and in the power of coffee to bring people together, build community, and inspire change.
More than three decades later, Portland has transformed into a nationally recognized destination for food, arts, and culture. Coffee By Design is proud to have played a part in that transformation, growing from a pioneering neighborhood coffeehouse into an award-winning specialty coffee company with relationships reaching from Maine to coffee-growing communities around the world.
Like so many businesses, we faced extraordinary challenges during the COVID pandemic. Those difficult years tested our resilience but also reaffirmed what matters most: our people, our relationships, our community, and the values that have guided us since the beginning.
In 2022, Coffee By Design entered a new chapter when co-founder Mary Allen Lindemann became sole owner, establishing the company as a proudly 100% woman-owned, Maine-made, farmer-focused business. Her commitment to keeping Coffee By Design independent and rooted in Maine reflects a belief that how we do business matters just as much as the coffee we produce.
Today, we are building on that legacy with renewed energy, creativity, and ambition. From deepening our relationships with coffee farmers and expanding our award-winning coffee offerings to developing innovative new products and thoughtfully growing our presence beyond Maine, we see tremendous opportunity ahead.
Our future is about more than growth. It is about growing with purpose, investing in our people and communities, celebrating the differences that make us stronger, and demonstrating that a successful business can also be a force for meaningful change.
The next chapter of Coffee By Design is already being written. We’re excited about what’s ahead.
